How much do you value your real estate license?

Hi, Sally and David:  Thank you for stopping by, and for your comment.  It's a bit of a tough position our industry's in- and surely more needs to be done to work on not only protecting the value of our licenses- for lack of a better term, but also in terms of protecting an promoting value our associations provide. 

Interestingly, we share a challenge with social service organizations like Kiwanis, Rotary and Jaycee clubs: how to address the concerns and needs of an aging group of core folks- while looking to be trendy enough and fulfilling enough to retain younger talent.

With disrespect intended toward none, I'm fairly confident in saying that our older generations- folks like the gentleman in my photo licensed circa 1949- are going to value their licenses andwhat they represent more than today's newest recruits. Part of the blame goes to folks like Carlton Sheets and others who have done a great deal to help consumers directly- yet have served to dumb down our licenses and their requisite education. "Anyone can get a real estate license...$129.99!" exclaimed by Internt ads hawking classes don't help, either.

As for folks knowing what to do, us policing ourselves, etc. Next Thursday will be the final meeting of the year for the Grievance Committee that great ActiveRainer Rob Arnold and I serve on. Not counting any cases we might send forth to Professional Standards from that meeting, our association's hearing backlog reaches into next June right now. That's a ton of folks (backlog 40+ cases) whom someone at least suspects of wrongdoing- and that's not good.

Rather than a lack of "how to", though, I'd say that most of those cases involve complaints against folks who knew what was right and proper to do- yet willingly chose another path. It's the "want to" we sorely lack at this point.

Hi, Wallace:  Thank you for dropping by, and for your comment.  I can't say I'm near that point yet!  I do agree that things might very well get tougher as the years go by, too- for the more you learn, the more you can possibly forget.

Hi, Bob:  Thank you for stopping by, and for your comment and contribution.  It's funny, but I was thinking about things earlier today- and it occurred to me that I will typically disagree with folks' comments about our licenses  and education that go into them.  If I hear one downplaying the significance of it all (i.e., "it's just a job", "have to take another worthless CE class"), I'll profess how great and significant our education is. But on the other hand, I'm quick to bring back to Earth those in our business who speak too highly of our education and all as if we've spent time going to school and learning how to cure cancer or something of that ilk.