This summer I will celebrate my fiftieth year as a licensed real estate broker, primarily serving clients in the State of Texas, but also with some reasonable frequency acting as a consultant for real estate transactions in other states.
I tell you that only because I believe it offers a pretty credible reference for me, since less than 0.003 of the Realtors currently licensed and in the real estate business have been doing it for as long as I have.
A huge portion of those who become licensed today won't be with us five years, while many times that many won't be selling homes full-time by the tenth anniversary of the license.
Today, I was in a meeting with maybe twenty-five fine agents. Most I had never met. But what was interesting was that the common complaint about our business is the number of licensed Realtors who are not competent, not because they don't want to be, but because they have not been taught anything of consequence after receiving their licenses. It's not a requirement.
In the ten years I've been in Dallas, incompetency and the overlooking of ethics have been the common denominator of a good percentage of those with whom I've co-oped a sale. That left me to do a good portion of their work for them.
One of those in the today's meeting asked in exasperation why our Association didn't make it a requirement that all agents complete the GRI courses within a certain period of time.
The common answer around the table seemed to be that the Association would be unable to require it. I don't agree with that. Here's why:
It seems to me that if Realtors can be required to take and renew ethics and legal training every few years, they can be required to learn the rudiments of client representation.
How nice it would be for Realtors to be able to say, what separates us from those who have only a real estate license, is that we have extensive additional training.
BILL CHERRY
Broker-Realtor
Keller Williams Dallas Premier
Direct: 214 503-8563
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