Reforming Pre-Licensing Requirements for Real Estate Agents
May 27th, 2009 categories: Military Installations, Relocating
In this second of a four part series on Improving the Practice of Real Estate in the Commonwealth of Virginia, we’ll begin the look at reformation, appropriately, at the beginning. In other words, where Realtors receive their pre-licensing training or instruction, the traditional classroom coursework that must be completed prior to testing by the state for a Realtor’s license.
Current Requirements
As stipulated by the Virginia Real Estate Board (VREB), and set forth in the Virginia Code, § 54.1-2105, pre-licensing education requirements for those seeking a real estate license are:
1. Every applicant for an initial license as a real estate salesperson shall have:
a. At a minimum, a high school diploma or its equivalent; and
b. Completed a course in the principles of real estate that carried an academic credit of at least four semester hours, but not less than 60 hours of classroom, correspondence, or other distance learning instruction, offered by an accredited university, college, community college, high school offering adult distributive education courses, or other school or educational institution offering an equivalent course.
In other words, to legally practice real estate in the Commonwealth of Virginia you need:
- 60 hours of classroom instruction (you actually don’t have to be IN the classroom – online courses meet the requirement)
- Passing a written examination.
- Oh, I almost forgot, you also need a high school education, or its equivalent.
So, having passed the state test, without having handled a contract, toured a home, negotiated a contract term or clause, or spoken to a client, a brand new licensee can “practice” real estate. Is that adequate preparation to carry out a responsibility involving hundreds of thousands of dollars? Is there another profession whose qualifications are as minimal?
Can you imagine a surgeon performing surgery without having gone through the steps a few times, not to mention hundreds of times, prior to going solo? What about obtaining a driver’s license? How many practices has the student driver had before they are operationally ready? Before they are licensed?
One might argue that those are poor comparisons since a lack of adequate training or preparation in those professions might lead to death, whereas nothing that extreme might occur as a result of an error in a real estate transaction. And, they have a point. It may not result in a death, but incompetence and real estate “malpractice” could certainly costs tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If you’re not satisfied with the comparison with a surgeon or a driver of a vehicle, what about teachers? Are they licensed to teach without student teaching many, many times while being supervised. What about an accountant? An architect? A bank teller? In each case, minimal hands on “real life”, supervised training is required prior to the ”students” being given the OK or being certified to operate on their own. Likewise, should this be required in our training?
In our profession of real estate, one may ask if this should be a pre-licensing criteria, or is it more suitably done after licensing, but as a first step of a mentoring program Realtors participate in once licensed and prior to operating on their own under the Broker of their choosing. Hmmm…that’s something to consider. For now, let’s begin by looking at improving pre-licensing training with a requirement of 60 college credit hours.
Learning is a never ending process. While there are many constants in a real estate transaction, there are some variables that may change depending upon the client, brokerage firm, financing involved, and other related factors. It’s important too remember that a standard curriculum can’t cover all the possible contingencies or circumstances a practitioner might face, however, it certainly should include many.
Current pre-licensing coursework provides students with little practical instruction of how to do their job. Its intent seems to be one of preparing students to pass a written test of concepts instead of preparing them to practice real estate. But, in examining how Realtors are trained prior to being certified or licensed to practice, maybe we’re not asking the right questions. Maybe we the should be asking, “What should pre-licensing instruction be designed to do?” What outcome are we looking for? Shouldn’t it be designed to prepare a candidate to do their job? If not, why not? For the sake of this series of articles, let’s assume that’s the objective. We want to prepare Realtors to do their job properly, plain and simple. In other words, to carry out their job related tasks in a “professional” manner.
Proposed Requirements
- A first step in better preparing our prospective real estate agents for their job begins with dramatically increasing their pre-licensing requirements. This can be accomplished through augmentation of the depth and breath of the classroom curriculum. While there is no substitution for experience, the increased use of case studies, and a more detailed examination of contracts and real estate practices, to include real estate finance among other topics, will provide candidates with a better base of practical problems and solutions to learn from.
- To adequately prepare Realtor candidates, the pre-licensing curriculum should be expanded from the current 60 classroom hours to 60 college credit hours. Not only would these college credit hours substantially increase students exposure to real estate material, but, doing so would also provide them with college level credit. In accordance with state guidelines, the specific content of the real estate courses “shall be in real estate brokerage, real estate finance, real estate appraisal, real estate law, and such related subjects as are approved by the Board.” Incorporated in this coursework should be 10 hours of “hands on” practice. This practice includes interaction with clients, both buyers and sellers, writing contracts, negotiating terms, and experiencing the entirety of a real estate transaction from beginning to post closing follow up.
While current pre-licensing training material provides students with a familiarity of real estate procedures (concepts can be identified if seen on a test), it does little to prepare these aspiring agents for practical problems they’ll face in a typical transaction. Increasing classroom time, improving the course material, and providing “hands on” practical experience with real estate trasactions, are three steps that need to be taken in order to improve the pre-licensing requirements for those training to be real estate agents.
Improving pre-licensing requirements for real estate agents is an initial step in attempting to improve our profession. By providing new agents an improved foundation to build on, they’ll be better prepared for actual real estate practice and carrying out their job. But, while they can now legally practice, how capable are they? Probably capable enough to be dangerous, but not capable enough to be on their own. And, that’s where the second step of the improvement process comes in, the use of a Mentoring program.
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[...] to police our profession? In our efforts to improve real estate practice by improving pre-licensing requirements and establishing a mentoring program, shouldn’t we begin by using the one valuable resource we [...]
[...] Reforming Pre-Licensing Requirements for Real Estate Agents [...]