Every once in a while I think of a way to change things for the better. I actually had this thought last night - it was random but the more I thought about it the more I liked it. And then this morning I had coffee with my buddy Tony, one of the most respectable, honorable real estate brokers I know. Tony and I have similar philosophies on giving back to the profession and come from a "colleague" perspective verses a "competitor" perspective.
So here's the deal. It's too easy to get a real estate license. If you have a thousand bucks and a few days, you can take the classes you need to satisfy the TREC educational requirements and sit for the exam. And the exam? It's not hard. At all.
This setup has allowed a ton of people to become licensed to help people buy and sell real estate. But it's kind of like Spandex...just because you CAN, doesn't mean you SHOULD.
Because it is so easy to get a license, we often hear people say "oh, I don't like my job so I am going to become a REALTOR" or "oh, I got fired so I'm going to...."
Today Tony told me a story he had heard....this agent went out to meet with the seller of a 750,000 home. The seller said "I'll have to be honest with you, I don't work, and I'm thinking I should just go get my license and sell my own place, and save the commission."
Thankfully this seller was smart enough to know, that just because someone has a license to do something, it does not guarantee that they are good at it.
But anway, enough of that. The bottom line is - there are too many agents, too many part time agents, too many BAD agents. So here's my solution.
Let's increase renewal fees to $5000 per year. Yes, five THOUSAND dollars per year. Now before you have a total tizzy, let me finish.
The base charge for renewals would be $5250 bucks. Plus satisfaction of stringent educational requirements (I'll save my thoughts on the status of quality education for another post). And, for every transaction you have completed in the past 12 months, you get $1000 credit, up to a total of $5000 in credit.
So in the end, if you are actually DOING real estate, the renewal is reasonable. If you are just "playing" in the field - it's not so reasonable. My theory is this - such a change would force licensees to either be GOOD at what they do (demonstrated by doing it over and over and providing quality service), or they simply could not afford to continue to renew their licenses.
That's Plan A. Plan B is similar, only it would require the sponsoring broker to pay an exorbetant fee for each licensee they sponsor. So if the people they're sponsoring are not producing, they'd have no incentive to sponsor them. And again, with verifiable production and no claims, there could be a credit system for the brokers as well. This would eliminate the "Hang your license with me for $100 a month and don't bother me and I won't bother you" type of brokerages.
Or Plan C....do both.
Those are my 2 cents for the day.......
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