Happy Sunday! I hope you all had a great week and are enjoying the last lazy, hazy days of summer. Last week I touched on what education is required to become a licensed real estate agent as well as some insight on required and elective continuing education available to us as professionals. This week let’s shed a little light on training and attending The School of Hard Knocks.
It is up to each individual broker to decide what type of training they provide for their agents, both new and seasoned. These days most do provide training in order to keep them up to date on this ever-changing industry. Has it always been that way? No. Let me tell you a little story…
When I first started this long and loved career of mine, I was eager to hit the ground running. To say I was excited when I got my first real estate deal signed is an understatement! I had the pleasure of working with a very nice man who was relocating to my area. He had sold his house in his home state so was ready to buy his new home using the equity to put 20% down which equated to about $80,000. When we were writing the offer we decided he may as well give his down payment as earnest money deposit since he’d be handing it over eventually anyway. For those of you who don’t know, earnest money is the amount a buyer provides at contract signing and puts at risk to show they are serious about moving forward with the sale. Needless to say, that amount said ‘serious’ so on we went with providing a majority of my client’s savings to the escrow agent.
Neither the other agent nor my broker pointed out the flaw in our reasoning. I had just put my client, and new friend, at extreme risk of losing a very large sum of money. I realized the error of my ways too late, though, and we had to continue on. Luckily for my client, my broker, and myself everything went smoothly, he lived happily ever after and I was a much smarter agent. This is what we call being tossed in the pool to learn how to swim. These days, much more oversight is provided to agents by their brokers, but this illustrates that to some degree every agent learns something new in each transaction. Even the seasoned ones. Whether it’s the changing rules of an established HOA, new tax guideline, or using an addendum we are not familiar with it is our duty to clients, customers, and the public to never assume we know everything. The minute I say I know it all is the minute I should retire and pick up a new trade.
I told you I would be telling an embarrassing story this week! You’re welcome. Now send me an email with topics you’d like me to write about and I’ll do my best to oblige. Take care and enjoy your week…
Melissa Berube, 2019 MBOR President
