The National Association of REALTORS® is planning to roll out a program later this year to help you test how well you stack up on 11 core competencies in the real estate profession. Courteousness is one of them—transactions can succeed or fail, in part, due to how well you and another agent communicate and cooperate. Few things are more frustrating than working with an agent who doesn’t strive for the same level of professionalism as you.
The program is called the
Commitment to Excellence. It’ll be organized around an interactive web tool that starts with a self-assessment and then gives you a plan for building on what you already know so you can close your knowledge gap in each area. Once you close one gap, you get a badge. When you’ve closed the gap in all knowledge areas, you get an endorsement to show you take professionalism seriously.
NAR President Elizabeth Mendenhall talked about the program in a Facebook Live event she hosted at Fox News studios in New York a few weeks ago. Her remarks are featured in the latest Voice for Real Estate news video from NAR, above. The video also looks at why sales in both residential and commercial sectors are getting off to a slow start this year. In both cases, inventory shortages are a problem. The shortage has been talked about a lot on the residential side, but it’s also a growing problem on the commercial side, including in the small cap market.
Also covered in the video are reports on recent Senate passage of a bill to curb abusive accessibility lawsuits filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act and a recent IRS memo confirming that the interest on home equity loans remains deductible for the portion of the loan proceeds used for home repairs and upgrades.
—Robert Freedman, REALTOR® Magazine
