The course explores a licensee’s ethical responsibilities to the public and the real estate industry. This includes specific rules and rulings provided by state statutes and administrative bodies as well as practical suggestions for maintaining compliance. The course closes with a section on the ethical duties to fellow licensees promoting mutual respect and professionalism for all Ohio professionals.

Course highlights:

• Standards of conduct for all licensees
• Identifying misleading statements
• Disclosures and ethics
• Advertising and ethics
• Compensation and ethics

*Please confirm that your local association, who administers the Code of Ethics training, will accept this course.

Agency relationships are at the very core of your role as a real estate professional.

A complete understanding of and compliance with Ohio agency law is critical to ensure clients are being properly served.

This course explores the duties and responsibilities of a listing and buyers' agents under Ohio law and the proper way to waive specific duties.

Course highlights include:

• Listing agent duties
• Buyer agent duties
• Waiving duties appropriately
• Express vs. implied agreements
• Appropriate use of the Consumer Guide to Agency Relationships
• Ageny disclosure statements
• Listing agreements; buyer agency agreements
• Potential conflicts of interest with dual agency

Thanks in part to movements such as #MeToo and Time’s Up, sexual harassment and discrimination have moved to the forefront of the national conversation. Responsible agents not only reject sexually predatory behavior but also actively dismantle toxic workplace environments to ensure a safe place for all. It’s up to agents to reject behaviors or ideologies that could damage neighbors, clients, and each other.

In this course, we’ll take a closer look at how sexual harassment is defined and the impact such behavior can have on your clients, your brokerage, and your reputation. Additionally, we’ll discuss actions you can take to ensure that your office is inclusive and welcoming to all, and that your clients’ best interests are always protected. This includes tips for putting together a comprehensive office policy that thoroughly addresses sexual harassment and discrimination.

Course highlights:

• How sexual harassment is defined by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR)
• Protections offered through Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the federal Fair Housing Act
• Ramifications of sexual harassment within a brokerage, including how it affects clients and customers
• Federal Sexual Harassment Housing Initiative
• Federal and state laws protecting sexual orientation and gender identity in housing
• Landmark legal cases relating to sexual harassment and gender discrimination
• Tips for putting together a comprehensive office policy that addresses sexual harassment and the complaint process
• Activities and scenarios to reinforce key concepts

Real estate professionals wear many hats: expert communicator, attentive listener, trustworthy confidant, obedient servant, loyal advocate, and knowledgeable educator, to name just a few. To juggle these roles effectively—and within the lines of the law—licensees must remain informed. Real estate professionals are in a position to provide an invaluable level of consumer protection as they support consumers through their real estate transactions.

This course explores licensees' role as advocate and educator, and how they can protect consumers and their business from the threats of antitrust and fair housing violations and predatory lending. We'll start by looking at what federal protections are in place to combat these unfair practices. We'll also provide the steps you can proactively take to protect the consumers you work with day in and day out and the business you've worked so hard to create.

Course highlights include:

• Federal antitrust laws and violations
• Avoiding antitrust violations and protecting consumers from them
• Antitrust complaint process and penalties
• Federal fair housing laws and violations
• Redlining, blockbusting, and steering
• Buyer love letters
• Fair housing complaint process and penalties
• Predatory lending
• Truth in Lending Act
• Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act
• Protecting consumers from predatory lending
• Reporting predatory lending

Whether you want to develop a niche business working with first-time homebuyers or simply increaseyour overall knowledge so you can better help inexperienced first-time homebuyers, this course willprovide you with the necessary foundation to serve this unique population.First-time homebuyers often rely heavily on agents’ expertise, and many feel overwhelmed, intimidated,and fearful of the prospect of buying a home. Your knowledge and calm influence can lead them towardtheir goal of homeownership, step by step.In this three-hour course we’ll explore the key characteristics of this niche market, how to cultivaterelationships with these buyers, and how to prepare them for the transaction ahead.

Course highlights include:

• First-time homebuyer market stats
• Pros and cons unique to working with this market
• Housing affordability’s impact on new buyers
• Targeted marketing approaches and conveying homeowner benefits
• Providing value to first-time homebuyer clients
• Walking clients through each step of the transaction
• Financing, loans, offers, negotiations, and closing

Whether you're representing a seller who's listing a high-efficiency home or working with a buyer to find one, it's important to be able to recognize a home's green features and the value they bring to the property. This means understanding the benefit of big-ticket green items such as solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal heating and cooling systems, solar water heaters, or even energy-efficient windows, as well as knowing the value in quick-and-easy updates like low-flow faucets, LED lighting, and smart thermostats. It also means knowing the difference between HERS and HES and SEER and LEED. Of course, greening up a home isn't cheap. Letting your clients know about available federal and state programs and incentives is another way you can ensure your clients are getting the best service around.

Course highlights include:

• An overview of the green home movement
• Green terminology, certifications, and ratings
• A review of energy-efficient upgrades, including solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal heating and cooling systems, solar water heaters, and more
• Tips for assisting green homebuyers and sellers
• A review of the FHA's Energy Efficient Mortgage and the 203(k) Rehabilitation Mortgage programs
• Qualifications for the DOE's Weatherization Assistance Program
• Interactive activities and scenarios to seal in the new information and frame it in everyday context

The Sphere of Influence approach to building your real estate business is based on nurturing relationships within your circle of friends, family, past clients, neighbors and acquaintances. Not pounding the pavement, buying bus signs and billboards, or purchasing leads.

This course helps you turn your acquaintances into your biggest advocates through respectful, non-intrusive methods. 

Course highlights include:

• Tips to ensure you present a professional, enthusiastic image to your contacts
• How to plan and implement an SOI strategy
• How to build and maintain a contact database
• Tips for writing effective reconnection communiques

Technology is a tool. Used wisely, it can free up time usually spent on mundane tasks to allow licensees to work at a higher (and higher touch) level of client service. Used poorly, it can waste a lot of time better spent elsewhere and worse—alienate clients, and even put them and the licensee’s reputation at risk.

Clients and prospective clients want their real estate professional to be accessible and tech-savvy on their behalf.  According to a National Association of REALTORS® real estate report, staying up to date on new platforms and systems will remain one of the biggest challenges for brokerages in the coming years. The industry is constantly changing, and technology is a big driver of that change.  

This course helps real estate professionals work with technology and reinforces putting client relationships first in the push to provide cutting edge tools and services.

Course Highlights:

• Technology tools to enhance service to sellers, including drones, live streaming, single-property sites, and speaking photos; ways to minimize risks involved in their use
• How to use technology to secure buyer representation agreements, assist buyers with financing qualifications, and pre-showing data to help them make informed purchasing and financing decisions  
• Technological advances in transaction management, including document sharing, electronic signatures, cloud storage, and photo, document, and email organization software, and identify risk management safeguards for online data storage and transaction management
• Technology tools you can use now to provide enhanced client service, and emerging trends to watch for

While conducting real estate business, have you encountered a situation in which you weren’t sure what the proper course of action was? What the right thing to do might be? Or maybe you’ve heard your colleagues’ stories and got that uncomfortable, itchy feeling that an action they took wasn’t quite on the up and up.

Let’s look at an uncomfortable truth: real estate agents have a small tarnished image problem. With every transaction being unique, real estate licensees often face ethical gray areas. Some real estate professionals simply don’t understand how to handle complex issues in the most ethical manner, and others bend the rules if they think it’ll keep a transaction on track or a commission in their bank account and not a competitor’s.

Aligned to the requirements of the current NAR cycle, this three-hour course helps licensees deepen their knowledge—and practice—of ethical rules of conduct according to the National Association of REALTORS® Code of Ethics & Standards of Practice. The code isn’t applicable to REALTORS® only, who are duty-bound to uphold the code as a privilege of membership. The code’s guidance serves anyone possessing a real estate license, and licensees who heed the code’s various articles and standards of practice can do the greatest good of all: protecting consumers while also bolstering the reputation of all the industry’s professionals.

Course highlights include:

• Laws vs. morals vs. ethics
• Top articles of the code involved in the most complaints (plus a few more)
• A candid look at the industry’s image problem
• Common ethical dilemmas and using the code to solve them
• Foundation and enforcement of the code
• Competency in real estate practice as a matter of ethics
• Steering clear of procuring cause disputes
• Ethics concerns with technology and social media
• Tips and best practices to keep your reputation polished to a high shine

*This course was designed by us to meet the REALTOR® Code of Ethics Training Requirement. Please confirm that your local association, who administers the Code of Ethics training, will accept this course.

Unlike most owner-occupied homebuyers, real estate investors enter the market to make money. By learning about investor motivators and criteria, you’ll be in a better position to help your clients navigate this asset strategy.

Working with Real Estate Investors examines investor goals and strategies, different investment property types, key financial considerations, and your role in locating, negotiating for, and marketing investment properties.

Course Highlights:

• An overview of residential and commercial investment property types
• Short- and long-term investment property acquisition strategies 
• Financial factors that influence investor decisions, including depreciation, 1031 tax exchanges, and cash flow
• Financing options available to real estate investors, including conventional loans, commercial loans, and private money lenders
• Tips for locating and marketing investment properties
• Pros and cons of working with investor clients
• Ethical duties when working with investor clients
• Activities and scenarios to provide real-world context for course content