30-Hr. SD Post-Licensing Package A Plus Professional Development

Fair housing, environmental hazards, and risk management strategies are issues for every real estate licensee. Knowing and adhering to fair housing law will help avoid violations and ensure equal access to housing. Understanding environmental hazards—both indoors and outdoors—helps licensees protect buyers from making costly mistakes. And appropriate risk management techniques can protect the brokerage (its reputation and license) and those it serves.

This 15-hour course reduces risk for licensees and those they serve, specifically covering the areas of fair housing, environmental issues, and risk management techniques at the organizational and transactional level, emphasizing the importance of a robust policies and procedures manual and errors and omissions insurance.  

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

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.

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

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

Tactics that work with motivated, excited sellers don't always translate well when working with short sale sellers and short sale buyers. Add lender approvals, junior lien holders, and inflexible timelines into the mix, and you end up with a whole new ball game.

In a short sale transaction, the motivation for each party is different than the standard transaction, and as the professional in the scene, you need to adjust accordingly. This course speaks to your interaction with short sale sellers, and how you can help them through a tough process while diligently advocating on their behalf.  We cover how to figure out an appropriate listing price, negotiate with the lender's representative, sort through debt settlement terminology, and carry the deal through to closing. We also look at the process from a buyer's agent perspective. Additional cautions, considerations, and fraud prevention tactics are required when advocating on behalf of these deal-seeking buyers.