Each new year brings a fresh opportunity to understand how the Vermont real estate landscape is evolving and how you can adapt to these changes in your practice. This course covers the latest updates in Vermont’s real estate regulations, offering insights into adjustments you need to make to stay compliant and effective. In addition, it explores best practices for reviewing and implementing remaining legislative changes, ensuring that you remain up-to-date with the laws that still require attention. You'll gain a solid understanding of how to integrate these changes into your daily work while protecting your clients and your business.

Course highlights include:

• Significant laws passed in the most recent legislative sessions
• Vermont case studies of interest
• Recent Vermont Supreme Court decisions
• Act 250 – Updates on housing development, Road Rule, and Farm Business
• Act 181 – Transfer Tax and Rates updates
• Act 181 – Short-Term Rentals Disclosure and updates
• Flood hazard and lead paint disclosures
• Vermont Zoning Act updates
• Amendments to Aboveground Storage Tank rules
• Education Tax prebates and rebates
• Review of age-restricted housing in Vermont
• Real Estate Withholding Tax review
• Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm Certifications
• Designated vs. Non-Designated Agency
• Service agreements and contract terminations
• Commercial practices and environmental site assessments
• Sign Law and Signage Regulations
• Filing Complaints

Green homes aren’t just the latest trend anymore. Thanks to sky-high energy bills, most homeowners are looking for ways to cut costs by making their homes more energy efficient. This means that understanding the popularity of green homes, being able to detangle the terminology and certifications, and identifying how the improvements impact value is a must for any licensee.

This two-hour course explores the key features found in green homes, as well as an assortment of eco-friendly remodeling strategies to green up a listing. Green features can help a listing stand out from others on the market, so this course prepares licensees to provide their clients with practical suggestions that will help them make their homes more appealing to the environmentally minded without blowing their budgets.

Course highlights include:

• Green and sustainability terms and concepts
• Vermont energy goals
• Green energy ratings, labels, and certifications
• Green home features
• Sellers and green homes
• Buyers and green homes
• Quick and inexpensive green changes
• The Residential Green and Energy Efficient Addendum
• Green financing and incentives

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.

Fair housing law stands as a cornerstone of civil rights legislation, aiming to eliminate discrimination in housing markets and ensure equal opportunities for all individuals regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, disability, or any other protected characteristic. By understanding the importance of fair housing law, licensees recognize its pivotal role in fostering inclusive communities and combating systemic inequalities. This course explores the historical context, key provisions, and practical applications of fair housing law, equipping licensees with the knowledge and tools necessary to uphold these principles in their professional endeavors.

Real estate licensees play a vital role in upholding fair housing principles and safeguarding the rights of all individuals in the housing market. As gatekeepers of property transactions, licensees must stay abreast of fair housing laws and practices to ensure ethical and nondiscriminatory conduct. Beyond legal compliance, embracing fair housing principles fosters trust, promotes diversity, and enhances business success in an increasingly diverse marketplace. This course will empower licensees to navigate complex fair housing issues with confidence, fostering a culture of inclusivity and advancing the vision of fair and equitable housing for all.

This course was designed to meet the REALTOR® Fair Housing Training Requirement. Please confirm that your local association, who administers the Fair Housing training, will accept this course.

A veteran broker once said, "No one ever failed in this business because of the paperwork." It's true: Real estate is a relationship-based business. However, to protect consumers and yourself, knowing how to manage the paperwork--whether it's cotton bond and ink or bits and bytes--is integral to your role. Maintaining detailed and organized records, even for transactions that don't close, not only satisfies regulatory requirements, it also protects your license. It proves you did what you were supposed to do when you were supposed to do it.  

We can't do anything about paper cuts, but if you're ready to become more comfortable selecting and using documents to ensure on-time, accurate, and litigation-free real estate transactions, let's do this.

Course highlights include:

• Typical transaction documents
• Standard clauses, addenda, and contingencies
• How to practice within the scope of your license (but avoid unauthorized practice of law)
• How to field and manage multiple offers
• Managing signatures, notarizations, and identification
• Best practices in transaction management 
• Best practices in document retention
• Keeping documents secure, both hard copy and digital
• Wire fraud prevention

The inspection period is a big hurdle to jump over on the way to closing. The inspector’s job is to call out defects. The buyer agent’s job is to negotiate repairs. The seller agent’s job is to mitigate damage. It can sometimes be hard to hold a deal together.

Protecting your buyer as a buyer’s agent means understanding the importance of the home inspection contingency and its deadlines, and identifying the need for specialized inspections.

Protecting your seller as the listing agent means helping the seller understand disclosure obligations, prepare for the inspection, and respond to a buyer’s reasonable repair requests.

Course highlights:

• The importance of the inspection contingency
• The licensee’s role in the inspection process
• Licensee and seller disclosure obligations
• Red flags related to common structural, plumbing, and electrical issues
• Specialized inspection types addressing radon, asbestos, sewer lines, septic tanks, mold, lead, and wells
• Interactive activities and scenarios

The Fundamentals of Commercial Real Estate covers the need-to-know information on a broad range of commercial topics.

If you're an experienced residential licensee, a few of the fundamentals of commercial real estate will be familiar to you—the importance of location, for example. In other regards, commercial differs sharply from residential real estate. Executives, investors, and business owners in commercial real estate focus squarely on the bottom line.

This course will provide a foundation for the more complex aspects of commercial real estate as you gain more experience in the industry.

Course highlights include:

• Key terms and concepts of commercial real estate
• How to identify and meet the needs of commercial real estate clients
• How commercial and residential sales differ
• Valuation methods for real estate and businesses
• Tips on gathering the demographic and location-related details that clients need to make well-informed decisions

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