2. Salespersons to whom active licenses have been issued by the Board shall be required to satisfactorily complete courses of not less than 16 hours of classroom or correspondence or other distance learning instruction during each licensing term. Of the total 16 hours, the curriculum shall include:

a. A minimum of eight required hours to include at least three hours of ethics and standards of conduct, two hours of fair housing, and the remaining three hours of legal updates and emerging trends, real estate agency, and real estate contracts; and

b. Eight hours of general elective courses as are approved by the Board.

We have a LONG way to go to making REB and practical education unite, but I really like Kevin Hoeft, the new Education Director. With efforts from VAR and the locals, I think we’ll get there one day. It’s just a slow, and long process.

I am sure it’s going to get better. Hopefully REB staff will be given some more authority to make commonsense approvals on basic classes and applications that are submitted.

I am sure if we all keep working together, we’ll figure it out!

I am a believer!

In the good old days (the beginnig of CE to the early to mid 90’s), agents took a standard 8 hour course. It was the exact same 8 hour course and was written by the VREB. Then, VAR decided (correctly IMO) that having to take the same course over and over again was both boring and worthless. Legislation was introduced to allow agents to take courses on other topics(from an approved list)to fulfill their requirement. The only mandatory part was a legal update and fair housing that took care of 2 of the 8 hours.

Unfortunately, the REB did not follow the law as it was intended and decided that allowing schools to teach whatever course they wanted (even with the approved list of topics) was too dangerous. God forbid we actually made the education interesting and dynamic to fit the ever changing market. The REB set up the education subcommittee and required “approval” of courses prior to giving credit. This was NOT what the legislation called for, but it did not explicitly prevent this beauracracy from forming.

The next thing that happened was a REALTOR in No. VA was upset that the ethics class he took did not count for CE credit (it wasn’t on the list), so he called his Senator and the next thing we knew Ethics was added as a required course. Now 4 of the 8 hours was required material and we were well on the way to returning to the standrad 8 hour boring class. So, we added more hours (twice) and created more required topics and thus we arrive at a point where it takes a full time staff person to explain the CE/PL requirements to members.

How I miss the good old days!