“Raise the dues!” “Raise the education hours to boost professionalism!” This is something I hear from other realtors all the time. It’s interesting because there’s this idea of professionalism out there, and the fact is, if you ask two different realtors what professionalism is, they don’t even agree on what it means. Usually when somebody says we need to be more professional, what they mean is that somebody else did something that made it harder for them to do their business, and therefore they’re not being professional.

Professionalism on the Phone

Sometimes these are legitimate concerns. Like they’re not answering the phone, they’re not communicating properly, they show up without announcing themselves, or they’re asking me to do all the work when they should be doing work. And now, these sound legitimate, but when they’re taken out of context, we’re only hearing one side of the story.

A lot of times the reality is that not answering the phone is the right thing to do in this situation. Like if I’m working with a client and the phone rings, I’m going to keep working with this client that I’m with face to face, and I’m going to wait to answer the phone until I’m done with this client. And then, when I check the phone, if it’s something that could be answered with the text, I’m just going to text back. We don’t need to be on the phone for everything.

Now, there is value to talking on the phone and I understand that. Especially old school realtors, they like that phone conversation, they like face to face best and they like voice second. And there is definitely value to that, but often when realtors say they want things to be more professional, what they really mean is they want everyone to do things their way.

Raising the Pricing

And there is a level of things where we want people to work a business at a certain level. Not to be someone working out of a garage, but to be somebody who is put together, who is keeping to a schedule, who is communicating properly. There are certain things that we probably all agree on what professionalism is, but there is no standard of professionalism. There is no rule that says what professionalism is, and a lot of the ways that I hear realtors saying that we ought to fix this is we got to raise the dues, make it more expensive for people to enter the industry so that only the more professional ones enter. But this is seriously wrong, because, firstly, the people with the most money aren’t necessarily the most professional.

I don’t think raising the dues will affect professionalism hardly at all. I think when you raise the dues, you set a barrier that’s based on something completely different from professionalism and ethics and all of those kinds of things that are high morally minded. And, instead, you set a standard of punishing the poor or rewarding people who just happen to have a windfall, that sort of thing.

Raising the Hours

So raising the dues to raise professionalism never really made sense to me. Another thing they say is, “Let’s increase the hours that are required. Let’s increase the education requirements to become a real estate agent and that will improve professionalism.” Well, I have news for you. The number of hours is a very small thing when compared to the amount of opportunity in the industry.

You know, even if we doubled the hours right now in Utah, it only takes 120 hours to get your real estate license. If we doubled that to 240, that would not significantly change the amount of realtors entering the business, is my belief. And even if it did, that doesn’t change the professionalism of those who are entering, all it does is change for people who have more time to dedicate to enter, which doesn’t change the level of ethics.

It doesn’t change the level of communication, things like that, because the license requirements are not the same thing as what we call professionalism. They are a little bit, the license requirements are meant to make sure you have a minimum amount of knowledge and agency contract law in order to get your real estate license.

Professionalism is Ethics

The minimum is you need to protect a client. And it’s difficult because what does the state decide needs to happen for the client? That’s something kind of in the cloud. It’s something that’s undetermined. So, on the one hand, we want people to be more knowledgeable, have more expertise to have more ethical behavior. We want more professional behavior.

But on the other hand, how much of that is wibbly wobbly and how much of that is concrete? And one thing that I struggle with is, how do you teach somebody to be ethical? Usually education, especially when you’re in a classroom, is more about book knowledge. In real estate specifically, it’s about how to write contracts

What is the law about agency? You know, what is land law and property law, those kind of things. That’s all book knowledge, but what we really want to improve when people say professionalism, half of the time what they’re saying is they want people to be more ethical. You want people to treat people better, to treat their clients better.

They want people to have better interpersonal skills with other professionals, and in the industry when they’re working with other clients. So how do you teach ethical behavior? That’s something I’m still struggling with myself. I am a strong believer in ethical behavior, but you can’t teach ethics from a book.

Knowing what is Ethical

Now, one of the lucky things for us, and this is where I’m going to wrap this up, is I think most people in the world want to be ethical. They want to be good. They want to do the right thing. A lot of times they just don’t know what that is. And so when they come on a circumstance or a situation where they don’t know how to handle it, they might make a mistake. They might handle something in a way that’s a little more selfish, or just because they’re more familiar with the rules of their political organization.

They’ll do something that helps them because they don’t know how it might be hurting someone else. And so, what we can do to actually help people be more ethical is education about specific situations which might compromise our ethical integrity. If we teach people about these specific situations where that might come up, things like limited agency, where you might compromise your ability to do what’s in their best interest, or conflicts of interest, like when you’re working on commission and you need to make sure you do what’s in their best interests and not your own.

But you’ve got that conflict by working on commission situations like that. Or if you are working for a brokerage and there’s another agent in your brokerage with a client, and you treat your agent friend better because you know him instead of doing what’s right for the client. All of these conflicts of interest, that’s where the ethical training really helps.

Teaching Ethics

That’s where we have these situations that we can put in people’s minds. Then they know, “Oh, I’ve seen this situation in practice, so I know the right thing to do instead of doing what my gut tells me, which might be based on my own needs or desires, or those of the people that I love and appreciate.”

So, if we really want to improve ethics, we can teach people existing situations that are things that they might encounter in the future and teach them with the ethical ramifications of this or that, so that they know ahead of time what they should do to move forward. And that’s how I think we will make a difference. That’s how we will improve professionalism, with general education about specific situations where people can make a better choice than we’ve made in the past, so that hopefully we can work together on that.

What do you think?