Why don’t we have more high-quality continuing education classes for real estate agents? Hey, I’m Danny Naylor with the Institute of Real Estate Education, Danny the Ethical Realtor, and I am a continuing education teacher. I write continuing education classes, I write real estate sales agent pre-license classes, broker license classes, and I know a lot about what it means to write education for real estate professionals.
Supply and Demand Affect Real Estate CE Prices
You will find that the nature of the market is the same as any other type of industry, where if something is plentiful, then the cost goes down, you know, supply and demand.
If something is rare, then the cost goes up. Now, in the industry of real estate, we have these required classes where agents need to continually get educated in order to keep their license, which makes perfect sense. I understand why the regulators have required that, because we do want real estate professionals to stay up to date on new laws, new rules, and to always be on top of what they need to know to protect their clients.
But what this has done is it’s created a market where we know that agents need to have certain classes. And so, because we know people want those classes, we’ve had multiple providers pop up and create classes that fill those requirements. And so, we’ve filled up the market with lots and lots of options to take these continuing education classes.
Price Drives Real Estate Agents to Select One Course Over Another
And so, how does one class stand out from another? The number one way is by price. So, that draws price down. Now, if the price goes down, and say I’m a real estate instructor, and I know that I can’t charge $1,000 for an hour of CE because there’s 50 other classes that are only $20, why would anyone pay $1,000 for my class? That becomes really difficult for me to earn $1,000 for a class that I write.
And so, now when we say, why don’t we have more high-quality continuing education classes? Well, how much work am I willing to put in for a class that I can only sell for $20 versus one that I could have sold for $1,000? So, the question realtors ask, or real estate professionals, if why don’t we have more high-quality continuing education classes? It’s because real estate professionals are not willing in a group, as a mass, to pay for those higher-quality classes. In fact, a lot of real estate professionals, there’s another side of it, right? Where something that I want is something that I might be willing to pay extra for, but something that I need, I want to get the lowest price I can for. So, this industry where we need to have certain classes to renew our license, those need things are become devalued in our minds, and so agents are only paying low prices for those classes, even though they have this opportunity to use that time.
State Requirements for Real Estate Continuing Education Set the Standard
For example, in Utah, you need 18 hours of continuing education to renew your license. Now, you could spend 18 hours taking low-level basic classes that do fulfill the requirement and do teach you the new laws, but don’t give you that extra information, that extra incentive, that extra hidden knowledge to really excel at your business. So, you can spend 18 hours getting that basic and getting it for free or getting it for $20 a class, a really low price, and that’s what most agents choose to do.
Or, you could pay $1,000 per class and get some excellent material that really stands out and really boosts your business, but not enough agents are willing to do that. So, the number of $1,000 classes, they may exist out there, but they’re pretty few, and it’s a hard sell because there’s just so many other classes available to fill that need that agents look elsewhere for the things that they want. So, they fulfill that need at the lowest price they can, and they look for what they want, which is sales training, boost my business, you know, those kind of things.
High Quality CE Classes Become Scarce Based On the Market
They look for that elsewhere, and it’s a sad fact of the market, but it is one of those things that happens just because of the way all the people act in the market. It’s a natural progression of an open market where there’s a demand needed, there’s high volume of things available, and it just drives the price down, which in turn, in a way, drives the quality down because you can’t earn more to build a bigger class in that industry. So, it’s kind of a sad fact of the world, but if you would like to see high quality continuing education, let me know the topic, and we’ll see if we can put something together for you.
And we try to, here at the Institute of Real Estate, we try to do classes that not only fulfill your requirement, but do take that extra step. And they are high quality classes that you will enjoy, they’re entertaining, and they include information that’s very relevant and will boost your business. So, we are working to make high quality courses, and if you’ll come help us with that, let’s make it a bigger part of the industry.