Jillayne Schlicke - Instructor of the Year

[Lake Hills Renter]

[jillayne]

Thanks for the shout out, LHR. I will continue to share tales from the front line with SB as needed.

Last week we had 80 Realtors in the Short Sale class. Typically Realtors never turn out for classes until after the MLK Jr holiday weekend. Lots of new Realtors and Realtors no longer afraid of the Distressed Property Law. SSs are becoming a larger part of the overall inventory in many areas now. The mindset is finally shifting when compared to the spring of 2008...at that time, there were still plenty who refused to believe Sea was in a bubble and that values would start to go down.

[rose-colored-coolaid]

If you weren't so cool, I would have taken this opportunity to post a humorous quote like "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

[tomtom]

Hi Jillayne,

i enjoy reading your stuff. Thanks and Congrats.

- Tom

[ira s]

Having read Jillayne's posts here and on RCG, she's obviously smart, funny, and wise, and no doubt a great instructor.....
But getting an award from from the Assn of Realtors?
Isn't that something akin to getting the Rod Blagojevich Ethics Award?

[Lake Hills Renter]

[jillayne]

Thanks RCC and tomtom. Ira, the Realtor Code of Ethics is over 100 years old and from the standpoint of applied professional ethics, it's actually a pretty decent code. Compare that to the code from the National Assoc of Mortgage Brokers which is basically a joke. In some states, the Realtor associations don't really enforce their code at all. In this state, they have an active, ongoing professional standards committee that holds meetings and hearings on consumer and competitor complaints on a regular basis.

[ira s]

Aw, Jillayne, no harm intended on you or the Assn of Realtors. I was just going for the cheap laugh, as is my downfall. I didn't mean anything by it, so if you took offense I am really truly sorry.

[TJ_98370]

Jillayne -
.
I'm amongst those who enjoy your posts. I'm sure you are someone of high personal ethics. Congrats.
.

[jillayne]

Hi Ira,

I was pretty sure that you were joking, but I wasn't; their code is actually pretty good. They need to do a better job nationwide of enforcing their ethical principles because without enforcement, the code is meaningless.

[jillayne]

Hi TJ_98370,

Thank you. I'm definitely far from perfect. I've been in some interesting ethical dilemmas during my career and life. I like that topic and focused on moral psychology and philosophy during grad school. The Realtor ethics class is one of my favorites to teach.

I will say that I've met plenty of UNethical Realtors and I've also met plenty of HIGHLY ethical real estate agents who were not members of the Assoc.

So just being a member of the group doesn't guarantee a consumer an "ethical" Realtor.

An ethical Realtor or real estate agent would develop over time with good coaching and mentoring from management as well as from colleagues AND ALSO from their competitors.

Some people are not open to growth.

[TJ_98370]

My brother in-law is a mortgage broker. He avoided the questionable transactions that were prevelant during the last few years, but he gets painted with the same broad brush of public perception at times.

[jillayne]

Hi TJ_98370,

Now teaching the mortgage broker ethics class, well that's a completely different story. There is no ethical oversight of mortgage broker conduct.

Here's their code. It's a one pager. A fast read:

http://www.namb.org/images/namb/Ethics/ ... Ethics.pdf

"NAMB members shall conduct business in a manner reflecting honesty, honor, and integrity."

This is ridiculous. Reflect. To me this means, all I have to do is to look like I'm honest and I'm being ethical. This phrase needs to be re-written.

When a consumer wishes to file an ethics complaint against a broker, the consumer is brough to this page:

http://www.namb.org/namb/Home_Buyer_Com ... 1024197648

which directs us back to the state regulators. So brokers have no interest in regulating the ethical conduct of their members at all and want the states to do their dirty work, and then they complain when the states ask for higher fees.

Let your brother know that Jillayne says that the general public judges an industry by the lowest quality members and not the highest. If he wants his industry to change, he has to be willing to be one of the people helping the unethical brokers learn. Not everyone wants to spend their time doing this so we're back to square one.

At least the Realtors DO have a system in place where competitors can come together to help each other learn and grow morally.

You've motivated me to write a post on the ethics of taking an overpriced listing. I'll write it in my head first.