Today I had my Quadrennial Member Education Program training on The Code of Ethics - our Promise of Professionalism. Ethics courses needs to be taken every 5 years for Realtors.
I was expecting to be bored to tears for a few hours and figured I would be resentful that I would be missing a ton of calls and emails over this course that I had to take. However, I ended up being quite enthralled with the discussions on ethics. It really benefits to have a great teacher/instructor. It got me motivated to be an even better realtor and a better person... and perhaps even volunteer to serve on an ethics committee !! It made me think a little bit more in terms of what I can offer and perhaps even give back to local association - the Greater Philadelphia Association of Realtors.
So, without going into too much detail, below are a few of the tidbits of information I left with:
1. The Greater Philadelphia Association of Realtors was formed prior to the National Association of Realtors (NAR) in 1908. The other two cities who also were formed prior to NAR was Chicago and New York City.
2. NAR was also formed in 1908.
3. Code of Ethics was adopted in 1913 to establish a professional standard of conduct.
4. Realtor stands for competency, fairness, high integrity and moral conduct in business relations.
5. There are 17 Articles of the Codes of Ethics made of 3 sections:
Articles 1 - 9: Duties to Clients and Customers
Articles 10 - 14: Duties to the Public
Articles 15 - 17: Duties to Realtors
6. Each Article has specific Standards of Practices
We discussed many aspects about ethics complaints and the arbitration process. There is a lot to learn. Between realtors, it seems that most disputes concern buyer agency/procuring cause. For this post, however, I think it is just a good idea and reminder for every realtor to read and review each of the Articles - all of the detail can be found at NAR's website.
Being in a difficult market as we are in currently, if every Realtor raised his level of business in terms of professional and ethcial standards, I think not only would the consumer benefit a great deal, but it would help our reputation rise to the high level that it should be. At least the Realtors that are doing this now I think are the true experts in their field.
What do you think ?
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Philadelphia Real Estate - Chris and Stephanie Somers
The Philadelphia Real Estate Blog
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