Avoid Deal Killers and Being Sued

You’re running a brokerage firm and have released your agents into the wild to write deals and generate income.  Note that you are not just managing agents, you are managing legal exposure.  How do you reduce the likelihood of deals being killed and you and your agents from being sued?  Keep in mind that “I didn’t know” isn’t a defense.  The answers lie in one of your duties: review transaction documents.  So what does it mean to review a transaction document?  What responsibilities does the broker have in the review process?  When does the broker have to review contracts and transaction documents?  Why is any of this even necessary?  This course will (1) answer these questions for brokers; (2) furnish tips and guidelines on how to review documents paying close attention to the nuances to lookout for; and (3) assist the broker with fulfilling the legal duties.

Be the Boss: Setting Up a Brokerage Firm

So you want to be your own boss.  Now that you have successfully represented clients and completed real estate transactions, you want to open your own firm.  Perhaps you have a lot of questions.  This course has been designed to provide you with an extensive checklist of tasks you need to complete before hanging your sign and opening your doors.

Attract Agents Who Align With Your Mission

In order for brokerage firms to grow and be successful, they must recruit agents that will align to the values of the brokerage firm. This course provides brokers with guidelines for negotiating with, evaluating and selecting agents who will provide the services that the broker wants to provide to consumers.   At the conclusion of the course, attendees will be armed with the skills, tools and approach to successfully recruit agents to the company who will deliver the best service to real estate clients and customers and keep broker out of trouble. 

Broker, What’s Your Policy?

You are a broker which means that you are responsible for your actions as well as the actions   Do you have protections in place?  Have you informed your affiliates of protocols at your firm?  This course has been specifically designed for brokers managing brokerage firms to explore the vulnerabilities that may be present in the brokerage firm.

Train Your Agents Avoid Trouble

As the quarterback on a football team is the leader of the offense and calls the plays, so is the QB (qualifying broker) in real estate.  The QB is the quarterback of the firm making sure that the plays (transactions) are run correctly. When players (affiliates) run an incorrect play (violation), the QB can be sacked (disciplinary actions).  This course is designed to protect the QB in the pocket by making the QB aware of the playbook to design, plays to call in the huddle (train the team) and ways to deliver the plays.

Advertising: Can I Say That?

Georgia law  and rules are clear on the topic of advertising, it seems.  Yet sanctions continue to be issued to real estate professionals for violating advertising regulations.  This course has been designed to remind students of the regulations, show samples and give explanations of inappropriate advertising  and provide guidance to creating and distributing advertising that is in compliance.

Little Known Laws with Big Impact – Developed for Brokers 

Due to the recent developments in the real estate market as well as the country, real estate brokers have had to adopt new business practices.  Brokers are responsible for the actions of the affiliated licensees and must remain aware of all of the regulations that dictate compliance.  Otherwise, brokers can find themselves in court actions and ignorance is still no excuse.   This course focuses on   the state and federal laws which regulate how information must be handled.  Specifically, brokers will learn proactive actions brokers can take to avoid violations and protective procedures to follow.

It's Your Move (In-person only)

As the broker, it is your job to train and advise your agents on how to respond to various situations. In addition, the broker must be able to properly interpret the events in a transaction when there is a dispute. This course presents various situations on game cards to which the broker must respond to their agents or interpret. Teams will work together to determine the best course of action to take in order to manage the transaction, address the concern or protect the client’s interest. The course of action will be voted on by the remainder of the class which will determine whether the team can advance their game piece on the board. The first team back to the starting space will win the game while all attendees will leave the course better equipped to go forward in their real estate career.

The Five R's of Trust Accounts

The Georgia Real Estate Commission has investigated and sanctioned numerous incidents of trust funds and trust accounts being mishandled. This course has been designed specifically for brokers as well as licensees permitted to have trust accounts and receive trust funds. By the end, each person will leave more confident on The Five R’s of Trust Accounts: what are the requirements, how to receive trust funds, a system to record, the process of reconciling the accounts, and preparation for the license renewal review.

Making the Most of Being a Referral Agent

After obtaining a real license, everyone is not interested in or available to actively practicing real estate.  Sometimes there are time constraints which limit the ability to be a full-time or even a part-time agent while other times there is a location issue or perhaps just no interest.  So many of these agents decide to become referral agents.  By going this route they are able to remain in the real estate field and keep up-to-date on the latest information.  However, how do they operate their referral business to make it effective and profitable?  The purpose of this course is to answer this question.  Students will learn how to present their value, market themselves and the duties that are specific to referral agents

Build Your Business

This course focuses on guiding new agents through the process of conducting prospecting activities and developing a personal marketing plan to establish a customer/client base.

Business Planning with the Consumer in Mind

There comes a time in every agent’s life when the decision is made to stop the madness and start planning for success.  Unfortunately, many agents make this decision when failure has brought them to the place where they have to choose between ending their real estate career and giving it one last try with a plan in hand.  This can all be avoided if agents would first view their real estate career as a business and view the folks they assist as consumers.  This course has been designed to help the agent create their business plan, but only after researching the consumer market in order to better serve consumer needs and manage transactions.

Time to Go – Your Exit Strategy

Many real estate professionals do not consider themselves business owners.  Thus, most do not view that “business” as having value.  Unfortunately, as a result far too many agents just leave their business to wither away when they decide to retire or stop practicing real estate for some other reason.  The impact is that past clients lose their real estate resource for real estate transactions, referrals and questions.  This course will provide real estate professionals with the skills to develop and implement an exit strategy to establish residual income and continued service to clients.

I'm Different, Will I Be Able to Get In?

When asked, most agents say that their number one reason for being an agent is to help people reach their real estate goals. Agents routinely advise owners on how to make their property more appealing to buyers and tenants. For buyer and tenants, agents work diligently to locate suitable properties. However, most agent are completely lost when faced with a client who is differently abled.  Agents are not prepared to assist people with different or limited abilities. This course will provide agents with a higher level of knowledge concerning accessibility and properties. Agents will be equipped with the tools to make their service more inclusive and better assist “everyone” reach their real estate goals.

Hosting A Home Buyer Seminar: Step By Step

This course is designed to guide agents through the process of a Home Buyer Seminar from planning to delivering to following-up.  Students will learn what information should be shared, how to leverage industry-related partnerships, how to select venues, how to manage the logistics for the day of the seminar, how to market the event and several other things germane to hosting a home buyer seminar.  In addition to the students learning how to host a seminar in person, they will also learn how to host an online seminar

Hosting A Home Seller Seminar

It has been said over the years that “if you don’t list, you don’t last.”  This may be the case in many instances.  But how does a real estate professional go about obtaining listings in a systematic way to create a constant pipeline?  One system component should be education.  And that’s where hosting a home seller seminar enters the plan.

There are a lot of existing homeowners, and many either want to sell or will want to sell soon.     The vast majority understand the real estate process as a buyer, but very few totally understand the selling process.  A home seller seminar should provide valuable information to home sellers in such a way that empowers them, aids them in making the selling decision and helps them to realize that it is best to have representation.  A great way to educate sellers is through a seminar.  So, this course will guide agents through the process of planning a home seller seminar and will provide ideas for planning specific content to include in a home seller seminar.  By the end of this class attendees will have the basic framework for Hosting a Home Seller Seminar.

Let Me Show You This

Buyers have many expectations of their agents most of which are obvious, but one in particular is unspoken and manifested itself after the fact.  Agents tend to allow buyers the space and freedom to choose the properties that best fit their needs.  But when they experience buyer’s remorse, they blame the agent for allowing them to make a poor choice.   This course will provide agents with specific features to evaluate and how to show property and guide buyers to the best decision for their circumstances.

Becoming a Buyer’s Advocate

This course introduces the agent to consultative selling and strategic representation.  The agent will be presented with specific skills and techniques to manage buyer customers and clients.

Becoming a Listing Specialist

This course exposes the agent to techniques of acquiring listings, marketing property and managing sellers.  Consultative selling is covered in relation to working with sellers.

Start With the Right Price

This course guides the agents through the process of researching and preparing a comparable marketing analysis to generate the most realistic saleable price for property.

Faster Than Writing

The statistics are clear – video is not the future, but the present.  Real estate professionals must integrate video creation and distribution into their business model in order to be more effective to their clients.  According to the Biteable,com article, 55 Video Marketing Statistics for 2019, “As a visual species, humans find videos more engaging, more memorable, and more popular than any other type of content out there. Video as a means of storytelling and advertising is no longer a nice option, it’s a necessity.”

This hands-on course is designed to provide real estate professionals with the tools to create and share effective educational videos for their clients.  By the conclusion of this course, real estate professionals will walk away with a sample video to continue to develop.

** This course is limited to 24 attendees who must bring a device on which to record video and a device to edit video.  Attendees will also need to provide online access if not provided by facility.

New Year, New Contracts 

Each year changes and updates are made to the GAR contract forms based on occurrences in the real estate market.  The challenge is making sure that the forms are used correctly.  This educational opportunity is a mix of a quiz game sprinkled with real life situations to aid attendees in their understanding of the forms and how to use them best to represent clients.

Composing Offers A to Z

One common complaint from buyers and sellers involves the fact that the agent cost them money for failure to cover everything in the contract.  In response, this course has been created to provide agents a thorough review of necessary considerations when constructing effective offers.  It is perfect introduction to and review of the GAR contract forms and components of drafting strong offers.  The goal is to supply agents with the knowledge and reduce the complaints.

The Curious Case of Contracts (6 hours)

The first half of this course will present basic information about what a contract is, how contracts are made and things included in contracts.  During this course various GAR forms will be reviewed and explained including the Purchase and Sale Agreement, Seller’s Property Disclosure Statement, Community Association Disclosure and Lead-Based Paint Exhibit.    The second half of this course is designed to assist agents in understanding their role in managing the risks of the parties when entering contracts.  Buyer/Seller scenarios will be reviewed in class pointing out techniques to manage the risk and additional forms to include.