Fall means Installations & ARELLO®

The summer tends to involve less travel for me, but as soon as Fall shows up….  so where are we headed in September? I get to start by having some fun attending a few Board Installations around the state. (Hello Telluride!) Then right after that we get into the real work.

ARELLO®, The Association of Real Estate License Law Officials, will be hosting their annual meeting in Anchorage, AL beginning September 16th.  This years conference will focus on regulating with a global perspective.  I have been fortunate to be named to two work groups covering Social Media and Real Estate Practices, as well as to be working with the Affiliates Committee.

ARELLO® Task Force to Study Social Media Issues  – ARELLO® has created a task force to study related regulatory issues surrounding how people communicate in social media. By communication, we mean regulators, licensees and consumers.  The group is looking at how regulators push out their public protection message and at how real estate professionals are using these tools to interact with and market to consumers.

ARELLO® President Gary Isom has appointed a Social Media Task Force to study regulatory issues related to social networking. The charge of the task force is to work with ARELLO® staff to develop resources, guidelines and a program to prepare ARELLO® members to (1) make decisions with regard to the utilization of social media within their agencies; (2) evaluate the legal concerns of public institutions using social media; (3) write agency guidelines for using social media; and (4) develop model laws to assist jurisdictions in regulating the use of social media by their licensees. Co-chairs of the task force are Jeffrey Ledford (GA) and Emmet Wood (NC).

As an aside, if ARELLO® were to publish guidelines and those were adopted by the member jurisdictions, then licensees (me) can expect regulatory oversight over all social media that they engage in.

ARELLO® Task Force on Real Estate Practices – This group is charged with finding out what practices that licensees engage in are of concern to consumers and regulators, and to potentially recommend to the regulators courses of action that can be taken in response. This is the first year that this particular work group (or task force) has been engaged and so far no issues or policy have made it to the organization on the whole.

ARELLO® Affiliate Forum - All Affiliate Members of the organization are welcome to participate, which is a concept I’d personally like to see in some other organizations.  At the Mid-year meetings the Affiliates began a couple of ambitious directives, including the possibility of creating public service videos on the benefits of ARELLO® and on unlicensed activity.

The meeting in Anchorage will include the top 10 biggest infractions in real estate transactions as reported by the E&O Carriers who are Affiliate Members (RICE & Williams Underwriting have been asked to report). There will also be a report to the Affiliates on what’s new on the website and how Affiliates can access that content.

I look forward to reconnecting with friends from around the state, and indeed around the country over the next month or so.

Spring Travel Season officially set to open February 2nd!

Next week I’ll be in South Dakota for the SDAR business meetings and then flying directly to Denver for the Colorado Association of REALTORS® winter meetings. Then it’s off to RAPDD in Wichita the very next week. No complaints, just sayin’ – the Spring Travel Season has officially begun!

After all the business meetings come some excellent opportunities to network and learn. One such event will be RealEstate WordCamp on April 12th in Denver, held one day prior to the REALTOR® Rally. There are also a couple of REBar Camps taking place that look like they will be great events (Austin, Phoenix, and my favorite…St. Louis in June (I want to go to this one, even if it is in the summer!)). Throw in ARELLO meetings and NAR meetings and Local Association meetings and Commission meetings and I’ve got enough going on that I don’t think I can add any more Spring fun! (Did I even mention the Credit Union yet? No? Oh my!)

But alas – I shall! I’m also going to go skiing with my kids, and hopefully enjoy a day or two off before I get into the Summer Travel Season.

Previewing the upcoming events, some of the most interesting will be the CAR business meetings and the ARELLO Mid-Year meetings. These groups are doing excellent work for their members and I am privileged to be involved with each of them. I’ll share any reports after the meetings. And for all of you who are also traveling soon – may you have safe and enjoyable travels!

Conference Season Rolls On

After some time in North Carolina visiting with the regulators at ARELLO, I had very little time between trips. I ended up leaving for Washington, DC and the NAR Mid-year meetings without ever feeling like I was home!

Quick recap on both conferences – the ARELLO Education Committee changed what delivery methods would be allowable. Any “enhanced” product, i.e. web enhanced, will no longer be certifiable by ARELLO. This means that the delivery of a book where only the exams are completed online is no longer an acceptable distance education delivery method. At VanEd we don’t use this method so we will not be affected by the new rules. And while some providers in real estate education will be forced to adapt their delivery to meet a different set of guidelines, this now brings ARELLO in line with IDECC (who approves appraisal education).

Along with delivery method changes, higher educational standards will also need to be met that also match the IDECC requirements. Again, this is not an issue for VanEd but may require other providers to make some changes to the delivery methods that they use.

At the NAR meetings there of course was lots of talk of economy, but for educators the biggest changes (as always) come out of the Professional Standards Committee. A long review of standards of practices that related to Article 12 took place, and we can all look for more changes and approvals at the Annual Meetings in San Diego. This means that any courses out there may need to again be updated later this year. VanEd will be making changes as soon as possible to make sure that the new SOP’s are all included in our Ethics courses. And yes, that means more work for me. Love it.

Next up? REBarCamp in Denver followed by State Association business meetings in Crested Butte and then REEA. If you have yet to decide on attending the Real Estate Educators Conference in Portland in June, take a look at this video to help you decide if there is anything of interest for you. And if you do decide to attend, let me know! I’d be happy to talk with you about all VanEd has to offer. (If you have trouble seeing the video, visit http://www.reea.org for more information)

more about "Conference Season Rolls On", posted with vodpod

ARELLO conference being held in Asheville

In just a couple of weeks I will be in Asheville, NC for the ARELLO Mid-Year meetings. With regards to distance education, there is a lot going on this time. First, they are hosting a Distance Education seminar on Tuesday, April 28th. I have attended in the past and these are full of valuable information.

Content Areas Include

How to meet the ARELLO-IDECC Instructional Design and Delivery Standards (applicable to primary and secondary providers).

Regulatory acceptance of distance learning, including updates on jurisdictions considering changes in distance education policy.

Perspectives on important distance education issues including strategies for surviving in a down market.

Recent statistics regarding distance learning trends and related technology.

Development and marketing ideas along with best business practices for offering distance education.

At the meeting of the Education Certification Committee there will also be a presentation on issues related to course timing and instructional design that will lead to a discussion on potential new policies that would help ensure students are unable to circumvent design features that then allow the student to complete the course in an inappropriate amount of time.

ARELLO Annual Conference set for New York

I am reviewing my itinerary for the ARELLO annual conference being held in New York, and there are a couple of items of great interest. The Fair Housing Advisory Group, of which I am a member, worked to get the National Fair Housing Alliance on the agenda. They will be presenting on Sunday September 16th. Congratulations to Tony Duncanson, Senior VP from the District of Columbia, the work group chair, for his hard work.

Two key education sessions take place on Friday September 14th. The Education Issues Monitoring Committee and the Education Certification Committee both meet in the afternoon. Topics will include both real estate and appraisal education approval and topics. The Keynote address by Richard Mendenhall, the 2001 NAR President will be followed by the Appraisal Advisory Group.

A new session Sunday on Internet Based Developments for the Regulator is also scheduled, and Monday morning is the Case Law Report. This is one of the highlights of the meetings. Cases and issues from all over the country and around the world will be highlighted and discussed.

I would be remiss in not disclosing that one of the receptions will take place at the United Nations. I will also be going on the tour of the UN, including a tour of the Security Council Chambers and reception in the Delegates Dining Room. You can view the conference information by clicking here.

CDEI Program launched by IDECC/ARELLO

Even I was shocked in St. Louis last month when the good folks at IDECC offered a discount to the attendees on the CDEI, or Certified Distance Education Instructor program. The CDEI has been in the works at IDECC and ARELLO for at least a year, and the launch of the first two courses was much anticipated.

Much anticipated by me, anyways. Most brokers, agents or lenders won’t ever hear of or learn about this type of education offering. As an instructor who trains other instructors, I’m always looking for anything that will help my teachers become better at their jobs. For most of us, training agents to be better at their jobs is, well, our job! And traditional classroom instructors think distance education or online training is an easy jump to make. Going from live to DE instruction, however, can be a difficult transition for many.

At VanEd we train instructors to first learn to use the tools that are available to them. The trick is to know where to start and how to communicate with the student when you get there. While we understand our tools, I’m hoping that the CDEI program helps me communicate better with my students and gives me ideas I can share with my teachers to make student communication even stronger. I’ll be working on earning my CDEI designation program this month, and I’ll let you know how it goes.

ARELLO Conference closes in Banff ~ State Updates

Sometimes I hate leaving a conference. I’ve made new friends and just now gotten comfortable on that bed, and then it’s over and I’m headed back to the airport. In this case, after almost a full week on the road presenting at the Nebraska REALTORS Association GRI Board of Governors meeting, I was ready to go home. And as soon as I got outside of the Fairmont Banff Springs hotel, I realized I might not have been as ready as I thought. This place had been wonderful and breathtaking just to see. With wonderful staff and friendly folks in town, it was the perfect setting for this type of conference and everyone had been thrilled to just be here.

Pictures don’t always do justice to the beauty we see, and in this case that is most assuredly true, but I’ll put up a couple anyways.

The conferences last day was full of meetings, and outgoing Director of TREC Wayne Thornburn led the charge Saturday at the What’s New, Who’s New Regulator forum. This open discussion gets everyone involved from Divisions all over the globe and is the single best session to be at if you want to know the what from the who. And while not focused on any single topic, the regulators always get answers to important questions here.

To open the session, Wayne talked about Texas moving appraisal and real estate to the same regulatory body, and that the next Director will be hiring up to 14 additional staff members to work in the newly restructured division. HOA’s will also be required to file with TREC, with financial penalties in place for failure to do so. Alabama has changed their rules to require a 6 hour state specific education course for those brokers coming to the state under reciprocity rules, and Indiana is moving to put entire complaint files on-line for the public to see.

Georgia is enacting more stringent application rules for felons, and also was the first state to adopt a new style of examination. The so called “simulation” exam puts the test taker through a series of situations and then asks the student to choose which response they should. That leads the student through another set of circumstances and forces them to choose another answer to another question. This process is gone through until the situation concludes and the question is then graded by the computer. While computers don’t always do the right thing ethically, Georgia regulators say that the response has been good to the new test. Nebraska, where VanEd will be teaching pre-license soon, is also moving to the simulation exam in July.

Delaware has seen the most striking legal changes with the recent elimination of the common law of agency, moving to a preferred model of Statutory Agency. Louisiana regulators are working to piggy back appraisal Errors and Omissions Insurance on the policy of the real estate agents. And when a regulator from Kentucky got up she opened with “Kentucky — leading the way in being sued by the Federal Government!”. It had been widely publicized that Kentucky was sued over their anti-rebate law, but now another suit is top of mind; Kentucky is a Turf State requiring a license for all real estate sales, but a plaintiff filed a suit claiming that a license could not be required for commercial sales under interstate commerce law. That case is at the judge now.

ARELLO’s Fair Housing Advisory group calls for changes

The Afternoon session Friday led me to the FHAG, or Fair Housing Advisory Group. In San Antonio in the fall I had been placed on this group, led by Chair Tony Duncanson from Washington D.C. The group discussed the 2006 National Fair Housing Alliance’s Fair Housing Trends Report, which is sometimes shocking. The report details how in some areas, including Detroit (the #1 city in the country for fair housing violations) descrimination is so bad that it can be mapped.

The map that has been created shows how African American families are only shown homes within the city of Detroit proper, while White families are only shown homes outside the city in the suburbs. The report also shows that testers from the FHAG and others are being trained in one state and then flown to another to evaluate and test Realtors and Mortgage Bankers.’

The committee concluded that the FHAG should be invited to be an Affiliate of ARELLO and will request the Board of Directors today to allow the FHAG’s Executive Director or the CEO Shawna Smith to make a fair housing presentation at the Annual ARELLO Meetings in New York.

Education Certification Committee meets at ARELLO conference

ARELLO’s Joe McClary spent the morning session going over the new Education Content Certification program with the collected group. The program, which is designed to help states who may need some assistance with content reveiw or for jurisdictions that just don’t do that now, will be up and running at the end of May. The program costs range from $300 – $900 depending on the size of the course being reviewed, but reviews are expected to take between 30 – 60 days, similar to the current ARELLO/IDEC certification time frames.

Also discussed was the CDEI – or Certified Distance Education Instructor program, and that 10-11 hour course will be offered around the end of May as well. Joe then went over how that course was built on-line for the group so that everyone could see what it takes to make a course or program that meets the ARELLO standards. One regulator from Georgia said to me at the end of the meeting that he was shocked at how much it took to put a course on-line.

Some of the facets of course design that were discussed include Instructions and Orientation, Remediation and Instructional Design. While the ARELLO course design system could be used for any purpose, the regulators require that it never be used to compete with the real estate or appraisal industries.

ARELLO mid-year meetings begin in Canada

Canada is lovely this time of year, and the regulators have gathered for the ARELLO mid-year meetings and conference in Banff, Alberta and for three full, long days share ideas and information across international lines.

My meetings opened with discussion of the new Time Share Registry being implemented by ARELLO. The project is set to be operational in the 1st quarter of 2008. Big news that carried over from the Annual Conference in San Antonio was the ARELLO.com project that was taken on by the regulatory association with the help of NAR. ARELLO is now responsible for their own maintenance and upkeep of the ARELLO.com web site which is available to both consumers and members of the industry.

ARELLO is also working the IRPF – the International Real Estate Property Foundation. Former Colorado Division of Real Estate Director Mike Gorham (and an Emeritus member of ARELLO) was hired by IRPF to create a partnership with ARELLO.

The Affiliates met here as well, so I had a chance to network with other industry members and talk to them about issues that may have been coming up in various states. For example, I had lunch with Tadas Dobson who is with PSI Examinations, the exam provider in Colorado. We were able to talk about some of the current challenges we face and how those are being addressed. I also had a moment with Larry Fabrey from AMP, Applied Measurement Professionals who operate the state exams in Texas and Nebraska. That discussion centered on the new simulated testing that is being implemented. I followed up with a regulator from Georgia to see how that was working for them, as they have already adopted the new testing method.

The affiliates were also greeted by ARELLO CEO Debbie Campagnola who shared with us the difficulties facing the organization as it prepares for the Annual Conference in New York. More on that as it comes to me. For now, a bit of light rain is falling outside my window here. The clouds seem almost misty as they cover portions of the mountains that surround this beautiful hotel and conference center.