by Michele Gillis
Staff Writer
In this market, being educated is your best tool to understanding the market and helping your customers with all of their real estate needs.
The Northeast Florida Association of Realtors has really ramped up their education opportunities to the Realtors to help them do the best job they can.
“We added some new iCE (Internet Continuing Education) classes offered through Florida Realtors, which increases our class roster by 12 classes annually with typically one iCE course per month,” said Cindy Foley, the local association’s education director. “Also, as changes continue to occur in the real estate industry, more new classes become available and I do my best to bring the latest information to our members.”
Classes are chosen based on monitoring the trends in real estate and offering courses to meet those trends. Most are 3-4 hours long, but some are longer depending on the course. Attendance runs from 20-80 people, also depending on the course.
Course popularity changes with the market.
“Last year, courses on short sales and real estate owned courses were extremely popular,” said Foley. “A few years ago, courses on the Green designation were on the front burner. Currently, there is a lot of interest in property management.”
Foley joined NEFAR last year and brings with her organizational and leadership skills from her 30 years with the Army Corps of Engineers. She was an executive assistant to the commander of the Buffalo district and then moved to Jacksonville as a Public Affairs Specialist with the Army Corps of Engineers.
“In the past I have helped put together PowerPoint presentations, so I help proofread new courses and if something sticks out at me that may not be quite right, I just ask a question and we fix it.”
Foley works with instructors to develop new courses.
“The instructors develop the courses and I work with them to get the course fine-tuned and help them with the format and then we will submit it to the state for approval,” said Foley.
Since NEFAR is an education provider with the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, it has its own set of courses. In addition, NEFAR can get courses from other education providers such as Florida Realtors and other boards that are education providers.
The iCE program is relatively new to NEFAR, but seems to be embraced wholeheartedly by the agents.
“The Florida Realtors iCE program started last year,” said Foley. “Live iCE programs are broadcast monthly to Realtor associations across the state and offer virtual campus technology that allows participants to interact with each other and the instructor simultaneously. The instructor can be located anywhere, but is most often at the Florida Realtors location in Orlando, and the course is streamed live to all participating locations.”
William Campbell is in charge of education decisions at Florida Realtors with the guidance of the Professional Development Committee, this year headed by Tallahassee broker Patti Ketcham.
“I’ve been here three years and one of my charges was to bring more education to our members and make it more accessible,” said Campbell. “I had done very similar things like the iCE program before in my previous employment at University of Central Florida where we had a virtual classroom. We would connect satellite locations together and have one instructor in one location.
“I looked at this as being a great solution to meeting the needs of our members and trying to get more education out to our members at the smaller boards. We finally got the approval and rolled it out last year.”
They did six programs last year and have done one per month so far this year.
Florida Realtors is an education provider with the state. They have a program called CE Express that is offered to all local Realtor associations.
“An association pays a licensing fee and gets access to our entire catalog of courses that we have approved,” said Campbell. “We do all the administrative functions of reporting. They can use that catalog of programs to pick and choose and schedule education at their local board. We keep content new, fresh and relevant. Their only additional cost is to pay the instructor. If they join CE Express, they get the 12 iCE programs for free. We pay the instructor on those and it is offered to every local association.”
The state association’s role, says Campbell, is instructor recruitment, training and retention.
“We provide a list of approved instructors and the local boards select one,” said Campbell. “I monitor their progress and performance. If they don’t meet a certain standard, I will work with them and coach them. If they don’t improve, I can ultimately remove them from the approved list.”
Campbell said about 45-50 of the 64 local boards have joined CE Express. He said 35-40 have at some point participated in a virtual classroom course based on their schedule.
The iCE course is monitored at each local participation site to assure that continuing education credit requirements are met.
Foley said the benefit of the iCE program is that it allows NEFAR to bring more classes to members at various locations.
Classes are always very crowded in March and September, which corresponds to real estate license renewal deadlines.
“People tend to realize they don’t have all of the continuing education credits, so they get busy,” said Foley.
Attendance at property management and short sale classes has been very strong this year.
“As the market changes, new courses are written to deal with the changing requirements and we do our best to offer the latest courses with the most current information, in addition to the standard required courses such as Core Law and Ethics,” said Foley.
The majority of NEFAR’s in-class education courses are free for Realtor members, not the case at every Realtor association.
“This provides exceptional value for our members, especially since we do offer such a variety of quality, in-class education opportunities,” said Foley. “We also offer online courses on our Web site, NEFAR.com, that are available 24/7, 365 days a year. There are nominal charges for online courses.”
Next year, they will offer several designation courses including Resort and Second-Home Property Specialist (RSPS); Certified International Property Specialist (CIPS); Certified Residential Specialist (CRS) and all three Graduate, Realtor Institute (GRI) classes.
“Right now Florida Realtors is working on improving the quality of the iCE courses,” said Foley. “We are trying to make it so the instructor can move around instead of being seated at a desk. Instructors like to walk around when teaching a class.”
As they move forward with the iCE program, they are making upgrades to the cameras and microphones to make the program even better for the attendees.
“This year has still been somewhat of a pilot program for us,” said Campbell. “We are still getting used to it and making it better. One thing we are going to do next year is instead of the instructor coming to me, I will go out to the instructor at their home office and film that instructor in front of a live audience and stream it that way.”
Upcoming Florida Realtor courses include social media contact, communication skills contact and accounting/Quickbook technology type courses.
“Two new things we are working on is a Florida military specialist designation program and a Florida Realty Specialist designation,” said Campbell. “We have 18 military installations around the state and there is no education that is specific to the military.
“There are a lot of special issues, challenges and financing programs specific to the military. We have a couple of good resources that are a part of this work group right now to create the designation.”