June 17th 2024
They teach you a lot in Real Estate Licensing School. Regulatory Compliance issues as they apply first to the Real Estate and Business Brokers Act (REBBA) and now more recently the Trust in Real Estate Services Act (TRESA). And of course, a host of other Acts and guidelines. The New Condominium Act. The Family Law Reform Act. The Residential Tenancies Act. And a whole lot more. In class you learn how to structure the deal. How to insert protective clauses into contracts to protect the interests of the parties involved. How to spot deficiencies and errors. How to accurately list properties for sale. And you learn how to do it all within the parameters of the Common Law of Agency.
Yes, they teach you a lot in Real Estate Licensing School. But they don’t teach you everything! They don’t teach you the art of selling. How to find buyers and sellers. And how to put them together in a contract that is a win-win. That is the task we embrace here at RE/MAX Garden City Realty Inc.
Recently completed and recurring on a regular basis is a course we’ve developed entitled ‘From the Ground Up’. It’s a five-week spaced 
learning course designed to lead new licensees through the art of the deal. Teaching them how to take the knowledge they have learned in the Licensing Program and apply it on the job. How, quite frankly, to excel in their new chosen profession.
We begin with a look at the mind of a champion. How does a winner think and in what way does it differ from the host of agents who never rise beyond the level of mediocrity. Then we look at the skill set that is common among the best of the best. What do they know that sets them apart?
We go on to embrace the challenges of prospecting. For the most part everyone is interested in real estate in one way or another. How do we locate and connect with those that are ready to buy or sell, either as end users, renovators, speculators or investors. And how do we find what they are looking for?
And in many ways that is the challenge. It’s been said ‘Buyers are liars’. It’s not meant in a derogatory sense. But it’s a fact that more often buyers buy something totally different than what they said they were interested in. Mediocre agents set out to find what the Buyers say they wish to buy. Great agents ask questions and watch reactions. Then they get busy finding that magic property that ‘talks to’ the client. Their forever dream home. Or the investment project that will forever be the flagship of their fleet.
We teach them how to competently handle the buying and selling process and how to take their clients by the hand and walk them past the pitfalls to an amazing fulfillment of their dreams.
And the course ends by giving these new and incipient super stars dreams for tomorrow. Not just what their career is now. Not just what success looks like today, but also what is possible for tomorrow. What real greatness in real estate sales could and should look like.
As an added bonus to this course, we have also re-introduced tour of property. Here we head out once each week, to actually inspect currently listed properties. Property tours, once popular, have fallen by the wayside thanks to the internet and virtual tours. But as useful as a virtual walk through is, there is nothing like hands on inspections where you can not only see the interiors of homes but you can actually walk the floors, climb the stairs and open the closets. Up close and personal.
So, a class of 20 or so has just wrapped up. And a group of 20 or so are now poised to not only put this classroom knowledge into practice, they are poised to go out into the field. Work with buyers and sellers, and to be great. To be incredible. To be the component in the transaction that exceeds wildest expectations and make dreams come true.