AREEA News

The 2018 Annual REEA Conference was held in San Diego, California from June 21 to June 25. AREEA Secretary and Treasurer Alicia White and former president Chuck Robertson both attended and shared their thoughts on the annual event.  Aside from the 2018 event, Chuck has attended the Annual REA Conference in Denver in 2016 and in Miami in 2017. Alicia could be best-described as a REEA veteran. She’s been attending conferences since 2006 and has visited San Diego, Miami, Portland, San Antonio, TX, Los Vegas, NV, Lexington, KY, Ames, IA, and the UCONN Campus in Connecticut.

The conference included five general sessions that was attended by everyone: “Memory Improvement” with Ron White, “The Power of Your Voice” with Karel Murray, “Collaboratively Being Your Authentic Self” with Jared James, “Tame Your Brain Game” with Jessica Rector, “REAA Talks” and the Real Estate Commissioner’s Update Panel Session, which was chaired by Alabama’s own Ryan Adair. In this session, several regulators from different states answered questions from attendees about the state of education, testing and schools.

There were also several panels and breakout sessions.

“School Owners Panel” with various panelists. This panel discussed the process of creating, running and selling a real estate school.

“T-3 Tech Tools for Trainers” with Jman Maneiro. Jman is a tech guru that covers tech at every conference. Chuck believes he has some of the best and most up-to-date tech for the classroom and instructional prep.

“Social Media Story-Telling” with Joe Sinnona. This session covered using Youtube, Pinterest, Twitter and other forms of social media to illustrate your points in your classroom lectures.

“Creating Synergy in the Classroom” with Evan Fuchs. This session explained how to motivate students to engage and learn from each other.

“Four Reasons Why Live Online Education Will Finally Change the Marketplace” with Toby Schifsky and Melissa Kleeman-Moy. This session covered the challenges of combining live instruction with live instruction online and how to make it effective for all attendees.

“ARELLO compliant webinar” with Mike Matoush and Jill Malloy. This session discussed strategies to make webinars ARELLO compliant and what types of webinars do not require ARELLO approval.

Alicia and Chuck were asked to share their top three takeaways from the conference. What did they learn that they felt could be used immediately in the classroom?

Chuck reported that he feels tech is always helpful, but not just for tech’s sake.  He says, “The tech we learned was to help make the presentation more interesting and MEMORABLE… to make an impression on the student so that they will remember and assimilate the information.”

The idea of classroom synergy also made an impression on Chuck. “Classroom synergy, although it wasn’t entirely new, they went into much greater depth and showed how getting the students to interact with each other could improve the learning experience.”

Chuck also picked up some “Words of Wisdom” that were sprinkled throughout the presentations: “Money is scalable, time is not.” “Real is better than perfect.” “Make yourself vulnerable to put students at ease” and others.

Alica was most impressed the networking opportunities. She spent time meeting the education directors, regulators, school owners, publishers and other instructors. “Everyone in attendance is related to real estate education,” Alicia shared.

When asked what was her favorite part of attending the conference, Alicia wrote, “I liked the location. San Diego is always a good conference venue.  This year I looked forward to the keynote speakers and some specific topics. As always the networking was good as well.” Chuck shared that “The best part is interacting with other instructors during the sessions and during breaks and social events.  We would talk about what we learned, what was going on in our respective state and what is going on in the industry in general. I learned a lot and I have contacts all over the US, even in Hawaii now.”

Both were asked if he or she felt it was important for other instructors to attend the Annual REEA Conference. Chuck commented, “I would encourage any instructor who can, to go to the conference.  It will change the way you look at your instructing and give you new tools to learn to be a better teacher.”  Alicia added, “There are some pluses to attending the conference. You get to meet an understand what other instructors are doing and what works for them.  If you wish to travel and train, you get to meet education directors and regulators who can hire you for training. You also get to meet the major book publishers for real estate education and get to take home free books and training tools.”

The 2019 REEA Conference will held in Austin, Texas from June 29 – July 1, 2019 at the Hilton in Austin at 500 East 4^th Street. The rate is $179 a night at the time of this report.

In conclusion, Chuck and Alicia both feel that every Alabama instructor should attend in possible. Chuck went on the elaborate, “I have attended three conferences so far and have gained much and they were worth every penny.  If several people want to go, we may be able to do some things to cut the costs.  I would like for us to have a large group to represent AREEA next year.”

It's time to celebrate. Football starts this month and there's only a few weeks remaining in this license renewal period. I'm sure we will all be happy to have the CE classes behind us. We can now catch up on some of the work we had to let slide due to an overload in class schedules.

October is a good time to start thinking about the courses we want to get approved before next October. I can only speak for myself, but my workload is heavy and I have a tendency to put things off until the last minute. It doesn't hurt me to procrastinate because I always seem to meet my deadlines in plenty time. It does, however, hurt my students. Let's look at some things we should do.

Selecting a CE class title doesn't seem that difficult but we should devote ample time to naming our courses as to create interest and cause a prospective student to take the class. A good way to begin the process is to ask your students during a current class, what subject matter they would you to teach during the next license renewal period. The subject matter will help determine a name in many cases.

Now we can put pen to paper. We should begin by writing an outline of the course material we want to cover and select three most important topics we need to get across to the student. Next we should select three sub-topics for each major topic. This will allow us to teach all major points of interest and be able to adjust our class time based on student participation. In DREI training we learn from the top national speakers that most instructors include three times more material than they can possibly cover. They stress the importance of having fewer topics while making use of examples, stories; video clips and work sessions to engage the student.

The real work begins here with selecting the best possible material to get all major points across to the student. Searching for supportive material is most time consuming. Finding that right example or story that perfectly illustrates a point. I have found that searching for the perfect video clip is most difficult. I get to watching videos on YouTube and lose track of which one is best. Video clips that relate to the topic can be the most valuable teaching aid. It will create interest and the student will remember it for a longer period of time.

The important lesson for us to learn is that time spent in research and course creation just might make us look smarter than we really are. It will definitely make our classes more interesting to the student.

Respectfully,

James Anderson
2018 AREEA President

This article will be quite different than previous messages due to its content. There seems to be a lot of discord and uncertainty across the state about the future of the real estate profession. When changes are first initiated in the way real estate is practiced, it creates a fear in people, a fear of the unknown. Since we are licensed by the State of Alabama to teach real estate, agents think we have or should have the answer to any given topic of concern. Therefore it is our duty and our responsibility to educate ourselves on political, global, and local affairs affecting our industry. We will never have all the answers to all questions, but our awareness of major situations can position us so that we can provide our students with a direction for them to take to get quality answers to their specific question. One of the things I have learned through the years is that generally things are not nearly as bad as were originally thought.

When approached about something we are not familiar with, we should think it through carefully before responding. If we can't answer their question factually, we should point them to someone who can provide them with factual information. Remember it is acceptable and proper for us to say, "I don't know the answer to your question, but I suggest you contact “fill in the blank” about this situation. Maybe they can help you." The worse thing we can do is provide them with incorrect information.

I get calls every day from agents wanting to know how to handle various situations in a real estate transactions. To manage my own risk, I only tell them what the law says, or I direct them to someone else. Much of the time they have already been searching the internet for an answer. While I read newsletters and special reports every day via the internet, I unfortunately can't honestly determine what is factual and what is gossip. For example, I have read that Zillow is eventually going to eliminate the need for a broker/agent to close a real estate transaction. I personally don't believe that state laws will permit that to happen but that is only my opinion. There is a lot of concern about it nationally so I continue to read so I can stay abreast of arguments on both sides of the issue.

Another major concern that has been developing over the last few years is virtual real estate offices. As I understand, they have already become a reality in Alabama. To educate myself I looked up the definition of virtual, which is defined as almost or nearly as described, but not completely or according to strict definition. "The virtual absence of border controls." It also means, "not physically existing as such but made by software to appear to do so."

Due to the sudden growth of virtual offices in Alabama, I contacted the legal department at the Alabama Real Estate Commission and asked Mandy Lynn for an opinion on virtual offices. She said, "More detailed information would be released in the near future."

This message is not intended to sway your position on any situation, for or against. I do encourage you to make yourself aware of all possible changes that could come about so you'll be prepared when called upon for an answer to a specific question. We need to only disclose factual information.

Respectfully,

James Anderson
2017 President, AREEA

There is only three months left in this license renewal CE season. Many of us that teach continuing education classes will probably have more students during these 90-days than any other time during this license renewal period. If we apply the new teaching techniques we learned in the CREI classes over the past 18-months, we have plenty time to impress some students and insure that they will take classes from us during the 2020 license renewal period. If students enjoy our classes, if they find us interesting and easy to listen to, and they leave class with new information they can use in their business, they will return for another class in the future. They will also tell their fellow agents about their learning experiences and will encourage them to attend one of our classes. Becoming a proficient instructor is the best way to grow your class attendance. Becoming complacent and not implementing better teaching skills is a sure way to destroy the business you once had.

Let's focus on instructors that teach continuing education because they are the majority of all instructors. Even though there isn’t that many instructors that teach prelicense, when compare to the total number of instructors, they can and should apply the same techniques to their classes.

A good way to begin improving our teaching techniques is to honestly evaluate our current teaching skills. To do this we should grade our own classes, just like we were sitting in the classroom ourselves. When an auditor sits in on one of our classes, they are checking to see if we covered all the material in the course outline. They are also watching to see if we follow all the commission rules. For the purpose of our evaluation, let's ask ourselves if we are making use of specific teaching tools.

What images are we using to stress importance of a specific point we are trying to get across to our students? A picture is worth a thousand words; especially for visual learners. I imagine there are more visual learners attending our class than other learning styles. Generally we retain 10% of the information we read. We retain 30% of the information we see. Images are seen. Images sell product. Look at the corporate world. Almost all advertising makes use of images and we remember them.

What type of multi-media (videos) do we incorporate into our PowerPoint presentations? Videos aid the both the visual and auditory learners. We retain 50% of the information that we read, hear, and see. Videos also assist in recapturing the attention of a student that has lost interest in the class material or we possibly haven't used teaching techniques to reach their particular learning style. Many times a short video clip will bring the point we're trying to make to full circle and make a lasting impression on us. The key of a successful video presentation is it must relate to the point we're trying to get across.

Are we incorporating stories into our classes? Story telling helps the student relate material to a real life situation. People retain 20% of what they only hear. A good story also produces images on the human mind. Stories should confirm what we are telling them in an interesting way. Some people have the ability to incorporate humor into their stories, which makes the story more interesting. Story telling really takes practice. If we use humor in our stories, we must make sure it is funny. If not it may backfire on us and cause our students to loose respect for our teaching style.

I just finished grading my last class and I admit that I have plenty room for improvement. It really brought home to me that I need to spend much more time in course writing and developing presentation skills.

Respectfully,

James Anderson
2018 AREEA President

I have been associated with a lot of industry-related associations, but none has given me more pride than AREEA. Our membership is not nearly as large as some of our neighboring states, but our members demonstrate their love, respect and willingness to help a fellow member when called upon. It seems that disasters come in groups. I've always heard that thing happen in three's. Boy it does seem that way.

First, Donnis Palmer was hospitalized with a severe number of blood clots. We immediately sent out a request for all members to pray for her recovery. Shortly thereafter, we learned the sad news of Harriett Isaacson’s passing as witness by the attendance of her funeral service. I’m sure we were all touched by Harriet in some way during her lifetime. We’ll be posting more about her life and career soon to help the new members learn more about this pioneer in real estate education.

Soon we learned that Clarence "Bo" Evans had suffered a heart attack while attending the ABR Instructor Training in Washington, DC. I’m so proud of how our organization pulled together to help raise over $4,300 to help the Evans family through this difficult time. Currently Bo has returned to Alabama and is recovering at home with his wife Pumpkin and son Bryant.

We also learned that Ginny Willis' daughter, Tricia Lacey Hyde passed on Saturday, May 12, 2018. Her services were held on Tuesday, May 15, 2018.

Why am I mentioning these sad events? Because even though we are all in competition with each other on one hand, we are still a family of instructors. How does that old song by Bill Wither’s go?

“You just call on me, brother, when you need a hand
We all need somebody to lean on
I just might have a problem that you'll understand
We all need somebody to lean on

Lean on me, when you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on
For it won't be long
'Til I'm gonna need
Somebody to lean on”

We ask that our members notify us any time one of our members experience a tragedy. We want to help any way we can. Lean on us!

James Anderson
2018 AREEA President

AREEA has developed a three-part certification program in conjunction with Karel Murray, DREI, entitled Certified Real Estate Instructor (CREI). All three classes must be taken in sequential order to receive proper credit for the CREI designation and the next training cycle is scheduled to begin November 9, 2018. 

Click here to register for Part 1: Content Creation

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THE REAL ESTATE EDUCATORS ASSOCIATION – providing resources and opportunities for professional development to individuals and organizations involved in real estate education.

CONNECT FOR RESULTS, OPPORTUNITIES AND IDEAS! Expand your curriculum and learn new classroom presentation techniques - Increase your business by learning new marketing techniques - Exchange and share competitive strategies with peers in other markets - Discover new books and literature - Learn new updates that will help you in front of the classroom.

For more information, visit the REEA website here. 

The 2017 Annual Conference of the Real Estate Educators Association (REEA) was held June 23-26 in Miami, Florida. 

We had several attendees from AL at the REEA Conference in Miami:
Debbie Coe from Aronov - Montgomery, AL
Alicia White from JMA Realty - Birmingham, AL
Chuck Robertson from Southern Institute of Real Estate - Birmingham, AL
Susan Hawkins from the Real Estate Education Center - Fort Payne, AL
Ryan Adair and Pam Oates from AREC

Next year the conference will be in sunny San Diego.  June 22-25, 2018.