Real estate agent training on ethics and professionalism covers four things when it is done right. The REALTOR® Code of Ethics itself, including your duties to clients, to the public, and to other REALTORS®. How you treat clients, cooperating brokers, and other people's property. Staying inside your scope of expertise so you do not practice appraisal or law with a real estate license. And, the part most classes skip, how to use the Code to explain to a consumer why a professional REALTOR® is worth hiring.
I teach a continuing education class called REALTOR® Code of Ethics: Conversion Using The Code, and I served as 2023 President of North Carolina REALTORS®. I have also watched the profession worry about professionalism for years. Here is what the training should cover and why.
The Code of Ethics is organized around duties. Duties to clients and customers, like putting their interests first and being honest about the property. Duties to the public, like truthful advertising and equal service. Duties to other REALTORS®, like cooperating, not interfering with another agent's client, and handling disputes through arbitration instead of on social media. Ethics training walks through those articles with real cases, because a rule you have never seen applied is a rule you will break by accident.
The best professionalism training I have seen starts at new member orientation and covers three relationships. How you treat your clients. How you treat other brokers, who are not your enemy and who will bring you your next buyer. And how you treat property that does not belong to you. You may be under contract, but that house does not belong to your buyer until the keys are in their hand and the deal has funded. Lock the doors, turn off the lights, leave it the way you found it.
When you dig into brokerages and associations, you find that the REALTORS® doing most of the business are amazingly professional. The friendships built on professionalism between agents are what give consumers a better experience, and a better experience is the whole point.
Ethics training should also cover scope. When a new fad shows up, like agents collecting appraisal data for a fee, the question is whether you are operating outside your area of expertise, and that can be a violation of the Code. My recommendation is simple. Do your REALTOR® job and let certified appraisers do appraiser jobs. The same goes for legal advice and tax advice.
Here is the piece I built my class around. Most agents treat the Code as something to survive every few years. I teach agents to put the Code of Ethics to work in their day-to-day business to help their community understand the value of a professional REALTOR®. When a seller asks why they should not just use an app, the answer is in the Code: fiduciary duty, honesty about the property, cooperation with every agent in the market, and a complaint process with teeth. That is a sales script hiding in a rulebook.
If your ethics class ends when the quiz ends, you got half the value. The other half is walking out able to explain, in plain words, why what you do matters.
The National Association of REALTORS® requires members to complete Code of Ethics training on a recurring cycle. Check your local or state association for the current deadline and approved courses.
Ethics training teaches the Code of Ethics and its articles. Professionalism training covers conduct the Code does not spell out, like how you treat cooperating brokers, showings, and other people's property.
Yes. REALTOR® Code of Ethics: Conversion Using The Code is a continuing education eligible class that teaches agents to use the Code to explain their value to consumers. Details are at leighbrown.com/speaking/speaker-topics.
Fearlessly real and faith-driven, Leigh Brown is the Disruption Navigator guiding professionals from chaos to clarity with guts, grace, and a good dose of grit.
