Over the years a number of clients have told me that while I was wonderful, they believed that it was pretty much the luck of the draw that they got a good agent! That tells me there's a problem with the system!

So, I will begin doing occasional posts here on questions you should ask a prospective agent. I will, over time, cover questions from both a buyer's and a seller's perspective.

Today, I'll start with a discussion of the question: What additional designations or certifications do you have?

I believe this is a vitally important question that almost no consumers ask!

Do you know that old joke about what you call the guy who graduates at the bottom of his medical school class? (Doctor!) Well, it's true in real estate as well. You have no idea whether your agent passed their real estate test with 100% of the answers correct the first time or if it took them 20 tries and then they passed by one point! Either way, their a real estate agent!

And, to be perfectly honest, the training you get in order to get a real estate license has very little to do with your ability to be successful in this profession day in and day out. As my instructor told me on the first day I sat down in the real estate class, "This is not to train you to be a real estate agent. It's to train you to pass the state exam." And they did a great job of that. But as a consumer, that's not much help to you! Much of the material is made up of arcane legal matters that will never come up in the average residential transaction in the commonwealth of Virginia!

So, to do this job well, I believe it's imperative to get additional training and to get it as soon as possible. GRI, Graduate Realtor Institute, should be one of the first things a new agent works on. It's all the stuff you need to know in order to really do your job as an agent!

Another reason I believe additional training is so important is that it increases your knowledge at a much faster rate than you could ever manage on your own. If the only lessons I learn are the ones from the transactions I myself am involved in, it's a pretty slow learning curve. If I get the chance to learn from the wisdom of the instructors, the course materials and the shared experiences of everyone in the course, I become a much more experienced agent in a much shorter period of time.

And, lastly, the continuing education requirements for real estate agents are pretty pathetic. While there's work ongoing to increase the requirements, currently an agent only needs 16 hours every two years. And a surprising number of agents manage to fulfill those requirements without learning anything new!

Here's a link to a list of the designations and certifications recognized by NAR (National Association of REALTORS). I urge you to take a look for yourself and decide which are important to you. If you're curious about which ones are important to me, you can check out my own designations or ask me about what I'm working on next!