Friday, April 08, 2005

RE Enforcer: Department Relies On Victims, Peers

The real estate police chief in California seems a little overwhelmed. And the title of this Examiner article, 'I don't see that price appreciation is a bubble', shows that even gritty, enforcement types wear rose colored glasses. The format is Q & A, here's a brief look.

"Q: Are there weaknesses in the state's policing of real estate agents? A: There are people, like in any industry, who take advantage and violate the law. Our biggest obstacle is finding out who they are. Most consumers that are taken advantage of do not even realize it until it is too late. Other agents..are sometimes hesitant to turn a peer in. The department has to rely on consumers and the industry to bring to our attention the "bad agents."

I thought this info better answered the question, "Is the DRE adequately staffed to police this growing industry?" "The growth in terms of our licensee population has been extraordinary. We have over 428,000 licensees today. We will test over 150,000 applicants this year alone, which is the most we've tested in the history of the department."

2 Comments:

At 11:40 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

If those 150K new applicants get licensed, Calif will have 578K RE agents...or 2.2% of the adult population of the state. Over the past (boom) year, about 500K homes/condos were sold, so each RE agent would get an avg of .86 of one sale during boom times. Methinks we shall see a great many ex-RE-agents in the near future.

 
At 12:09 PM, Blogger Ben Jones said...

Good point. I'll admit to changing to a RE major just before the oil field bust in the 80's. At the time Dallas had the best performing RE sector in the world, five years straight! Just a few years later, only a pidgeon could make a deposit on a Mercedes in the metoplex. But, alas, I was young and naive.

 

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