AREC talks education to FCBOR
February 22-28, 2016
By Jay Edwards
Members of the Faulkner County Board of Realtors enjoyed a fried chicken luncheon during their February General Membership meeting at the Centennial Valley Country Club in Conway, while also catching up with some of the goings on at the Arkansas Real Estate Commission.
Commission Executive Director Gary Isom, joined by his Deputy Executive Director Andrea Alford, stressed the importance of education for Realtors. Isom began by remembering Tina Daniel, who passed away in March of 2013.
“One week before Tina’s death, she and I were sitting in a legislative committee testifying why the Real Estate Commission needed to take over education. We could see that with so many people who would be retiring in the coming years that we were going to be losing a lot of instructors.”
Daniel, a former commissioner appointed by Governor Mike Beebe, was a state and national real estate instructor.
“Our concerns of course compounded when just one week later we lost Tina,” Isom said.
“She would be glad to see that it is a priority of the Commission to focus on education.”
He also quoted the late Bill Ladd, who passed away last year. Ladd, a former president of the ARA and popular CE instructor once told Isom, “If you are going to be an educator your heart really has to be in it.”
There are five commissioners at the AREC, two of whom are in their last year, Lesia Ford (Realtor) and Monica Freeland (Consumer Rep). The remaining three are Tony Moore (Realtor), Linda Prunty (Consumer Rep) and Doyle Yates (Realtor).
One good thing, Isom said, is that there were only 89 complaints in 2015. He said that when they receive a complaint from a consumer, that they recommend they speak with the firm’s broker, if that hasn’t already happened, to see if the broker can work the problem out before it goes to the commission.
“Property management continues to plague us,” Isom said. “We just had another hearing this week and the Commission paid out four thousand dollars. We don’t think this one will reach the recovery fund, that the property manager will reimburse the complainant in this case.”
He said there was a less fortunate situation in 2015 when the commission paid out the maximum $75,000, which was over property management.
Starting in 2011, Isom said they have paid more from the recovery fund than all years combined before, since its inception in 1977.
“When the economy dropped and people started getting into property management, where you have a substantial amount of cash flow, it started hurting us financially,” he said.
“On top of this there was a loss of revenue with licensees moving into other careers.
We don’t have as much flexibility with the recovery fund when it was twice the size as it is now and we would always plow a lot of money into education. The state board was collecting the revenue and we were putting the money into education, which worked fine when the recovery fund was healthier.”
He said he met with the director of the state board and said that the AREC had to be the ones collecting the fees and administering the money, so that it can be put back into education.
AREC Deputy Director Andrea Alford reported that there are 11,450 licensees, active and inactive, currently in Arkansas, which is up about 50 from this time last year and up about 300 from two years ago.
PHOTO CAPTION:
The Faulkner County Board of Realtors held their monthly General Membership Meeting on Feb. 10 at the Centennial Country Club in Conway. At the sign-in desk are FCBOR Executive Officer Connie Briggler with Realtors George Heintzen and Velda Lueders. (Photo by Jay Edwards)
