The Broker Responsibility Working Group (BRWG) met July 13 and acted on two proposals related to broker oversight and sales agents’ response times.

Proposed Rule

BRWG proposed a new rule, 535.157, that requires a broker or sales agent to respond to their principal, a broker or sales agent representing another party to a real estate transaction, or an unrepresented party to a real estate transaction within two calendar days.

The Education Standards Advisory Committee (ESAC) met July 7 and discussed pre-licensing course credit and the qualifying course outline for real estate brokerage and property management.

Pre-Licensing Course Credit

The committee discussed whether to further consider recommending a time limit for accepting and awarding pre-licensing course credit. Any update would require a rule change. Staff will gather data on this issue and present to the committee for discussion at the next committee meeting in October.

It is now easier to find whether a license holder has a disciplinary history with the Texas Real Estate Commission. The newly launched Disciplinary Actions button at the top of each license holder’s page will take you to their specific Disciplinary Actions page if a disciplinary history exists.

Previously only indirect methods—such as searching the Disciplinary Actions section of trec.texas.gov—were available. These remain available along with the new button.

In recent months, I’ve had the privilege of presenting alongside Texas Real Estate Commission Executive Director Chelsea Buchholtz to license holders around Texas, many who are REALTORS®.

As some of you may know, I served as chairman of the Texas Association of REALTORS® in 2015 and have chaired more than a dozen other committees and task forces of the organization on local, state, and national levels.

The 87th Texas Legislature passed a bill requiring the Texas Real Estate Commission to collect management certificates and amended management certificates from property owners’ associations—also known as homeowners associations (HOAs)—and make the certificates publicly available online.

"How do we raise the bar of professionalism?"

"We need more broker responsibility."

"I work with people on the other side of a contract who don’t know what they are doing. They don’t even know the name of their broker!" 

The Texas Real Estate Inspector Committee (TREIC) met April 18 and talked about hot topic issues, including how inspectors must handle single-item inspections, clarifications to 535.222, Inspection Reports, and expired licenses. Read on for more takeaways.

It’s been more than two years since the pandemic changed the real estate landscape and how you do business, and your license renewal may not be on your mind. But now is the time to ensure your license hasn’t been expired for more than two years, which requires you to take extra steps to renew.

The Texas Real Estate Commission met May 2, 2022. In addition to hearing updates from TREC staff, the Commission contemplated a proposed new flood disclosure form for leases, non-substantive proposed changes from the quadrennial rule review, and adopted a rule change for easement or right-of-way (ERW) agents. The Commission also heard a presentation from Gary Maler, executive director of the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University.

TREC is pleased to announce an update to the Posting System that allows all providers of real estate Qualifying Education (QE) courses to post course credit directly into the agency’s system of record. The student must have a TREC real estate sales agent or broker license number to award qualifying credit.