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.

The Broker Responsibility Working Group (BRWG) met April 13 and made two proposed recommendations that will be discussed during the next TREC Workshop on May 3. Feedback from the TREC Workshop discussion will be part of the next BRWG meeting in July.

The TREC Education Standards Advisory Committee (ESAC) met April 4. Members of the committee made plans to review the qualifying course outline for property management and discussed how to incorporate education on the broker-agent relationship in existing courses.

In late January, the Texas Real Estate Commission launched an online survey to gather information from wholesalers, consumers who have purchased from or sold property to wholesalers, and license holders who have represented a party in a wholesaling transaction.