Continuing Education 3 Hrs Commissioner’s Standards, 3 Hrs Disclosure
Course Creators 520.360.0280

If we understood how professionals are using blogs then we could use them to get customers. You can maximize the power of internet resources, upload links and photos. Know how to use new and innovative tools like Google docs, alerts and calendars to fully realize your potential, minimize your time and maximize your income.

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Bring Your Laptop Hands- on-Training 

Sponsored By:  Stewart Title & Trust

Held At: 3939 E. Broadway, Tucson, Arizona

9:00 AM to 4:00 PM – Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Questions often arise under the Real Estate Settlement & Procedures Act (RESPA) concerning the issue of joint advertising by and between settlement service providers. Common questions that arise include:

1. Can a title company create flyers for a real estate agent that promote the agent and/or the property and include the title company logo?
2. Can a mortgage lender offer open house flyers which display property details and financing options and include the agent’s picture and contact information on the flyer?
3. Can a title or mortgage company provide postcards to a real estate agent that promote the agent and include the mortgage company or title company logo.

Let’s start with a couple of basic principles of RESPA. First of all the federal statutes prohibit the exchange of “items of value” between settlement service providers and HUD has issued numerous rulings that define marketing or advertising as an item of value. Therefore it is relatively clear for example that a settlement service provider shouldn’t be providing marketing, advertising or promotional material to another settlement service provider free of cost. Common violations include paying for an agent’s business cards or paying for an agent’s print advertising.

However RESPA allows for the existence of joint advertising by settlement service providers where there is a pro-rata sharing of the costs involved in the marketing. Pro-rata means that the costs and proportionate space have been equitably divided between the parties. For example a 30 second TV commercial that costs $1,500 where the title company uses 15 seconds of the commercial and the real estate professional 15 seconds should have them sharing the cost on a 50/50 basis since they have used equal amounts of the space. The same rule applies to flyers, brochures and other promotional material. There is no guidance in the RESPA statutes as to what can be included in the pro-rata sharing of costs. If one party pays for the flyers, the other party may contribute their pro rata share of the costs by distributing the flyers or if one party pays for the design and creation of the flyers, the other party may pay for the printing costs. There are lots of ways of sharing costs and expenses. Each business will ultimately decide on its own whether it can appropriately and reasonably justify the pro rata sharing of costs and expenses.

Regardless of how any particular business decides to try and allocate or justify the pro-rata sharing of marketing or advertising expenses all settlement service providers should know that any alleged violation may require them to justify what they have contributed to the marketing effort in conjunction with how much proportionate space they occupy in the joint advertising. Different situations may require different allocations of cost so that there is compliance with RESPA’s mandatory pro-rata sharing rule.

Len Elder, DREI, JD. is a national real estate educator and has been teaching courses related to RESPA and its compliance issues for the past 20 years.

Real Estate CE 3 hrs. General Real Estate By Course Creators 520.360.0280

Linkedin is the ultimate professional social networking venue. We can show you how to create a powerful presence in Linkedin, how to build your online resume, how to take deliberate action using Linkedin’s search mechanisms. Don’t get left behind.  Showcase your specialties and educate your clients on how you can help them best!  Grow your professional reputation starting NOW and be found by the clients who are looking for you and need you! 

Get Linkedin

Sponsored By: Stewart Title & Trust

Held At:  3939 E. Broadway, Tucson, AZ

1:00 PM to 4:00 PM – Thursday, January 10, 2013

Bring Your Laptop – Hands On Training!

Instructor Development Workshop – From the OVATION Series

As the national authors of the book Ovation – How to Present Like a Pro, Course Creators will be leading a full day Instructor Development Workshop (IDW) for the Utah Real Estate Commission in Park City, Utah on Monday, October 29th, 2012 to empower Utah instructors to get standing ovations and elevate the level of their teaching and presentations. This full day six hour session will enable instructors to employ the use of videos and other technology in the classroom, create themed courses which engage their students and provide tips and techniques that will increase the effectiveness of presentations. Course Creators customizes these presentations to fit the needs of education directors and instructors. We will have you excited about teaching and accomplishing more in a day than than you ever thought possible.

What other Education Directors say about these IDW courses:

“Powerful, passionate and persuasive speakers with a remarkable ability to ignite any audience into action. They do their homework. The presentation was diverse and encompassed many techniques to hold the audience’s attention, but most of all they connect on an emotional level. The participants were very impressed and the feedback was extremely positive overall. I would personally recommend this for anyone wanting a brilliant and inspiring presentation.”

Sponsored By: The Utah Real Estate Commission

Held At: Park City, Utah

9:00 AM to 4:00 PM – Monday, October 29th, 2012

8:00 AM to 12:00 PM – Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

Coming to You in 2013!

Watch for our upcoming Investors Summit!

Creating a More Stable & Secure Future For You and Your Family! A one day special event that will help you create a more stable and secure future for you and your family!  If you are thinking about investing in real estate, now is the time.  Here’s why!

• The Wall Street Journal Market Watch: Tucson #1  “10 Best Cities for Real Estate Investors”!
• Forbes: Tucson, the best city to buy a home right now!
• REALTOR.com®: Tucson, “Top Real Estate Investment Market”!
• Inman News: Tucson #4 “10 Best Markets for Real Estate Investors”!

6 dynamic real estate professionals eager to show you how to:

• Build an investment team that will save you time and money
• Know the local market and the current trends
• ‘Leverage’ and truly understand how it can work for you
• Understand ‘creative financing’ and use it effectively
• Decide if buying foreclosures is right for you
• Pick the right property to purchase and begin your financial journey
• Protect your investments and reduce your liabilities

Click here for Sponsorship opportunities at The Summit!!

The Real Estate Settlement and Procedures Act (RESPA) is the federal law which governs the relationships between settlement service providers in real estate transactions. The Act makes it illegal for settlement service providers to give or receive anything of value in exchange for the referral of business in a real estate transaction. The Act also makes it illegal for settlement service providers to require that a borrower use a particular provider in a real estate transaction and sets forth disclosure guidelines when there is a co-ownership of more than one settlement service provider in a real estate transaction.

The Tucson Association of REALTORS annually hosts a RESPA Roundtable organized by the RESPA Committee where licensees can explore these issues and get answers to the most commonly asked questions. In order to obtain a copy of the frequently asked questions all you need to do is click here or click on the stack of RESPA files to the right.

The questions are divided into categories based on settlement service providers. In order to obtain more information about RESPA and its enforcement you can visit the official RESPA pages at HUD.gov.

Real Estate CE 3 hrs. Commissioner’s Standards By Course Creators 520.360.0280

Take a look back on past business practices, determine what has worked, establish an effective plan to move forward and understand why the business of real estate is important to you and your clients. Make commitments to your business that will take you to the next level, personally and professionally, and will help you serve more clients more effectively.

The Business of Real Estate

Sponsored By:  Keller Williams Southern, AZ

Held At:  The Tucson Association of REALTORS®    2445 N. Tucson Blvd., Tucson, AZ

9:00 AM to 12:00 PM – Thursday, October 18, 2012

Your Registration Fee is Paid by Sponsor, Keller Williams Southern Arizona.

Please register via email to Course Creators, Kris@CourseCreators.com

Congratulations to Kris Inman, the new Executive Director of the national Real Estate Educators Association (REEA). The Association has been in existence for 30 years and is the home to instructors, school owners and educational professionals in the real estate industry. Engaged in elevating the level of real estate education across the country the national organization has hundreds of members dedicated to real estate instruction.

The Executive Board of Directors recently made a decision to move to self management of the Association. By unanimous vote of the Executive Board, Kris Inman of Tucson, Arizona was chosen to help lead the organization into this new era of education. National President, Julie Garton-Good, and the Board of Directors is excited about having Kris at the helm of the Association.

For the past three years, Kris has worked diligently in real estate education for Tucson based, Course Creators, a national education company, started by Len Elder and Theresa Barnabei. In conjunction with her new role as Executive Director of the Association Kris will continue working with Course Creators. Both Theresa and Len applaud Kris efforts, dedication and look forward to watching her grow even more in a new prominent national role.

Congratulations Kris & Welcome Aboard!

REEA serves the real estate education industry with information, training, webinars and national conferences. It’s members are located across all 50 states. You can find out more about REEA by clicking here or visiting REEA.Org. You can also check in on what the Association is currently doing in the area of education by connecting with them on the REEA Facebook Page.

Real Estate CE 3 Hrs. RE Legal Issues

What is going on in today’s financial world? There are several open cases of loan fraud pending in our jurisdiction. Do you have policies and procedures to keep you and your company from becoming a statistic? Know what activities and actions are getting your colleagues in hot water and know what you can do to avoid it.

Truth In Lending

Sponsored By: The Tucson Association of REALTORS®

Held At: 2445 N. Tucson Blvd., Tucson, Arizona

1:00 PM to 4:00 PM – Tuesday, October 16, 2012

On my recent tour of North Carolina I had the opportunity to finish a great book given to me by my dear friend, Marcie Roggow. Marcie, Thank YOU! Charles Duhigg’s book, The Power of Habit, Why We Do What We Do In Life and Business, will change the way you look at your business, your clients and most importantly yourself.

The book explains and explores the nature of habits and habit creation. Whether we realize it or not, habits are powerful things. They control most of what we do and why we do it. Learning how they operate and what can be done to change them is a worthwhile endeavor. The sections on how major businesses from Starbucks, to Alcoa to Target are full of well documented and practical approaches that allowed these businesses to succeed based on the habits of people that they either leveraged or changed.

Charles Duhigg is an investigative reporter for the New York Times. He is a winner of the National Academies of Sciences, National Journalism, and George Polk Awards, and was part of a team of finalists for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. he is a frequent contributor to This American Life, NPR, PBS Newshour, and Frontline. A graduate of Harvard Business School and Yale College, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two kids.

If you are into education you will find some fascinating reading in the section which deals with the habit of Success at Starbucks and what companies such as that have done to create training that actually teaches people greater skills in areas such as willpower, discipline and other life skills that are hard to come by but absolutely hard to come by in the world of education. It will make you wonder what types of education we are missing that are key ingredients for success in any industry such as relationship building, time management and how to cope with stress and distractions. Fascinating I tell you, simply fascinating.

One of the great assets of the book is the Appendix entitled A Reader’s Guide to Using These Ideas. It is a framework for understanding how habits work and a guide to experimenting with how they might change. It is laid out in an easy to follow and implement step by step approach.

You can find the book in all of the major bookstores, on Amazon and just about anywhere else. We should all read it. If you would like more information you can find out more with a simple Google search, or better yet, just visit Mr. Duhigg’s website.