Understanding Real Estate Agents’ Certifications
While a bit confusing at first, those three or four letters form an alphabet soup that can make home buying or selling a much healthier experience. For instance, CRS stands for Council of Residential Specialists, indicating the holder focuses on the buying and selling of residential properties.
Nor are the letters merely handed out to anyone who asks. Each designation involves a lot of classroom time, test taking, and practical knowledge says Ann Pettijohn, current President of the California Association of Realtors.
“For instance, SRES, which is the Seniors Real Estate Specialist, is for people who want to have additional knowledge working with seniors. Often, senior citizens have not sold a home in a long time, so there are many things someone with the SRES designation would focus on, from the many disclosures now required to the amount of deposits. They study for the designation to help educate the senior seller,” she explains.
Pettijohn is not merely preaching what she doesn’t practice, either. With a GRI designation herself (Graduate Realtors Institute, the highest professional standing for a residential realtor), she is also considering other certifications as well. “It really opened my eyes to some things I didn’t know before,” she notes, adding it took a regular six to eight months of coursework.
“It increases your professionalism,” she says, adding, “None of these are mandated. All of the designations are in addition to the required coursework every realtor must undergo every four years to maintain their license,” she explains.
Currently, Pettijohn is considering an additional designation, CRE, or Counselor of Real Estate. While coveted, the designation is not easy to obtain, and there are currently only 1,000 holders of the designation throughout the world.
But any additional work is well worth it. Just ask Don Dunning, of Wells & Bennett Realtors in Oakland, and a lecturer and writer on real estate topics. In addition to holding a CRS designation, Dunning also holds CRB (Certified Real Estate Broker, a certification for the broker, or owner, of a real estate agency) and ABR (Accredited Buyer Representative, for those specializing in representing buyers) designations. “Getting a designation requires both experience and training. It increases both knowledge and professionalism,” he says.
As the current president of the Oakland Association of Realtors, Dunning is working to encourage more agents to obtain designations, so he and the other officers are planning a Designation Awareness Day for later this year.
Likewise, Art Godi also realizes the importance of such designations. The Stockton-based agent not only holds the CIPS (Certified International Property Specialist), CRB, CRS, and GRI designations, but he has developed and taught much of the coursework. A former president of both the California Association of Realtors and National Association of Realtors, Godi has taught throughout the US, as well as in Russia and Eastern Europe.
To put it mildly, he knows the value of such designations very well. “I have four of them because they are tremendously valuable,” he says. “They indicate a couple of things to the homeowner looking to buy or sell. This is someone who has taken the time to try and be better educated, to raise their own level of performance. It also indicates this is someone committed to their profession. They’re here to stay, not fly by night. And, they have a higher level of expertise in their specialty.”
Godi says the additional networking opportunities for those holding such designations provides additional benefits to both the agent and the agent’s clients. “There’s a tremendous referral network out there.”
To illustrate that point, Godi mentions a phone call he received just the other day from a real estate agent in San Francisco. She had a house in Stockton which needed to be sold, and found Godi by looking for the CRB and CRS designations in the National Association of Realtors’ directory, which is online at www.realtor.org. “We work mostly by referral,” Godi adds, indicating the importance such a designation holds when establishing credibility.
