What sounds reasonable in conversation can get you in trouble in the real world.
I just renewed my real estate license.
I wasn’t looking forward to the mandatory continuing education classes. Thankfully it turned out I wasn’t due to take any this time.
But it did get me thinking about all the classes I’ve taken in the past.
I’m old enough that when I started in this business, the internet technically existed but wasn’t really part of everyday life yet. So the classes were in person.
A memory from one of them came back to me after writing last week about staying in your lane.
The thing about real estate licensing classes is they are designed for the average agent. And since most agents end up working in residential, that’s what almost everything revolves around.
Most of the coursework is designed to teach you what not to say so you don’t get sued later.
Which is useful as far as it goes.
As for learning how to become a successful broker, I’d say the value is more questionable. You’d probably learn at least as much reading this blog for a few months.
Especially if you understand the importance of reading between the lines.
But anyway.
Almost the entire course was geared toward houses.
Contracts, disclosures, house valuations, common residential problems. Pretty boring if you already know that’s not the business you’re going to be in.
Out of about thirty hours they spent maybe fifteen minutes one day touching on land and commercial property.
Which was entertaining, although probably not for the reason they intended. Pretty much everything they said was backwards.
Maybe not backwards in a technical sense. More like simplified to the point that it stopped being true in the real world.
To a normal person, it would sound smart enough in conversation.
But if you actually applied it the way they described, you could get yourself or your client in trouble pretty quickly.
Luckily almost nobody else in that room was ever going to deal with serious land or commercial transactions anyway.
So no real harm done.
Did I say anything?
No.
It wasn’t worth turning a continuing education class into a debate. And I didn’t particularly feel like helping introduce the word “mansplaining” into the culture twenty years early.
But I remember thinking even then that it was another example of why specialization matters.
People assume broad familiarity is the same thing as expertise.
Usually it isn’t.
Especially in businesses where nuance is what keeps small mistakes from becoming expensive ones.
PS- Most landowners are not planning to sell today.
But things change. Markets change. Development pressure changes too.
That’s what the MBR Land Reality Check is for.
It looks at nearby sales, current competition, market direction, and the details affecting value that are easy to miss if you don’t spend time in the land business every day.
Is it a bad idea to know where things stand?
PPS- If you’re not ready for a Land Reality Check but enjoy reading about land, negotiation, markets, and how business actually works in the real world, you can sign up below and get future posts in your inbox.
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