Readers, please bear with me. I am going to explain something, but I promise there's a point worth sticking around to hear. I am going to explain how to upgrade the real estate education industry in a way that gets people excited to be involved.
For years, I've been training realtors, and when I do, one of the things we work on is writing personal bios. In this exercise, I ask realtors to list the credentials they have. All too often, a realtor responds with a little shame and slumped shoulders. They say they have no education.
Then I ask the next question. Can you please detail the real estate training you have attended? And that's where the conversation changes. The list becomes very long and very detailed.
Our industry is a lot of things. Realtors are complex and nuanced. But the one thing we are pretty consistent about is our commitment to be good at the job. We understand that we are working with people's life savings and that this role matters deeply.
This is why the average realtor spends a shocking amount of time in training. Not in the traditional sense—they aren't attending university or credentialed programs. They are attending specialized workshops and training sessions. They are studying contracts, market trends, disclosure obligations, technology platforms, negotiation, and regional development issues.
And all of this represents an enormous opportunity. There is room here to rethink how we recognize and accredit the work our realtors are already doing.
Right now, we require PDP training. And in response to industry calls for better credentialing, the BCREA introduced what has been described as a "gamification" model—a points-based system designed to encourage participation.
I want to be direct about this: spending time learning how to do your job well is NOT a game.
Realtors who dedicate hours, weekends, and their own money to professional development deserve to have that recognized with dignity. Not with badges that feel like a loyalty program. Not with a leaderboard. With real, meaningful credentials that communicate to the public what realtors have actually accomplished.
What if instead we had LinkedIn and embeddable badges showing completion of specific courses? What if there were certificates of completion issued when realtors completed a defined number of classes in a specialization? What if those credentials could be displayed on Realtor.ca where the public could actually see them?
Strata property specialist. Land development fundamentals. Real estate technology certified. Negotiation and communication. Valuation studies. All designations that could communicate to the public that we care. That we woke up early, spent time and money learning how to serve the greater good.
This type of recognition would go a long way toward communicating to the public how hard realtors actually work to serve them. It would introduce a new competitive dimension based on competence. It would give consumers a meaningful way to evaluate who they are trusting with the most significant financial decision of their lives.
Professional education is not a game. It is a choice. It is a decision to allocate scarce time and resources toward becoming better at a job that matters deeply to the people we serve.
That deserves to be treated with dignity.
I would love to see a program like this take hold—not only at the provincial level with Greater Vancouver REALTORS® overseeing two-thirds of the realtors in BC, but on the national level at The Canadian Real Estate Association | L'Association canadienne de l'immobilier.
Realtors work hard to serve the public. It's time the industry gave them the language to say so.