This week, I've been talking about real estate education at the national and provincial levels. Today I want to bring that conversation closer to home—down to where most real estate training actually happens.

At the brokerage level.

Brokerages are where realtors learn how to write contracts, communicate property details, process transactions, and develop the habits that define their careers. This training happens every day, delivered by industry veterans who have spent decades learning what works.

And yet it happens in a closed system. A realtor can spend dozens, hundreds, even thousands of hours learning from the best in the industry—and still have no meaningful way to communicate that training to the public or have it formally recognized.

Brokerages have been waiting for permission that may never come. So let me ask a different question: do brokerages actually need permission from a regional, provincial, or national body to recognize the completion of their own education programs?

Is there not an ability—at the franchise or brokerage level—to assess learning, issue certificates of completion, and give agents something they can display on their websites, their LinkedIn profiles, and their client communications?

I would argue there is. And I would argue that if brokerages organized and collaborated on this independently, that recognition would be meaningful and worthy.

There is also an opportunity to bring this to the national level. Our associations exist to serve us. They are funded by the fees we pay them. Providing tools that allow brokerages to adequately train their agents is not an unreasonable request—it is a fair one.

What would that look like in practice?

Courses in a box. A two-hour session with professionally developed slides and materials, written at a national or provincial level, that enables an industry veteran to deliver training with precision—without spending weeks building materials from scratch.

This is something that already exists in other industries. It is something I have done personally. I have courses written and available. Taylor & Francis, the publisher I work with, has entire divisions dedicated to exactly this model.

The instructor delivers. The brokerage reports completion. The agent gets a credential they can actually use.

This approach would allow our industry to move quickly. It would make training accessible to brokerages of every size. It would give realtors a way to communicate their expertise to the public. And it would make our industry meaningfully better without waiting years for a centralized system to catch up.

If you are interested in going deeper on this, I have written a book on real estate brokerage leadership. There is a chapter specifically dedicated to education design—how many people attend training sessions, what types of training programs you need, and how to build a program that actually works.

The tools exist. The expertise exists. The only thing missing is the decision to organize around it.

Are you ready to stop waiting for permission and start acting?

Looking for a place to start? Check out my book at: https://www.routledge.com/Leadership-in-Real-Estate-A-People-First-Approach-to-Brokerage-Recruitment-Retention-and-Team-Building/Penner/p/book/9781041158608