California takes on the alphabet soup of real estate designations.

An article by Bob Hunt in yesterday’s RealtyTimes was written about the California Department of Real Estate (the DRE) taking on the issue of all of the recent designations, which are mostly for marketing purposes, of so-called experts and even certified experts or specialist in such things as short sales or foreclosures. The DRE is apparently concerned, and rightfully so, that many of these advertisements are misleading and involve agents who have done little more than pay to attend some class somewhere (usually for a day or less) and have then begun portraying themselves as somehow now being experts at handling distressed home sales. One has only to read the advertising that agents use on Webs sites and in blogs to see what the DRE is concerned about.

There are real estate related fields in which one can become trained and claim some level of unique expertise; however, the legitimate one usually require much more training and may even require a period of supervised apprenticeship. Most of these distressed property designations require nothing more than a few dollar and a few hours of the agent’s time. At that point one can say, “Yesterday I didn’t know what a Distressed Property Expert was, now I are one.” Good for the California DRE for taking on this issue.

There are certainly lots of designations that one can earn as a Realtor that are worthwhile and meaningful and most of them are sanctioned by NAR. Then there are all of these little specialty designations which really just represent some entrepreneur’s idea for making money from Realtors. Too many of these are just sham designations that represent no particular skill or expertise and certainly no experience, just a willingness to pay the going rate and spend a few hours in class, in order to use the impressive sounding letters after your name.

The RealtyTimes article contained a few of the questions that potential clients should ask, such as, “ So, tell me, Mr. expert, how many of these distressed property sales have you done? And, how many were you successful at?” “What kind of test did you have to pass or apprenticeship did you have to serve to earn this designation?” “What makes you a n expert or specialist in this type of sale?” The RealtyTimes article points out that there is apparently a 12 question list that the DRE has put out. Let’s face it, 80-90 percent of the folks running around touting these credentials in their ads couldn’t pass the muster of 4-5 of these questions, much less all 12.

So why do it? Why try to pass yourself off as something that you’re not? Well it is good advertising and, after all, agents using these designations know that most potential clients wouldn’t know about the 12 questions, so why not go for it? The “why not” is that it’s basically dishonest. You’re not an expert or a specialist because you paid your $99 and took the three hour course. You’re just a fake. And that’s what the DRE is saying. Many so called “Experts” and “Specialist” and “Certified Distressed Property Salespeople” are just part of the larger fraud being foisted on a trusting and unsuspecting public. Eventually this will come back to haunt the so-called experts when they get their day in court to try to explain how they lead some clients so horribly astray due to advice based upon their certified “expertise.”