NY Real Estate Continuing Education 22.5 Credit 

License Renewal Course Package 

On 9/20/16 the NYS Board of Real Estate continued its mission of optimizing the regulation of real estate brokers in our state by holding its meeting in NYC and Albany. To remind real estate brokers and salespersons, the public is welcome at these meetings where the public can bring comments from the floor. It's encouraged that Lieb School students attend these meetings to have your voices heard. 

"[T]he Board has general authority to promulgate rules and regulations affecting real estate brokers and salespersons in order to administer and effectuate the purposes of Article 12-A of the Real Property Law."

A complete video of the meeting is available on youtube.

In summary, the following was discussed:

1. The partnership between the Department of State and the Division of Human Rights to enforce fair housing laws; 
2. The new agency disclosure continuing education requirements as signed by the Governor into law earlier this month; 
3. Diversity being an approved topic for continuing education;
4. Notice of regulatory changes for the following topics will appear on the state register for 45 day comment period on 9/28/16: 19 NYCRR 175.1 (escrow and how much time can be held before deposited), 19 NYCRR 175.7 (consent of parties), 19 NYCRR 176.3 (license safety course and reduction in hours to property insurance course), 19 NYCRR 177.3 (allows training modules to be 1 hour rather than 3), 19 NYCRR 177.7 (allows the computating the computation from 60 to 50 minutes), and 19 NYCRR 175.25 (advertisements of business cards that license type be listed as a clarification); and
5. Changing point allocation for acting as listing agent and selling agent.

This past Friday, the NYS Department of State provided an Opinion Letter stating that the use of corporate titles by real estate agents, who do not actually hold such related authority, is misleading and impermissible.

On Friday evening attorneys and senior management at brokerage houses throughout the State were scrambling to address this issue immediately as many companies give out titles based upon agent's earnings as a reward as opposed to an implied authority and the companies needed to have a plan of action to address this change of understanding of Real Estate License Law.

Somehow the news got a hold of this Opinion Letter and now it is flying around at a rampant pace. So, what you should know is that your company can no longer permit you to utilize titles such as President, Vice President, Senior Vice President, Chairman, Vice Chairman, Managing Member, Director, Managing Director or anything else that is contained in the Business Corporation Law or Limited Liability Company Law as a term that implies authority. Instead, companies need to utilize titles without any correlated authority that does not exist.

Some articles flying around are:

The Real Deal - Brokers with false titles must now toe the line, regulators say
The Wall Street Journal - Titles Could Change for Some Real-Estate Brokers

Yet, there is no need to read the news, instead read the Opinion Letter for yourselves and understand why your companies are doing what they have to.