Evaluating the Professionalization of Real Estate Agents Paper Example

Introduction

Research in professional regulation across Canada depicts that the state holds massive power in regulating professions and there exists a sizable gap in this area for the professions to support and collaborate with the government to actualize responsible regulation in professions. However, there has been a progressive change in the relationship between the state and professions over the last two decades characterized by setting up more regulatory measures by the state for various professions (Adams, 2009). Professions have also been viewed to have independence and influence and the ability of the state to recognize this relationship has fostered the growth of professionalization in the country. Although the state has recognized the importance of professions, it has not been interested in formalizing their existence by implementing legislation to this effect. This has left various professionals including engineers, lawyers, doctors, accountants, and other practitioners to make sustained efforts to obtain favorable piecemeal laws from the provincial administrations in order to satisfy their quest for self-regulation (Adams, 2009). They have mostly been efforts in futility due to the divisions existing between different professional bodies due to their different philosophies and training backgrounds.

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The professionals described above have experienced difficulties in obtaining favorable legislation through acts of parliament to set up professional bodies for their various careers. The real estate as a profession can take advantage of massive opportunities to achieve an effective regulatory framework in the face of a number of drawbacks in their quest to subject themselves to either self-regulation or state regulation. There are several advantages of adopting either self-regulation or state regulation approach in attempting to exercise control over the real estate profession.

Merits of Real Estate Self-Regulated Profession

Real estate agents should be self-regulated in order to limit frequencies of gross misconduct and scandal occurrences as compared to regulations instituted by the state. The professional bodies may be able to put forward standards that should be followed by different professional bodies, failure to which the affected member stands to face commensurate punitive actions that have been widely agreed in the real estate professional circles (Brockman, 2004). Sexual misconduct, for instance, can be prevented and punished through institutions created by the real estate profession. The women in the Legal profession, which is a subcommittee of the Law Society, for instance, recommended that discrimination in employment based on sex in employment and sexual harassment to be considered as a misconduct in the legal profession (Brockman, 2004). Real estate industry, just as any other profession, is prone to such vices and real estate self-regulation is a very sure way to counter and minimize these vices compared to state regulation.

Self-regulating organizations (SROs) should be more empowered in the real estate profession because they would be able to enforce standards in the profession to members that would otherwise not be enforced by the state (Brockman, 1990). This is because the real estate profession has access to privileged information, resources, and research data that they may use to observe trends that may be having negative impacts on the profession and institute punitive measures. Some of these trends are quite spread out that they cannot be easily discovered by state agencies for regulation for enforcement of punitive measures. With all the above resources at the disposal of the real estate SROs, they are able to scrutinize and explore a wide range of behavioral characteristics in the profession and place a higher standard of adherence by the members as compared to if the state was charged with this responsibility.

Self-regulation in the real estate industry is the best approach to ensure adequate monitoring of the real estate practitioners' behavior and instituting preventive mechanisms through offering continuing education and repeat-training programs that are specifically aimed at preventing future cases of misconduct in the profession (Brockman, 1997). Intra-industry training and education are important in the real estate industry due to the dynamic and ever-changing nature of the profession. Having the profession regulate itself is a source of innovation both structurally and regarding the marketing strategies because state regulation tends to disregard the need for freedom in harboring innovation. Innovation and education are two critical tools to ensure the improvement of the existing systems to respond to the new changes in the profession and initiating new changes too.

Self-regulation is the best approach to check the activities of private and self-employed real estate practitioners who are under particular investigative processes. Real estate being a capitalistic profession possess a particular problem with the presence of salaried professionals who can be suspended on full pay. The self-regulating real estate approach is able to limit the activities of these professionals by suspending their certificates to only allow them to practice in an employee capacity to limit their wayward behavior to a relatively small extent and access to the client's resources (Middleton, 2005). The real estate self-regulated approach will be better placed to execute these checks than the state agencies because they have ample access to resources necessary to perform these tasks including the professional networks and the profession's knowledge. These checks, however, are exercised with lower expectations of proof as compared to the real estate practitioners who will be facing disciplinary actions.

Self-regulation of the real estate profession is the best way to ensure that the industry remains autonomous and push away any kind of interference from the state or other professions (Adams, 2009). This will not be an exclusive occurrence but it will just be following the course set by other professions including medicine, accounting, engineering, and law. This is important in ensuring that the real estate profession makes decisions that are advancing the interests of its members. Independence of the profession also comes with the more responsibility on the members' part especially in the area of ensuring the profession's financial stability which is mostly achieved through a system of regular remittances to the profession in the name of membership or subscription fees. McLeod asserts that the use of self-regulation for professions cannot be doubted to have served effectively to provide and promote competence in the industry. This would be critical in ensuring full participation of the real estate profession members into the activities of their profession. State regulation would ensure that the real estate professional would remain dependent on the government's goodwill for its advancement. This is very dangerous to the real estate profession which would be in for a progressive death.

The real estate profession should be allowed to be self-regulating because this approach is more flexible and adaptable than regulation by the state. The institution of self-regulation by the real estate professional would stand a higher chance of achieving higher compliance levels as compared to a profession regulated by the state. This too is due to the higher chance of the members of the real estate profession to buy into the self-regulatory ideology than state regulation due to their ability to enforce the required ethical standards to the profession. The international competition also needs self-regulation in order to avoid the bureaucracies that come with conforming to different countries' regulations of the real estate industry that may be very distinct from one another. The flexibility of real estate self-regulation approach is also manifested in the service timelines of their professional services which are very elastic and is open to adaptation to the consumers' schedules. This is contrary to the state regulatory approach which is mostly rigid and can only fit within the prescribed timelines according to the state's schedules.

Self-regulation of the real estate profession should be encouraged because it promotes and protects the culture of whistle-blowing in the profession which ensures ample checks within the practitioners themselves. Whistle-blowing is a long-standing practice that is a very critical aspect of self-regulation. In the legal profession, for instance, Chapter 13, Rule 1 of the law society states that a lawyer will report another lawyer's breach of undertakings not consented to by the recipient of the undertakings among other incidences and this in effect maintains the honor and dignity of the profession (Brockman, 2004). Whistle-blowing can be very important in the real estate industry especially due to the financial stakes that are involved in it attracting financial misconduct from wayward practitioners in the industry. Mitigation of this vice in this profession can heavily gain from this whistleblowing especially with the placement of strategic platforms and mechanisms for the whistle-blowers to ventilate without blowing their cover for those who want to remain secretive. Whistle-blowing should, however, be moderated and be exercised with key reference to particular boundaries in order to ensure that professional integrity is maintained without seriously severing one's personal links with their colleagues.

Friedson, in defense of the status of self-regulation status in professions, argues that the regulation of work by an occupation is the third tool for analysis in the examination of the control of works and services. The first tool is the free labor market which is reliant on marketplace competition and consumer choice to direct work. The second tool is the rational-legal bureaucracy reliant on work controlled by managers (Brockman, 2004). This privileged position could, however, be eroded by the vested economic interests of the real estate profession and failure to perform regular quality assurance exercises on its members. This goes a long way in affirming the claims of self-regulation suffering from the phenomena of consumerism and managerialism. He further believes that a mix of the three logical tools coupled with appropriate policy direction to adequately utilize the resources at the disposal of the real estate profession are critical in evaluating work output and the quality of the services rendered

Self-regulated real estate profession is most likely to conform to the existing statutory provisions which are largely oriented to self-regulation. This implies that most of the control functions of these institutions have been delegated to the real estate SROs by the state with very minimal oversight to them (Brockman, 2014). This, therefore, dictates that the government gives general guidelines that the real estate SROs are to be followed in their establishment and operation in order for the SROs' conformity process to be coherent. In occasions where there is a regulation for the establishment of real estate SROs, there is a presence of a passive political goodwill and recognition of the importance of the self-regulated organization's existence and mandate. This provides a very fertile ground for the real estate SROs to thrive in terms of recruitment of members and delivery of services to the general public due to the resultant view of the self-regulatory bodies as credible and institutions that can be trusted with members' resources (Strober, Strober, & Strober, 2009).

Self-regulation of the real estate profession is the best approach to instilling and maintaining institutiona...