DRE Continuing Education Courses

  It's Not Easy Being a Top Agent!

To the typical homebuyer, the title "real estate agent" has many meanings: neighborhood tour guide, financial counselor, legal guardian, defect detector, structural specialist, and hazard expert, not to mention friend, confidant, and shrink. Too often, though, when undisclosed hazards are discovered after the sale -- and the unhappy buyer looks for someone to sue -- the title means "insurance company of last resort."

Protecting yourself from nondisclosure liability is a fulltime job in the real estate business. Fortunately, there is DRE-approved continuing education to help you do it.

JCP-LGS is a leading provider of DRE-approved courses in the disclosure industry. Our current offerings include the following courses:

CALIFORNIA COURSES

Natural Hazard Disclosures: The Issues and Requirements

For the past decade, JCP-LGS has offered this very successful natural hazard disclosure course in California. It grew out of concerns in the real estate community over the state's passage of a law mandating a broad spectrum of seller disclosures.

Brokers and agents must be aware of disclosure obligations and keep up-to-date on new disclosure requirements. As licensees of California you have addition obligations when it comes to disclosing natural hazards that might affect a property. Consumer lawsuits against agents over non-disclosure prompted the state government to increase the mandated natural hazard disclosure obligations of real estate licensees in 1998. This DRE course is designed to satisfy these needs of the real estate professional. (2 hours)

Property Tax and Assessment Disclosure Requirements in California Real Estate Transactions

This course provides an overview of California’s property tax and assessment system. Upon completion of the course, the agent will understand the difference between "Ad Valorem" property taxes and "special assessments", learn the current disclosure requirements relating to property taxes and special assessments, and identify why these disclosure requirements are important. (1 hour)

RESPA: The Real Property Hazard for the 21st Century

The Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act -- or "RESPA" -- is a Federal law enacted in 1974 that regulates the actions of lenders, real estate agents, and other service providers in a real estate transaction. It is enforced by HUD and protects consumers from abuses during the residential real estate purchase by requiring lenders and agents to disclose all settlement costs, practices, and relationships. It's complicated. And because RESPA is poorly understood by many real estate agents it's often ignored by them -- increasingly at the peril.

In recent years, the real estate industry has come under HUD's increased scrutiny for RESPA violations. In May 2007 HUD filed the first lawsuit ever that targeted real estate brokers and a hazard disclosure company, over "illigitimate profits" generated by "sham" joint ventures.

Our RESPA course, presented by the legal counsel of First American Financial, educates brokers and agents about this growing threat to affiliated business relationships between real estate services. (2 hours)