Leigh Thomas Brown warns that REALTORS who leave NAR won't be bound by its Code of Ethics anymore. He's pushing members to stay in the association and report unethical agents through official channels so the profession can police itself. His Code of Ethics class on May 23 counts toward continuing education in some states.
What's going to happen to the REALTOR® Code of Ethics in light of all of these settlements and the ongoing lawsuits? Well, here's the first thing you should know. Only REALTORS® are subject to the Code of Ethics. So, for all the members out there that are ready to burn everything to the ground and drop all their memberships, okay, you'll no longer be subject to the Code of Ethics. I don't know that that's good for us as a profession. I love that our profession is one that self-policizes. So if you believe that the professionalism needs to go up a notch, then you want to stay in the organization that's been fighting for that. And you got to fight harder for it. What does that look like, Leigh Thomas Brown? Huh, I'll tell you what that looks like. Funny enough, in all of the posts that I have done and that I have read, I've seen a lot of very frustrated people that didn't like their agent for this reason or that reason. One of those people was in my mentions on X, and I asked this person, I said, you mentioned that your agent was unethical, incompetent, broke all the rules, terrible, and just awful human. Did you turn them in? He said no. I said, you have to turn in a bad actor, otherwise the organization, the commissions, the world can't punish what we don't know about. We can't teach them a better way. We can't offer them an opportunity to make everything better. Because nobody knew about it except for this one grumpy consumer. And in fact, I didn't say it, but I wanted to. In all the time that we spent typing back and forth, he probably could have gone to the website and clicked on the button to submit a complaint. But y'all, if we're going to watch real estate go through some growing pains right now as it restructures and settles out, I think those of us that are all in for real estate are going to have to commit to not just talking about the Code of Ethics, but we're going to have to talk about enforcement of the Code of Ethics. And that means we have to get better educated on the Code of Ethics, because if you weren't aware, this is the year to renew. It's year 3 of our 3-year cycle. And National Code of Ethics Day, which is Leigh Thomas Brown's favorite project of the last several years, is coming up on May 23rd. Yes, you can get NAR credit for your ethics if your local association manages that. So have your local reach out to me. Your state might be providing it for the locals. Your state can go statewide. We have several states that do that, including North Carolina. Thank you, home state. Have your state reach out to me. If your brokerage wants to sponsor my livestream code of ethics class, talk to your local about how to set that up. And in some lucky states, including North Carolina, you can get continuing education for this livestream class while we talk about making the Code of Ethics stronger in 2024 than it's ever been and making each one of us a better professional REALTOR®. Think about this, y'all. You can't fix things if you run away from them. Decide, decide to be all in and do the hard things. And that includes how we hold each other to the standard that we have set to take care of our neighbors who might or might not be our clients one day, but will always be our neighbors. I'll see you around. If you need anything, click, click, comment. I'll see you.
