It’s a Question of Knowing the Rules
Posted on April 26th, 2008 by Jonathan Dalton
Yesterday was a first in my youth soccer coaching career. A handball was called against an opposing player and my team was awarded a free kick, which about 90 seconds later was converted into a goal.
“Timeout!” yelled the other coach, stomping onto the field. “I have an issue.” (I tend to think she had more than one issue, if you know what I mean, but I digress.)
Her argument was her player shouldn’t have been whistled for stopping the ball with her elbow. Alllllrighty then.
Later in the game we had a goal kick and I elected to have someone other than the goalie, my daughter, take the kick. “You can’t do that!” the coach screams. “It’s a goalie kick.”
Except it’s not a “goalie kick.” It’s a “goal kick” and anyone can take one. It’s even in the rules, somewhere or another. (I suggested she Google them after the game.)
This is my ninth season as a soccer coach for the YMCA. I give all the credit in the world to someone willing to volunteer their time to coach a group of kids, most strangers, and try to enrich their lives.
But getting a T-shirt that says “YMCA Coach” doesn’t really make you a soccer coach - not if you don’t know the rules.
Likewise, getting a real estate license doesn’t really make you a real estate professional - you’re not if you don’t know the rules. And the rules involve more than calculating what your commission will be based on the co-broke in the MLS.
The rules involve knowing the contract - not just knowing of it, but knowing the contract backward and forward to the point that your client won’t be disadvantaged when you run into an agent who really does know the contract.
The rules involve knowing the local MLS rules. There was a long debate in my office on Thursday about the best way of avoiding short sales in the local MLS (at the instruction of a buyer, of course.) One agent suggested a search for listings without “short sale” in the agent remarks. Which is fine, except agents aren’t required to use the words short sale anywhere in the listing.
Agents are required to mark the “Lender/Corp Approval Required” field. Not that all do. In 90 listings last week I found two dozen violations.
(Another agent argued that you may lose REOs - bank owned homes - if you exclude the Lender/Corp Approval Required field because some listings agents mark that field for these properties as well. Those agents are doing their client a disservice since there’s a separate field for Lender Owned Properties.)
None of us come out of real estate school knowing all there is to know. For all of us, there is a constant educational curve. Assuming, that is, we choose to pay attention to such things.
For many, a license is enough and the rules of the road aren’t too important, at least until they are. Just like not knowing that there’s no such thing as a “goalie kick” isn’t all that important until it becomes so.
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Unforntunately, a great number of realtors play with their elbows up hoping they don’t get hit and give their brains a shakeup. Such bliss can only be imagined. In the interim those who make the effort to learn have to deal with incompetence.