Wednesday, March 19, 2008

What is a CRS?

Within the world of REALTORS®, we have initials after our names that probably confuse the public in general. You can see them on our business cards, our websites, etc. They look like:

Billy Bob Houseseller, REALTOR®, ARM, LEG, TOE, EAR, etc.

However, there are two of these designations that I would like to define clearly to my readers. The first is the broker designation. The general public recognizes that the broker designation carries more weight than an salesperson license. To qualify as a licensed broker in Texas, an agent must actively practice real estate for two or more years within the state. Further, they must attend 270 classroom hours of core real estate classes approved by the Texas Real Estate Commission (TREC requires this for the salesperson license) AND have an additional 630 hours of courses related to real estate logged and on file with the commission. If you are counting, that means they have spent 20 weeks in a classroom within a 2+ year practice! That is a great amount of training. Finally, the broker-candidate must successfully pass the state and national exams for the license.

The state recognizes a broker as not only able to practice real estate, but also able to manage other agents in the sales process. They are thus allowed to open their own brokerage or property management businesses. If you will note, I have taken the time to earn the broker designation and I believe it offers me the ability to be the best I can be for my clients! This has also allowed me to open a property management company for my real estate investment clients. We currently manage property under the business name of HBH Management.

The second designation I would like to make you familiar with is the CRS (Certified Residential Specialist) designation. This is also a training and experience-intensive designation. To qualify for my CRS designation, I had to present proof that I have worked in over 75 real estate transactions, had to attend several CRS-approved courses in buyer, seller and referral strategies and techniques. Finally, I had to present another designation that I hold from the National Association of REALTORS® (Graduate REALTOR® Institute - The Master's Degree in Real Estate). The CRS designation is held by less than 5% of the REALTORS® in the United States and is a prestigious award of which I am extremely proud. Out of 1.1 million REALTORS® in the USA, less than 50,000 care enough about the quality and professionalism that they offer to clients to spend the time and money to become a CRS. I DO care and hope that this will earn me the right to be your referral partner when friends, co-workers and relatives need a REALTOR®!

If my team and I can assist you today in any of the following, give us a call:

  1. Home buying (new or resale).
  2. Home sales.
  3. Trade-up / trade-down.
  4. Real estate investing.
  5. Commercial properties or Farm & Ranch.
  6. Leasing and management.

You can learn all about what we do for our clients as well as a great wealth of information about real estate and the Austin, TX area by checking out our websites at:

Or you can call our offices at (512) 439-3772 or toll-free at (877) 268-1877. We look forward to hearing from you. As always, the highest complement we ever receive is the referral of your friends, customers, co-workers and family. They will always get "World-class service with a Home Town feel" from us at The HBH Group.

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