For those of you who have been following my twitter feed, you may have noticed that I’ve been working or some time on getting my CRS (Certified Residential Specialist) Designation. At long last, I was awarded the CRS designation a couple of days ago, making me the newest CRS in town. A lot of my colleagues think the CRS (and other Realtor designations) are all a bunch of hooey – of course, the people who think that are mostly the people who have never bothered to try and get any.
There are many fine Realtors out there without a designation to their name, of course. Nothing wrong with that. But if you’re looking for a Realtor and you know nothing else about them, it’s not a bad thing if they have a few of those designations – you may have seen ABR, CRS, SRES, and GRI, for example, following a Realtor’s name in their marketing material. This indicates that the Realtor at least strives to improve to offer a higher level of education and training than the average Realtor.
One thing good about the CRS Designation about most others is that it actually has some fairly stringent production requirements – that is, you must have actually sold some real estate in order to get this designation. So when you see that someone is a CRS, it’s a sign that they have at least been around the block a few times and they didn’t just fall jarringly and recently off the turnip truck.
One of the supposedly big benefits of being a CRS Designee is that if another CRS needs to refer business to a Realtor in a particular area, he (or she – apparently female CRS Designees outnumber males 2-to-1) can just look in the CRS Directory and find a qualified Realtor who, more likely than not, will serve their referral client well.
Thanks everyone, I hope you have a happy holidays!
Find your Place
