Professional Real Estate Designations

I have noticed the string of initials after your name. What do the initials mean? Should we only work with a real estate professional with designations?

While it is not necessary to have these designations for a broker to be a true professional, they almost guarantee that he or she is one. All of the professional designations that I have represent a very rigorous course of study, exams, and usually a demonstration of many years of experience and volume.

The Master of Corporate Real Estate (MCR) is granted by Corenet International, a worldwide organization of corporate real estate executives. The coursework has a strong financial component, which emphasizes the critical need for understanding corporate real estate’s linkage to the corporate bottom line. Strategic approaches are presented in portfolio management, aligning real estate to business strategy, outsourcing and partnering, technology and workplace strategy. To complete the MCR designation I took 100 hours of classroom instruction and five exams, followed by a one-week long “capstone” course given at MIT.

A Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM) is a recognized expert in the disciplines of commercial and investment property. The CCIM curriculum consists of four core courses (160 hours of instruction) that incorporate the essential CCIM skill sets: financial analysis, market analysis, user decision analysis, and investment analysis for commercial investment real estate. Additional curriculum requirements may be completed through CCIM elective courses, transfer credit for graduate education or professional recognition, and qualifying non-CCIM education. Following the course work, candidates must submit a resume of closed transactions and/or consultations showing a depth of experience in the commercial investment field (mine was nearly 2 inches thick and demonstrated with executive summaries and a case study over $30 million in property transactions.) After fulfilling these requirements, candidates must successfully complete a comprehensive, day-long examination to earn the CCIM designation. Only 6 percent of the estimated 125,000 commercial practitioners nationwide hold the CCIM designation.

The SIOR designation is certified by the The Society of Industrial and Office REALTORS,© the leading professional commercial and industrial REALTORS,© association. SIOR has certified almost 2,500 practitioners (again, a very small percentage of the total practitioners nationwide) with the prestigious SIOR designation, a professional symbol of the highest level of knowledge, production, and ethics in the real estate industry. This designation also requires rigorous course work, as well as a demonstrated volume of business. Last year, SIOR members reported an average per person dollar volume of $25.7 million.

Are you working with a true professional? One way that you know for sure is his or her attainment of professional designations, attesting to both their commitment to professional education, as well as the very highest levels of performance in the commercial real estate industry.

Australian Property Inspection

The Property inspection is designed to give the real estate agent or prospective purchaser a system to detect some of the readily accessible major flaws or deficiencies in the significant components and systems of a home. It is not designed to, nor does it profess to facilitate detection of all flaws, problems or occurrences that might exist in any given home.

To maximize time efficiency and to ensure all of the major sections of the home are take into consideration, we have developed a systematized approach to the inspection. This is a simplified overview of systems that professional home inspectors use when they are inspecting a home.

On the interior, begin your inspection in the basement and then follow the system throughout each floor in the house. The system for inspecting the interior is to begin with the floor, go to the walls and then the ceiling, and then consider any appliances or other items in the room. Move from room to room, always in the same direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise) so as to not miss any areas. If you see a door, open it!

Some homes may not have any noticeable evidence of termite infestation. Due to the cameras ability to see variances in temperature, it allows technicians to accurately identify potential and immediate problems that you may have missed if you were conducting a traditional pest inspection. Surface temperatures are changed by pests and living organisms in an area of your home. This technology means the problem areas can be pinpointed without the need of demolishing the structure of the home. An advantage of the thermal imaging camera is that it doesn’t limit the inspection to areas that are accessible. Areas that are hard to reach can be easily scanned with the thermal camera. This method cannot detect activity behind the walls and under the floors without demolishing parts of the house. However, a thermal pest inspection detects termite activity in the wall cavities by using a thermal camera. Thermal pest inspections cameras are now becoming more popular as the process is less intrusive than the traditional method and it is now becoming more affordable. Real Estate Murcia