One of VAR’s committees deals with issues of risk management. VAR’s legal counsel, Lem Marshall, attends these meetings and the information is well worth a visit. This is not your ordinary committee meeting.
Issues:
- Liability protection for users of VAR Standard forms – VAR will offer legal support for authorized users who have legal issues arise. This support is availble at the “appeal” level. The Committee approved this and it now goes to the Board for final approval.
- Broker’s Toolkit – VAR has developed a Broker’s Toolkit to help brokers deal with issues like “how to start a firm”, Employee based taxes, bookkeeping, etc. This will be an on-line resource and will be updated and expanded often. It will be published on the VAR website as soon as the final clean-up and editing has been completed – timeline is by the end of the year.
- Stateline Barriers to Real Estate – VAR is studying the issues of doing business across statelines. MD, WV, and DC offer reciprocal licensing and Tennesee is agreeable, but NC is a problem. VAR is trying to negotiate with NC to make this situation better. Also, VAR is working to make it easier to invite commercial brokers to bring business to VA.
- Unlicensed Assistants – VAR has asked the VREB to give some guidance as to what an unlicensed can and can’t do. The committee decided not to wait and move forward with creating such guidance to present to the REB.
October 2, 2007 at 10:08 am
I am a professional business continuity planner who regularly deals with organizations to assess risk and develop mitigation strategies. While I am very pleased to know that the Virginia Association of Realtors is helping its members proactively identify risk, I was saddened to see that there was no mention of operational risk for protecting their businesses. Operational risks areas such as maintaining protected information, having a plan to deal with business disruptions (in and out of disasters), and security. If you do not include these areas of risk management, you are missing the mark.