Greetings from Austin. We are just on the other side of another Commission meeting and participation in Texas REALTORS Winter Meeting. I love that these two events occur at the same time in Austin so that attendees of the Winter Meeting can also attend the Commission meeting (and receive CE credit). And with Texas REALTORS as TREC's largest stakeholder group, participating in Winter Meeting is a wonderful opportunity to be with license holders. We talked about wholesaling, risk reduction/enforcement, education, and provided a TREC update to the Board of Directors. I am grateful for every opportunity to be with our license holder communities, and this was no exception.

Throughout the last few months, and even at the most recent Commission meeting, broker supervision has come up as a topic of conversation in various forms, but primarily, it’s about sales agents who are not properly supervised by their brokers. This concern is often raised by a broker or agent on the other side of a real estate transaction. The Broker Responsibility Working Group (BRWG) and Education Standards Advisory Committee (ESAC) are each looking at aspects of this—potentially increasing the number of transactions a broker needs to sign off on and identifying qualifying and continuing education opportunities to educate brokers and agents about their responsibilities. As so many new agents join the professional community, equipping them with resources and supporting them is imperative. We will look for avenues to raise the bar from a regulatory and educational standpoint.

But I also want all license holders to share in the responsibility to raise the bar. When you see problematic conduct of a fellow license holder, file a complaint. TREC is a complaint-based enforcement agency. We do not have investigators in the field looking for the bad actors. We rely on complaints to issue discipline. We rely on you.

I have heard many say, "I can't file a complaint. I need to work with these people again!: If that is true for you, I challenge you to come alongside those who need guidance and provide it. Kindly correct. Or call their broker. Do what it takes to change that type of conduct. The responsibility to raise the bar lies with us all—TREC does so from a regulatory standpoint. But each of you can do so as well.

You can expect more to come on this topic in the coming months. I look forward to finding solutions and for each of you to be part of the conversation.