The National Association of REALTORS® has announced a new certificate course to help real estate professionals combat implicit bias. The course, “Bias Override: Overcoming Barriers to Fair Housing,” was featured during an interactive workshop held on the first day of the 2022 REALTORS® Legislative Meetings in National Harbor, Maryland. The session was led by Ron Phipps, NAR’s 2011 president, and Natalie Davis, 2022 chair-elect of the Colorado Association of REALTORS®.
The course is designed to help real estate professionals avoid fair housing pitfalls and provide equal professional service to every customer or client. Participants learn about the mind science of identity, study how implicit bias can result in fair housing violations and engage in interactive exercises to enhance communication skills with clients of all backgrounds.
“Bias Override” teaches REALTORS® how to:
- Understand the history of bias and discrimination in real estate
- Explain how implicit bias may result in violations of fair housing laws and industry ethics
- Identify interventions to prevent implicit bias, identity anxiety, and stereotype threat from influencing behavior
- Increase personal motivation to confront these phenomena in their business and community
“REALTORS® are committed to upholding fair housing laws and the Code of Ethics,” said 2022 NAR President Leslie Rouda Smith, a REALTOR® from Plano, Texas, and broker associate at Dave Perry-Miller Real Estate in Dallas. “However, our brains sometimes take shortcuts that can unknowingly lead us astray. This innovative certificate course helps participants recognize unconscious biases and how they impact interactions, ultimately enhancing professionalism and expanding business opportunities as we work to make homeownership accessible to all.”
The three-hour classroom course can be taken online or in-person and may qualify for continuing education credit in a member’s state.
To learn more about the course, click here.
