Real Estate Continuing Education: Rent Seeking or Improvement in Service Quality?

Massachusetts adopted a continuing education component to its licensing requirements for real estate agents in 1999. The Massachusetts Association of Realtors lobbied for this change claiming it would enhance the quality of service for the public. The paper's regression analysis fails to find any improvement in the quality of service as measured by complaints to the real estate licensing board. The paper does find that the adoption of continuing education reduced the number of licensed active agents by 39 to 58 percent and increased the income of those who remained by 11 to 17 percent.

Find the article at Palgrave Macmillan.