Arkansas Best Practices in Real Estate Cooperative Brokerages

This elective course on Arkansas cooperative brokerages fulfills 3 of the required 7 hours of annual continuing education for real estate licensees in Arkansas. This course reviews many aspects of cooperative brokerages, from the use of single agency to the difference between referral fees and cooperative commission splits.

This course will look at the following topics:

• Agency and disclosure
• Compensation in cooperative transactions
• The MLS
• Open house policies
• The cooperative transaction process
• Referral fees

We begin the course with an overview of agency, and a look at the different types of agency available in Arkansas. Students will understand why single agency is used for cooperative transactions, and the requirements for disclosing those agency relationships to the other parties of a transaction.

Next, students will learn about how compensation is split between cooperating licensees, and how the cooperative commission agreement is set up. This is further reviewed in the section on the MLS, where we examine the National Association of REALTORS® MLS model rules and the history of the MLS.

The next section discusses open house policies that hosts must adhere to. These center around the necessity for disclosure of agency relationships and inquiries of other visitors' current representation status.

Students then get to see these segments brought together in the cooperative transaction process. Here, we also reiterate the need for cooperating licensees to respect the other party's agency agreement and to treat all parties with courtesy and respect. The course ends with a quick look at referral fees, and the differences between this type of payment and cooperative commission splits.

This course includes three incremental quizzes, consisting of 10 questions each, placed throughout the course. These are included to ensure that students fully grasp the concepts they've just been taught.