The Alabama Real Estate Commission convened for its September meeting last Thursday. Several commissioners were out on excused absences including Jim Dye and Emmette Barran. The meeting marked the final one for Cerita Tucker Smith, whose term representing Alabama’s 7^th Congressional District expires at the end of the month. Earlier this year Juanita Taggert Jones was appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate to fill the seat. Continue reading for highlights from the meeting.

Active and inactive salesperson, associate broker, qualifying broker and company licenses must be renewed by September 30 to prevent a lapse of the license. At the meeting, commissioners learned that around 8000 individuals had not renewed by August 30, and, if renewed in September, will pay a late fee of $150. AREC’s article on renewal, including the few exceptions, can be found here. 

One case of an invalid e-payment revealed an interesting detail about the electronic payment process. As you may know, AREC allows electronic payments for the various fees a licensee may pay the commission. In many meetings, license law violations are brought for rejected payments. In the situation heard last week, the licensee used cut and paste directly from the licensee’s online banking account to enter the banking and routing numbers. However, the system inserted an extra zero, and the payment was rejected. 

Commissioners voted that the licensee was not guilty of violating license law, but it is important to note that one should be careful not to rely on cut and paste. Also, the licensee contacted the payment system (Alabama Interactive) to determine what went wrong, allowing the licensee to find the evidence to explain the situation and be found not guilty. 

Another commission meeting, another case of poor trust account practices. Whenever your brokerage has trust accounts, it is extremely important to institute good accounting practices, including close attention by the qualifying broker and, when feasible, independent review by an accountant or firm. 

In the case before the commission, the qualifying broker of a property management company failed to identify shortages in several trust accounts. The broker testified that an employee had stolen funds and that several journal entries had been entered accidentally. The broker did not notice the shortages until AREC staff conducted an audit. The broker and the company were found guilty and fined $1000 each, and commissioners requested an additional audit of the company’s accounts. 

The next meeting of the commission will be held on October 24 in Auburn, followed by the last meeting of 2024 on November 21 in Montgomery.