Green Real Estate Certification Available

Promoting green building can be “extremely profitable” for real-estate professionals, according to one educational company, illustrating a trend in a market reeling from the subprime-mortage crisis.

Tampa-based Green Real Estate Education, a company that hosts courses for real estate agents, house inspectors, mortgage officers, and appraisers, is now offering a three-hour green building course that fulfills continuing education requirements for real estate licensees in numerous states. The course is intended to inform participants about green building materials and techniques, global climate issues, renewable energy, air quality, and marketing of green features, among other subjects.

Kerry Mitchell, Green Real Estate Education’s president, acknowledges that the course cannot be comprehensive: “I don’t think you can cover [the course’s topics] in three

days,” she said. Mitchell says the goal is to provide an overview, teaching real-estate professionals “how not to greenwash, not to call a house green if [the seller has] done one or two upgrades,” for example. She also hopes to train real estate agents to offer guidance on improving salability with green improvements. Those who complete the course—over 3,100 so far—may call themselves Green Certified Real Estate Professionals.