Every so often a newspaper article appears that’s critical of the California Department of Real Estate’s record on enforcement against agents who are breaking the law or otherwise misbehaving.  Fortunately I don’t have any experience with that side of things, because I generally obey the law and don’t misbehave — at least not in a real estate sense.  (I’m fairly fond of sugary foods, if that counts).

I do however have experience dealing with the Department of Real Estate when I need something done that has to do with my license. I thought by way of setting expectations for those who might have something to complain to them about, I’d share one recent experience I had with them.

Several months ago I sent them a form to change the broker of record for my company, since the broker who was working for me left to go be a full time mom.  After about a month or so, they sent me a form asking for a corporate resolution saying basically what I said in the form, I wanted them to change the broker of record.  OK, fair enough, you like redundancy, do you?   Let’s be redundant.  So I sent them the corporate resolution, and a few weeks later I got the same form, saying they want the corporate resolution.  Apparently being only a little redundant wasn’t good enough, so they asked me for the resolution again, by way of being redundantly redundant.

Several weeks go by…

Now meantime, lots of the things I need to do as a broker are on hold because I’m not officially listed as broker of record.  For example, I can’t go in to our MLS and make changes to our listings, because the MLS takes the DRE’s word for it as to who the broker is.  In general that’s a good idea, because you need to know who’s who, but of course the effectiveness of that check relies on the assumption that the DRE keeps up-to-date records.  So I’m getting anxious to get this change done so I can get on with my work, so I call the DRE.

Wednesday morning.  Ring ring.  I talk to the computer and tell it I’m a licensee and my license number, and after a few minutes of mucking around with the computer I’m told my wait time will be one minute.  Then I get on the phone with a human being.

“Hello, I want my license changed.”  (This is the short form of the conversation, of course).

“Well, did you get the form asking you for a corporate resolution?”

“Yes, I got it, but I ignored the second one because I sent it to you the first time.”

“Well, we don’t have it.”

“You lost the corporate resolution?  OK, I’ll fax you a new one.  You should have a form asking for a change of address, too”.

“No we don’t have that, either.” (Now mind you, I KNOW they have that because the original broker of record form is the same form as the change of address form — the very same form that triggered them asking me for the  corporate resolution — which they also lost).

“OK, I’ll fax that, too.  Who do I speak to about it?”

“You ask for Mary in Business Licensing.”

So I go back to my desk and fax in the same stuff I sent them months ago, and a couple of hours later I call back and the computer tells me my wait time will now be 20 minutes, so I spend about 20 minutes on hold waiting to ask Mary if she got my fax or if somehow that managed to get lost, too.  Well, Mary’s not available, so meantime I’m trying to get someone in the department to help me with my month-old request to have someone do five minutes of work.  The person I get says the department manager can help me, and proceeds to transfer me.

Do I get the department manager?  No, of course not.  I get his voice mail, so I leave him a voice mail asking him to please get back to me, etc.

By now you probably guessed that he doesn’t get back to me, so I call Mary again, and after a sufficiently long hold time I learn  “Oh, Mary’s gone home for the day, can you call tomorrow?”

So the next day I call the guy who says he’s going to work with Mary on it for me and ask for him by name.  So I get the guy I get to go find Mary and hunt up an answer for me.

This is going to be good, I think.  She has the fax.  All’s well.  I’m going to get my five minutes of work done.  Hooray.

The Mary-finder returns to the phone, and tells me what Mary told him, which was that it takes two days to distribute the faxes and then about a week to do the work.

Yes, you heard right.  It takes two days for the Department of Real Estate to get a fax with the paperwork you sent them that they lost the first time, which was a restatement of the paperwork you already sent them, after which, if you’re lucky, a week later they can do five minutes of work for you.

Now, I’m not saying that if someone’s misbehaving you shouldn’t complain to the Department of Real Estate — that’s part of what they’re there for.  I’m just saying that if you go down that road, you should bring a lunch and a warm sweater, since you likely won’t return before dark.

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