With his laid-back demeanor, teacher Tim Rice simply doesn`t fit the intimidating, terrorist educator role played by actor John Houseman in the movie ”The Paper Chase.”
But he has been in his students` place-seated behind a desk, scribbling notes furiously, sweating through final exams-and he much prefers to be teacher rather than student. He now teaches several classes at the Realtors Real Estate School, operated by the Chicago Association of Realtors.
”I know that the classes are difficult and that the amount of information they`re getting is intense,” he says. ”I find myself up there thinking, `I have to teach all of this in 30 hours,` and then I think, `Gosh, they have to learn all this in 30 hours.` I`d much rather be in my shoes than theirs.”
From Day 1 of classes, Rice begins delving into topics both legal and financial, on subjects that include contract law, land description, joint tenancy, ownership and other esoteric-sounding jargon of the trade. Some students find it all a bit overwhelming, Rice says.
”Coming into classes, sometimes students underestimate how much work there really is to do in the class. If it were up to me, the basic 30-hour real estate transactions class would be twice as long,” he says. ”And it`s not because anything we teach is so difficult, it`s because they get it thrown at them so fast. I stand there wondering sometimes, `Gosh, how do they remember all of this stuff?`
Don`t get behind
”One of the things I tell my students the first night of class is,
`Don`t get buried. If you get buried, transfer out, pay the transfer fee and start over again,` because if you get buried in that class you just don`t catch up.”
Does such an ominous warning from the teacher scare off a lot of students?
”There will be a few who will transfer, and I`ve even had people who go to 9 of the 10 classes and skip out on the day of the final,” he says. ”Why? I don`t know. It does scare some people, but the thing is, those who put the effort in do well.”
When he`s not teaching, Rice is a partner in Valuation Professionals, a residential real estate appraisal firm in Oak Forest. Though he`s a full-time appraiser, Rice got his start in real estate as a sales agent during the late 1970s. Back then, he says, ”the market was so good, you didn`t have to be a salesperson. People would call us up and say, `I want to buy this house,` and you`d have to ask them if they even wanted to see it first. That`s how good it was.”
His career path changed in the early 1980s as a result of real estate classes he took as a student. About that same time, Rice decided that teaching would be an interesting sidelight to his budding full-time career as an appraiser. ”I had taken a whole bunch of classes and felt I could do what they were doing, but felt I could do it even better,” he says.
Rice started out teaching a 30-hour real estate transactions class, the basic real estate class for people getting into residential sales. Students who take the transaction class and earn a passing grade become eligible for the state licensing exam. Once licensed, a salesperson can go to work for a licensed broker.
Firsthand knowledge
Rice still teaches that course occasionally. He also passes on his firsthand knowledge of the appraisal industry in one of the newest programs offered by Realtors Real Estate School: real estate appraisal classes, where students prepare for that profession`s State of Illinois licensing exam through a 75-hour program of classes.
The appraisal classes were developed in response to the federal government`s new Financial Institution Reform Recovery Enforcement Act
(FIRREA), which requires states to certify and license appraisers. Previously, Illinois had no educational classes for appraisers, says Rice.
”A year ago, nobody knew how to get into the appraisal business. It was really kind of a closely held group and there were no college programs where you could finish school and go out and find a job as an appraiser. Now, with the licensing and certification, there`s a model set up that people can follow and know specifically what classes they need to take to get the experience,” he says.
”The nice part about our program is that it was developed by the National Association of Realtors . . . and we did a lot of the development for them,” says Rice, who ran a pilot class and also consulted on the program`s development.
In addition to preparing people for the state licensing examination, the appraisal classes enable real estate salespeople to react to shifting needs in the real estate job market, according to Joel Rich, director of education for the Chicago Association of Realtors and administrator of the Realtors Real Estate School.
”When mortgage rates were very high, no one was refinancing and no one was buying and appraisal was as weak a field as any other,” says Rich. ”Now, it`s a recessionary time and people are not as interested in purchasing, but they are refinancing. So appraisers are busy, even though they`re not as busy in terms of the initial purchase of homes.”
Teacher learns, too
The continuing education for professionals doesn`t apply just to students, either. Sometimes the teacher learns quite a bit, too, Rice says.
In brokers` classes, for instance, he occasionally has students who have been in the business for 10 or 15 years and possess a fair amount of expertise, but just never got licensed. ”It keeps you on your toes,” he says.
The key to teaching real estate, whether the students are novices or longtime professionals, is to dive right into classes, says Rice.
”Once you get up there and once you get started, you just basically get turned on,” he says. ”And it gets to the point where it`s five minutes after class and people are putting their books together to catch the train or the bus and I could just keep going on forever.
”The other thing is that these people pay good money to be there so it`s not like teaching high school where the guys want to go out and play football or whatever. You`ve got a captive audience that wants to learn,” says Rice, who flavors his class with real- life examples and local items of interest from the media. ”I just try to keep it interesting and move things along.
”One of the problems that the teaching profession has is that after a while people who teach get stale and I always say to people I attended classes with, `When I start to teach like this, tell me, because it`ll be time for me to quit.` ”
