The credit system has arrived!

When we said good-bye to 2005 and joyfully faced the incoming year, not many of us had the mind or heart to dwell on IMOPPI's system of credits as defined by the now famous portaria 1326.

Brokers and listers alike have been drawn into the vast framework of the training world - seeded in the Bologne process: A period of 3 years where some sort of insurance must be ascertained by IMOPPI that those in the real estate business undergo training and retraining to better their professional abilities.

In essence, the real estate professionals have now become officially obliged to attain six "training" credits every three years - which is the lifespan of a licence or enrolment, depending on whether you are a broker or a lister.

What IMOPPI doesn't realise, among many others, is that this in turn takes us into the sphere of re-interpretating such activities and their training, understood until now as merely intuitive and - as the Portuguese have said in the past, "para inglês ver" (For the English to see).

Training has been cast under the rug over the last 20 years, since Portugal joined the EU, and like so many other countries has treated professional training as some sort of escape goat.

It's time real estate training be taken seriously and looked in the eyes.

The pertinence of IMOPPI's credit system is in augmenting the need for training solutions not yet fully developed which can permit all that has been said herein happen.

It is up to trainers, training schools, associations and the universities to offer the professionals credible, reliable solutions that can incorporate the spirit of real estate practice in Portugal.