Has anyone heard of a practice in some states that lenders, title companies, builders, and realtor offices band together and offer continuing education classes, including lunch, for realtors - making the CE free for attending realtors. The same state has approved providers of CE that offer online CE classes for fees. Could this be a potential Section 8 issue for the companies that are "sponsoring" these CE classes?

If there are multiple companies sponsoring and it is open to all realtors, then it sounds like a marketing and promotional expense.

(vi) Normal promotional and educational activities that are not conditioned on the referral of business and that do not involve the defraying of expenses that otherwise would be incurred by persons in a position to refer settlement services or business incident thereto;

I'm going to tag onto this one - what if it's just our financial institution covering the cost? We're starting to see this also; however it is open to all realtors.

Thanks Randy. I just keep circling back to the "defraying expense". Just seems that if the annual CE is required and if it is known that an expense can be involved (i.e., online fees ranging from $36.00 to $75.00), arranging to provide the CE at no cost to the realtor could be suspect - regardless of whether it is one company or multiple covering the charge.

If you were a loan wolf - as in Skittle's case, then I think it gets a little more dicey. If it a combination of businesses getting together to offer it, then I don't think the risk is that great.