Dave Ramsey is one of the world’s best-known financial gurus. His radio show reaches 14 million listeners each week who tune in for his advice about debt and living financially healthy lives. To help his audience locate service providers who share his values, Ramsey established the Ramsey Endorsed Local Provider (ELP) program. ELP realtor program (Endorsed Lender Program by Ramsey) is an endorsement from his organization that is given to businesses like real estate agents who follow Ramsey’s principles in their business practices, like real estate agents. While this has caused some controversy – with agents firing individuals who don’t share his religious and political beliefs – for buyers or sellers, this may provide an option endorsed by Ramsey but won’t necessarily save them money on home purchase/sale transactions.
Dave Ramsey ELP realtor program is free for consumers, while agents incur a monthly membership fee to participate. Over time this cost could add up quickly for experienced agents who already pay out an increasing percentage of their commission to real estate boards as well as incurring other service fees such as marketing and lead generation which cut into their profit margins.
Additionally, their network is relatively small when compared to other agent-finding services; this increases your odds of missing out on working with an exceptional agent in your locality. Therefore, it is advisable to investigate other options since many offer wider selection of agents and more stringent screening processes than their competition.
Trusted agents at Ramsey are licensed, full time professionals who meet specific criteria. These requirements include:
To become a Ramsey Trusted realtor, an agent must hold at least four years of professional experience and closed at least 25 sides in the last year. Furthermore, they must abide by Ramsey principles and receive ongoing coaching from an appropriate Ramsey team member. Furthermore, applicants are subject to screening for criminal history checks, license renewal requirements and bankruptcy filings prior to becoming part of our network.
Ramsey Trusted realtors offer several advantages over non-Trusted agents, the main one being they have been carefully selected by the Ramsey team. Unfortunately, however, their platform doesn’t go much beyond this point – after customers fill out an online form and answer some basic questions about their real estate needs they are immediately matched with 2-3 agents without human representatives who check on customers to assess motivations or assess readiness – leading them to an agent that may not be the perfect match. Other agent finding services like UpNest or HomeLight have much larger networks as well as more effective processes in matching buyers/sellers with appropriate agents.