HOW I GOT HERE

With my wife, Realtor® Maita Herce-Siquijor

I am not entirely new to real estate practice. For one, I am married to Maita who  has been  a real estate broker for more than  10 years now.

Actually,  I got my  real estate broker's license   in 1996,  Only my family knew  this story.  When I was courting Maita in 1994, she decided to take up the Comprehensive Real Estate Seminar or CRESAR-- an 8-weekend course that prepared a candidate for the licensing exam.

To be with Maita, I also enrolled in the same course. I sat through the lectures and  really studied the course materials.

 We both passed the licensing exams.  Eventually, we applied for our licenses.  She pursued her real estate practice while I went on to move up on the proverbial   corporate ladder in the pharmaceutical industry.

Since then, I have referred to Maita a number of  my office mates for  their real estate requirements.  I am glad that Maita was able to successfully close deals  for them.

Up until 2009, I did not see  the need for me to  renew  my real estate license.  I was just  happy to give Maita referrals.  But now that we have put up La Maisonette Manila, Inc. -- a general real estate brokerage-- there is that obvious benefit for me to get my license renewed.

With the enactment of the Real Estate Service Act in 2009,  the licensing authority for real estate brokers was shifted from the Department of Trade and Industry to the Philippine Regulation  Commission.  One of the requirements for me to  renew my license was to take up 24 units of Continuing Professional Education units or CPEs.

CPEs are offered by local realtor boards.  Maita belongs to the Muntinlupa Realtors Board or MUNREB.  Sometime  July 2009, she received an email  from  Pasay Makati Realtors Board or PMRB that  a course on CPE would be offered.  Maita forwarded the email to me and I looked up PMRB on the net. The course lecturer was Atty. Ariel Martinez,  whom I have met in one of the seminars on estate planning.   I wanted to sign up for the course but there was a conflict in my schedule.    I called up the PMRB secretariat and spoke to Tere Santana who advised me that  there was another CPE course to be offered by the Paranaque Las Pinas Realtors Board or PLAREB.   To cut the story short, I attended the course organized by PLAREB that was conducted by Mr. Cesar Santos, another prominent real estate lecturer.

In  August 2009, I decided to apply  for membership with  the Pasay Makati Realtors Board.   Maita and I agreed that it would be better for me to sign up with another board so that we could expand our business  network,  I chose PMRB because I knew Atty. Ariel Martinez and because I actually grew up in Pasay City.

Maita is very proficient in the use of the net  for her real estate practice.  She has a Masters Degree in E-learning from University of Sheffield in UK.   But instead of me taking her time away to teach me concepts on e-commence and blogging, I decided to sign up for  a blogging course at Ateneo de Manila   One Saturday in   October 2009, I went back to my alma mater and  found myself again in a classroom.  The program director was Janette Toral, one of the most influential names in  blogging and e-commerce in the country.

To comply with   one of our course requirements, I put up this blog.  And that's how I got here-- literally and figuratively speaking.