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House approves real-estate licensing bill to clarify rules, remove 'good moral character' language
Summary
The House passed HB 69, a package of amendments to real-estate licensing that clarifies required written disclosures, expands rulemaking authority for unusual broker circumstances and removes 'good moral character' language from statute; sponsor says testing changes are clarifying, not substantive.
Representative Musselman described House Bill 69 as a targeted update to Utah’s real-estate licensing code that removes ambiguous language and aligns statute with longstanding practice. "It's gonna take me a moment to read through some of the changes," he said, and summarized provisions affecting real estate, mortgage and appraisal management companies.
The bill adds a clear written-disclosure requirement for agents who represent more than one client, allows the division to bill costs to individuals found in violation, grants rulemaking authority to handle broker-death scenarios and creates statutory language to mirror federal practice for lifetime revocation of mortgage licenses when federal law so requires. Musselman said the bill also removes references to "good moral character," calling that term subjective and hard to apply consistently.
Representative Thurston spoke in support: "They're vague. They're impossible to enforce," he said of good-moral-character clauses, adding that enforcement often proves inconsistent and punitive to workers. Representative Robertson asked whether inserting the phrase "fundamentals of" before testing requirements would change the real-estate exam; Musselman responded the wording merely clarifies existing rule-based practice and is not intended to alter the substance of the test.
Musselman waived summation and the House voted to pass HB 69; the Speaker announced the bill will be transmitted to the Senate for further consideration. The transcript's numeric vote record for HB 69 is garbled in the floor text; passage was announced on the floor.
