A report last Wednesday took up topics regarding "Regulation of property agents under review”. The SAEA or Singapore Accredited Estate Agencies is completely positive of the Government’s step towards an effective approach of shaping real property agents.
The industry of housing agents is mostly unregulated and fragmented. The present basic requisite is to successfully pass the House Agent’s Common Examination and obtain a licence from the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore. This house agent licence is released to agencies, which are firms and not individual agents. Once the license is obtained, the proprietor recruits several associates, who work according to a shared commission agreement. There are numerous agencies that recruit agents randomly, several without suitable qualifications.
The industry, therefore, ends up with over 30,000 agents and almost all of these agents do not have a sound understanding about real estate practice.
SAEA believes that professionalism comes from basic qualifications of knowledge and skills with continued professional training for development; and practice policies which agents adhere to. This will only happen if licensing and individual housing agent accreditation will be mandated and a body accustomed with the practice of real estate should be sanctioned by the Government to serve as a watchdog.
The Government has been encouraging the business to self-regulate and this will be feasible if the business is primarily regulated. To implement control on an unregulated industry is certainly daunting. However, the scheme of Singapore Accredited Estate Agencies was launched officially last 11 November 2005 by Mrs. Lim Hwee Hua, Minister of State for Finance and Transport. This scheme was encouraged by the Iras, HDB, and the Ministry of Finance.
Consequently, there are over 300 accredited agencies at present and 6,000 accredited salesmen and housing agents, sharing a common goal of uplifting professional levels in the business by compliance to the professional code and certified competencies. It is believed that a fine scheme and leaders of accredited agencies, which include a total of 23,000 agents, will make an effort to work along with governmental bodies to create a country with a developed real property agency force.