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PETALING JAYA (March 11): The Malaysian Institute of Real Estate Agents (MIEA) is targeting for 22,000 registered real estate negotiators (RENs) to be under the institute by this year-end, said MIEA deputy president Eric Lim.
“Currently, we have about 18,500 registered RENs with the board, and we observe about 350 new members registering on a monthly basis,” Lim said at a press conference in conjunction with the Malaysian Annual Real Estate Conference (Marec’16) event today.
The two-day event (March 11 and 12) is organised by MIEA and is expected to see 300 real estate practitioners come together for the convention with the theme “Elevate To Differentiate”. Marec’16 is being held at Connexion @ Nexus, Bangsar South, Kuala Lumpur.
There will be talks by various industry experts with different themes such as using social media to boost real estate sales and leadership forums with the participants.
The event was officiated by the president of the Board of Valuers, Appraisers, and Estate Agents Malaysia (Bovaea), Datuk Faizan Abdul Rahman. He noted that the board is aware of recent disruptions in the form of digital platforms that sidestep real estate agents as intermediaries in real estate transactions.
“We want to continuously highlight to the public to only engage with registered RENs. This will ensure that all legal and regulatory requirements are met, which will ultimately provide a peace of mind and confidence to the public that the right skill set is being applied by those equipped to conduct real estate transactions,” he added.
MIEA’s immediate past president, Siva Shanker who was also at the event, highlighted that illegal brokers have moved on to performing transactions on digital platforms such as certain online websites.
“I would like to stress that not all online websites are illegal – there are legal websites which help to advertise listings such as TheEdgeProperty.com and others without receiving a commission from the seller or buyer if the transaction is successful. If the websites or mobile application (mobile app) is used to promote a property for advertorial purpose that is not breaking the law,” Siva explained.
Commenting on why some negotiators are reluctant to register with the board, he noted that some of them are very used to handling transactions without any restrictions.
“An example I can give is that some of them are so used to collecting fees from both sides [buyer and seller]. If they join the board, we have proper guidelines that say professional fees can only be collected from either the buyer or the seller and that the maximum fee is 3% of the transacted value,” he said.
“The only way to handle illegal brokers is through enforcement,” he added.
According to Faizan, the Attorney-General’s chambers has finally authorised the police to take action against illegal brokers.
“The board is also seriously looking into non-compliant agents and negotiators who fail to insert their REN numbers in all their promotional and marketing materials. We have six investigation officers to conduct random checks through all ads in various media,” Faizan said.
“So far, we recorded about 20 reported cases each month about illegal broker’s activities,” he said.
Faizan noted that the board spent RM1 million in 2014 and RM500,000 in 2015 on PR campaigns to educate the public about this issue and will spend another RM500,000 for the campaign this year.
According to Siva, most of the cases take place in the secondary market as compared to the primary market.
“Primary market products are sold by the developers and in most cases, developers do not cheat their customers. It is the secondary market where an intermediary, which involves the real estate negotiators, that most cheating cases take place,” he noted.
Siva stressed that they only want to help the public so that scams by unscrupulous brokers are reduced.
“If you put your money with an unregistered broker and they run away with your money, it is harder for us to take action. The best we can do is just to report to the police on your behalf,” he said.
“MIEA’s advise to the public would be this – do not pay your deposits in cash, make sure the cheque is paid to the company’s name and go to the MIEA website to key in the name of the negotiator or his REN number. Alternatively, you can look out for a QR (quick response) code on their tags which you can scan with your handphone, which will then lead you to the board’s website to identify if they are registered with the board,” he noted.
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