Real estate agent facts belie perceptions

Recent high profile prosecutions of real estate agents for publishing misleading advertisements have created an impression of relatively widespread illegality within the industry but the facts suggest the opposite, says Real Estate Institute president Rex Hadley.

Monday, September 10th 2001, 8:50AM

by Jenny Ruth

The institute’s analysis of Commerce Commission complaints, or "inquiries" as the commission calls them, show the real estate industry is well down the list as the 13th most complained about.

"Numerically, we rank as receiving less than a 10th as many complaints as the energy industry and less than a quarter the number of complaints received by the finance, banking and insurance sector," Hadley told the institute’s annual meeting this week.

Real estate transactions in 2000 totalled about 75,000 and the number of "inquiries" the commission received totalled 253.

Of the 253 inquiries, 18 were against non members of the institute, 80 were queries, 129 used the term "complaint" or a similar word, 11 were duplications and three were more than two years old.

Of the 129 complaints against members, only 11 are under investigation by the commission. "Our assessment of the majority of them was that they were largely related to advertising semantics about descriptions of properties and their location," Hadley says.

Given those figures, "it is difficult to see how the Commerce Commission can justify such a high profile and high priority level of attention for our industry," he says.

Nevertheless, Hadley says he’s annoyed at the way the New Zealand Herald newspaper reported his speech, suggesting he was attacking the commission.

"I fully support what the Commerce Commission is doing. If any of our members transgress, that’s one too many," he says.

The commission prosecuted the Orewa Property Shop, trading as The Professionals, in December and in July it said it will also prosecute Sails Reality at Mangawhai Heads, Olsen Everson at Orewa and Century 21 Morris Realty in Palmerston North.

The number of complaints the institute receives are falling – from 311 in 1997 to just 144 in 2000. Hadley says this can’t be solely explained by declining sales over that period because the number of total sales declined to a much lesser extent than the complaints.

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