Fewer complaints against real estate agencies

SINGAPORE — Fewer complaints were lodged against real estate agencies last year, the industry’s regulatory authority’s annual report shows.

There were 702 complaints in Financial Year 2014, down from the 751 in the previous year, said the Council for Estate Agencies (CEA), which attributed the trend to enforcement actions, coupled with the professional development of salespersons and consumer education in the past five years.

Complaints involving private residential property transactions fell from 334 to 237 cases. There were 232 complaints lodged for Housing and Development Board resale flat transactions, slightly higher than the 213 in 2013.

Complaints over commercial/industrial property deals also dropped from 63 to 55 cases, but there was a big jump in cases unrelated to transactions.

The 87 cases the CEA got in this area, compared with 25 cases the previous year, pertain to complaints about advertisements on properties, said the regulator’s licensing deputy director Heng Whoo Kiat.

For example, these advertisements may have been put up without the homeowner’s consent or have incorrect licence or registration numbers.

Mr Heng said: “Depending on the nature of each complaint received, the CEA will investigate to establish if there is any infringement of the Estate Agents Act and related Regulations, and the Code of Ethics and Professional Client Care.”

The dip in the number of complaints came as the number of salespersons and estate agents in the industry tumbled.

To renew their licence, salespersons need to meet continuing professional development requirements and new entrants must go through a course and also pass an examination.

The number of salespersons entering the industry was 1,654, about half that of 3,061 in the previous year. At the same time, 85 salespersons left the industry.

These two factors led to an overall drop in the total number of salespersons, from 33,498 to 32,006.

Similarly, the total number of estate agents shrunk from 1,449 to 1,422. There were 81 agents joining the industry last year, down from 109 the previous year, while 55 of the existing 1,368 agents left.

Commenting on the figures, ERA Singapore’s key executive officer Eugene Lim said most of the customer complaints his firm got resulted from “service delivery issues”, which they proactively try to resolve.

He added that the firm handled close to 40,000 transactions last year, but “the number of substantiated complaints against our salespersons were very low; relative to our transaction volume”.