All housing agents should be registered for better control and regulation
Letter from ONG CHENG HONG
I WAS glad to read the article, “Agents who move in for the kill” (Aug 31).
The article came at a time when I, too, suffered the tyranny of unethical housing agents and echoes the experiences of many people who have been “bullied” by these unprofessional agents.
Bullies do not exist only in schools. In the adult world, there are road bullies, gender bullies (those who fire pregnant employees, for instance), and business bullies — just to name a few.
With the booming property market, there are many new agents entering the business. Because of this, I think there is a real and urgent need to do things right.
Legislation should be in place to regulate the conduct and practices of housing agents.
I’ve checked the websites of a few institutions and to my disappointment, discovered that there is no official body that regulates housing agents.
I also found what I read on the website of the Singapore Accredited Estate Agencies disturbing:
“While there are professional bodies such as the Singapore Institute of Surveyors and Valuers and the Institute of Estate Agents (IEA), which exercise control on the practice and conduct of their members who practise as estate agents, there is at present no proper system of accreditation for practising estate agents. The increasing number of property transactions arising from a growing economy and the effects of globalisation have inevitably raised the issues of control and regulation of those who perform as estate agents.”
On its website, the IEA says that it hopes to register 75 per cent of agents in Singapore on a voluntary basis. Is this sufficient?
As IEA has a registration system for housing agencies and agents, I decided to check up on the names of the agents that I had encountered.
To my horror, I discovered that many of them were not registered.
Without the power to make it mandatory for agents to register with the IEA, the organisation is as good as non-existent.
How can it help to upgrade professionalism or regulate the conduct of agents? How can the public be protected from unprofessional, unscrupulous and unethical agents?
The relevant authorities must step in to enforce compliance with ethical practices before more Singaporeans, especially the old and uninformed, fall prey to unethical agents.
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