Dearth of local talent in booming real estate sector

MISSING SKILLSETS: Burgeoning property industry churning out job opportunities, but Omanis are losing out, says ORA

The absence of training institutions providing professional skills relevant to the property and real estate industry is fuelling a shortfall in professional Omani talent necessary to support the growth of this flourishing sector — a gap the Oman Real Estate Association (ORA) is looking to address.

According to Hassan Mohammed Juma al Lawati (pictured), Chairman of the officially recognised industrywide grouping, the growth and diversification of this promising economic sector is opening new employment opportunities for Omanis, but with few takers for want of the right skillsets.

“One of the real challenges we face is to attract good calibre talent,” said Al Lawat. “This is a serious challenge that the government as well as private sectors will have to work together to address.”

Addressing held in the an industry event city recently, the Chairman attributed the shortage of skilled Omani talent to the lack of professional training institutes in the Sultanate. “We don’t have an academy or institution in Oman that offers real estate courses,” he lamented.

The Oman Real Estate Association, said Al Lawati, is playing a key role in addressing the skills gap in this sector. In collaboration with Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), the Association supported the training and certification of 300 Omanis as brokers, he said. This was in line with newly introduced guidelines by the Housing Ministry’s requiring all brokers to be registered and licensed by the government as brokers — a provision came into force in October, he said.

“This year, we are exploring other solutions to provide training support for Omanis in Real Estate Valuation, Asset Management, Property Management, and Commercial Real Estate services, and so on,” he said.

Underscoring the implications of the lack of skilled Omani talent in the real estate sector, the Chairman explained: “For example, we have more than 700,000 sq metres of retail area in shopping malls which opened this year or are under construction. Most of the talent required to service this new capacity is coming from outside Oman because we don’t have the necessary local expertise in commercial real estate. Thus, there is good potential to train Omanis in these areas. We are trying to associate ourselves with big international bodies, charter surveyors, and so on, to help support the training of Omanis in these disciplines.”