Commission to inform Board on grievances
The Real Estate Committee will be writing to the Real Estate National Board to raise grievances faced by many real estate agents in the country. This was confirmed by the Real Estate Committee Founder and President Vyas Sharma yesterday. He said the committee had a meeting with the Real Estate National Board and many problems faced by agents were brought forward. “The most important thing right now is the submission we will be making to Real Estate Board,” Mr Sharma said.
“We are requesting all the agents whether they are members now or not to put their grievances, difficulties to the board.”
He added: “We don’t have any institution to educate our agents and we want to have an institution which can provide training before they step in to the industry. “We are in talks with our counterparts in Australia and New Zealand so that we can follow the right direction.”
He also said that realtors in Fiji did not have code of ethics and the committee would look into this matter as well.
“The Real Estate Industry is booming in Fiji and we need our agents to be able to tackle clients from overseas,” he added.
“There is also concern about illegal operators who have formed an association and we want the real estate board to look in to this issue immediately.
“These illegal operators are paying little bit of money here and making commissions offshore. The question is where is the tax? What is Fiji getting from them? “On the other hand our agents pay a high amount of fee to the real estate board.” Another issue raised by the president was the time taken to process transactions on sales.
“It takes almost eight months to process sales therefore the board need to look into this as well.” Mr Sharma also urged real estate agents who are not part of the committee to join and submit their grievances with the committee which would then be forwarded to the Government.