Meth hysteria’s property impact

the lack of guidance from some of the professional bodies,’’ Weymouth said.

He joined Lugton and others calling for the Real Estate Authority to issue fresh guidance, quickly.

‘‘I don’t want my clients to be pinged for unilaterally taking action in the absence of a direction or a guideline,’’ he said.

‘‘There are a lot of salespeople out there who have suffered as a result of a lack of guidelines.’’

That suffering goes back years, Weymouth said, of defended cases in front of the Real Estate Agents Disciplinary Tribunal where many people received findings against them.

‘‘We had professional bodies as well as professional organisations disciplining people, charging people or censuring people without knowing or inquiring into whether or not there was actually health consequences.

‘‘It’s all very right to have a standard that’s 1.5 [micrograms per 100cm2 of methamphetamine contamination] but what’s the consequences and they were tending to look at it under OSH legislation saying it’s an OSH breach because there are health consequences but there were no facts to say health consequences.’’

They now have no legal recourse, he said. ‘‘That’s the unfortunate thing about it so what we’ve got to do is make sure salespeople in the future don’t also now fall foul to this hysteria.’’

Harcourts Hamilton manager Campbell Scott said the Gluckman Report has created uncertainty.

‘‘There have been a large number of clients who have spent tens of thousands of dollars decontaminating properties and removing something the government might now be saying is not a problem, so you feel for those guys,’’ Scott said.

‘‘But as much as that complicates the problem, that doesn’t change our stance on it. We need to have clarity from the government as to how we treat it now and we’ll be led by them.’’