Better education would cut complaints about property managers
The housing rental sector would get fewer complaints if better education standards in property management were brought in, according to real estate industry training organisation chief executive Lesley Southwick.
The organisation is consulting the property management industry on qualifications for letting agents and property managers.
Level 3 and 4 papers will be introduced to tertiary institutions later this year.
Over the past 18 months, the Real Estate Agents Authority received 80 complaints related to property management rather than sales issues.
Such complaints make up about 10% of the total received.
Two years ago new education standards were introduced for real estate by the government.
The intention was to improve standards and protect the public while buying and selling property, but residential property management was not included.
Ms Southwick said the education of property management staff had been overlooked in terms of a national qualification.
“Real estate agent offices handle a large percentage of the housing rental market business,” Ms Southwick said.
The organistion estimates the market to have an annual turnover of around $7 billion, a figure it arrives at by assuming the Department of Building and Housing’s 2009/10 estimate of at least 400,000 New Zealand homes being rented and multiplying this by the median weekly rental figure of $338, multiplied again by 52 weeks.
“This is a very large industry where anybody can claim to be a property manager and start a business.
“There are fundamentals such as the Tenancy Act and Privacy Act, as well as skills to learn in managing tenant and landlord relationships.”
Signup to free NBR email alerts here
Back to home
Back to top
Print
Email
Share
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Google
Yahoo
Technorati
Scoopit
NBR SERVICES
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Sign up for NBR subscriber content or email alerts
Latest
Comments and questions4
Another BS course in common sense? People have been renting houses for centuries and all the information is now on the internet with regards to rules and regulations just READ. Looking to create new industry out of bureaucracy? NZ needs to get real and start minimizing this sort of inefficient activity
To Anonymous, Actually renting was quite simple before the politico's got involved and came up with the RTA 1986 and recently updated in Oct 2010. This means explaining or interpreting this law for tenants and property onwers is not easy. Real estate is a professional industry now just like accountancy and law. There is so much legislation that professionals need to be aware of that it requires skills and experience to navigate all the potential outcomes.
Not all tenants and owners play fair hence the need for law and property industry law and market experts.
But I'm sure you knew that when you commented. I assume you would prefer to sell your house privately too.
Interesting that almost all of the consumer complaints against property managers pertain to REINZ qualified practioners .. same standard of training as for sales people.
The actual personal attributes required to be a good & professional property manager fall within the realm of basic common sense, honesty, moral fibre / backbone, basic ethics and integrity. These are commonly traits that are foreign to real estate practioners and no amount of tertiary training is going to change that. This is another beat-up ... more smoke & mirrors from the Real Estate industry suggesting that they can clean up the property management industry which is made up mostly of their own members.
An alternative and more likely effective solution would be to exclude the real estate industry and their inherent economic use of the truth from the property management function. The independant operators, that is, those that are not associated with the questionable culture of the real estate industry, mostly have squeaky clean records.
The accasional exception to this, of which there are very few can be adequatly dealt with through existing consumer protection infrastructure. Letting the real estate industry get their grubby hands on the selection and administration of independant property management practionors would be a perilous and backward step and would render the property management function a foul tasting monster. If the real estate industry genuinely wish to clean up the property management industry, they will be best served cleaning their own house first of all. The chances of that becoming reality is hardly likely given their poor track record to date.
Remember Murray that Helen tried to introduce a rule that would limit the water capacity from a shower head for people like you that would prefer the Gov't dictate waterflow because a few wasted a few gallons ?
Post new comment or question
To share this article, click on a service below