News from propertyplus in the Sun daily newspaper

ENHANCING PROFESSIONALISM AMONG REAL ESTATE AGENTS

Malaysian Institute of Real Estate Agents (MIEA) president, K. Soma Sundram, wants to enhance professionalism in the real estate business and to develop it into a degnified profession. He says that the long-standing unresolved issue of illegal real estate agents is becoming a frustrating problem in MIEA. With approximately ten to fifteen unregistered real estate agents for every registered agent, the lost of revenue to the government is tremendous. MIEA intends to take action and would be relentless in its effords to deal with this problem. Illegal agents do not pay the 5% service tax to the customs department and as such it has agreed to work with MIEA to act on the illegal agents.

MIEA has formed a strategic alliance with Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) and American International Assurance (AIA) for a period of one year. OCBC will be providing training on loan packages while AIA has come out with a mortgage reducing term assurance policy which would benefit MIEA clients. MIEA will be introducing the MIEA Industry Awards of Excellence this year as a form of recognition to agents who have excelled in the profession. The awards will be presented during the MIEA dinner scheduled for June 20th this year. Nominations for the awards will be accepted after its annual general meeting in April and an independent judging committe will be appointed to select the winner.

In order for the standards of the real estate industry to go up, MIEA has plans to begin training and certifying negotiators by introducing a government recognized course. Certified negotiators would be issued with a special card which is renewable yearly. Negotiators would be required to go through refresher courses in order to renew the cards as a means to maintain industry standards and to ensure that the negotiators are well verse with the latest developments in the industry.

Soma Sundram also adviced real estate agents to extend their businesses overseas as a lot of foreigners have been entering Malaysia under the Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) programme.