The number of formal complaints made about real estate agents and salespeople increased by more than a third in the 12 months to June.
The Real Estate Authority (REA), the statutory body that regulates the real estate industry, received its highest ever number of complaints about the conduct of licensed real estate professionals in the last financial year, according to it's just released annual report.
A total of 487 complaints were received by the REA, up 126, or 35%, from 361 in the previous 12 months.
"The increase in complaints highlights the complexity of the real estate transaction process and the importance of consumers receiving high standards of service from the sector," REA Chief Executive Belinda Moffat said.
"The provision of quality information about the property is important to support good decision making by parties to a transaction," she said.
The most common complaints related to customer service, skill and care, disclosure and misleading advertising.
"Poor communication was a common theme in complaints raised," the REA said in a statement.
However, only 9% of of the licensees subject to complaints had findings of misconduct or unsatisfactory conduct against them.
"The complaint results indicate that most licensees are continuing to maintain high standards of professional conduct and REA is holding to account those who don't," Moffat said.
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9 Comments
I've given up trying to stop them putting their bloody fliers in our letterbox despite clear "no junk mail" signs. W**kers.
I had an RE who crossed out a line in my offer and initialed on my behalf ....... without me knowing, I didn't know I could swear like that.... got my way in the end but what a cowboy
Did you lay an official complaint?
I managed to work the issue into a much lower risk profile transaction..... i said I wanted 21 days to sell another property on offer , he crossed out and put 5 days ... i walked away from the deal as it was NOT MY OFFER that was accepted by the vendor....
I told him to become more flexible.. in less words. which started with F and himself. the vendor threatened to sue me. I said go ahead it was not my offer that they accepted...
I only re offered at minimum 35 days, the vendor was asking questions and RE seemed shy.... I think the vendor forced him to lower commission before accepting my offer conditional on 30 days to go uncon.
this reduced the risk of the transaction as I could go through a full marking routine, this was Oct 2021, making then entire offer totally risk free for me, i set the reserve very high and it blew through it.
I found the official complaints situation inside the agency useless.
no one wanted to reply to emails, classic of shit moment for them
My guess is that bad quoting to vendors was easy when the market was going up because time would bring that unrealistic quote to market price. Agents are still entrenched in over quoting however now as time goes by the real price is actually moving away from the vendor which is causing more bad blood between the agent and vendor
I've had 2 experiences in recent months of houses being placed within search $ range on Trademe with reserves set $100k higher. Different agents same company (begins with H)
Quotes shouldn't be taken seriously unless they have a buyer already lined up anyway.
Also I found none of them stuck to it in a revealed preference experiment
They had it easy for a decade or more. List a house and fight off the buy now requests. Taking an order is not selling. Lazy and entitled...to your money.
That said there are the small group that are A Class pros.
I have a few agents that get results, and and few that are totally honest, its a small vent diagram
you can ask the mob to kill someone for less then many RE commissions...
therefore you can see why this is happening, its only money
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