‘Integrity will make estate agents indispensable in property market’

Real estate professionals are not smiling as usual on account of low patronage but to salvage the situation, experts say integrity and commitment to the practice would help practitioners to thrive.

Speaking during a seminar organised by the faculty of estate agency and marketing, a division of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV), the managing partner, Osas and Oseji, an estate surveying and valuation firm, Mr. Hyacinth Oseji urged practitioners to improve on their skills and knowledge through training.

Oseji posited that prompt application of core professional standards of integrity in service delivery would make professionals to be more relevant in the ever-changing socio-economic environment. He stated that virtues such as trust, honesty and commitment to transparency should be uphold while transacting business with the public.

According to him, real estate practitioners must also be able to constantly network to learn from others, as knowledge is key to success in the profession. “Our personal knowledge is the bedrock of anything you want to achieve. The knowledge entails that we must have a deep understanding of the market where we operate because the real estate market operates in circles, which follow economic trends. Practitioners must have clear understanding of what the client want. Knowledge of what is available in the market at all times including the ones handled by colleagues or other participators in the real estate market”.

Oseji who spoke on, ‘Strategies for timely closure of real estate transactions’, lamented that all over the world the perception that estate agents are fraudulent is rampant because some people collect house rents from clients and disappear without securing the proposed accommodation. However, he said, professionals can change the perception through the way they present themselves to the public in the course of running the business.

Contributing, the chairman of the faculty, Samson Eboigbe tasked practitioners to restrict domination of the profession by quacks and miscreants in the society. He expressed concerns that the estate agency practice in Lagos State has been dominated by quacks, which has rendered the profession as unreliable business.

Eboigbe called for a law regulating the operation such that anyone practicing estate agency would be forced to register with the regulating body in order to erase negative perceptions and restore public confidence in the profession.