Speaking at the Vietnam Realtors festival held in Hanoi on June 27, Nguyen TrongNinh, director of the Housing Management and Real Estate Market Departmentunder the Ministry of Construction said the Vietnamese National Assembly hasratified the Law on Real Estate Business in which recognises real estatebrokerage as one of services in this sector, contributing to the country’sdevelopment of property market.
“Development of brokers has changed the perception and habits of peopleparticipating in the real estate market. The purchasing of property productsused to happened spontaneously. People now are seeking the support of realestate brokers,” Ninh said.
However, he said there were many estate broker offices operating with a lack ofprofessional training. Some realtors have only provided home buyers withinformation, but do not bring convenience and professional consulting servicesto help customers quickly make good investment decisions. Many localities havenot well managed realtors.
Statistics from the Vietnam Association of Realtors (VARs) showed that only10-12 percent of roughly 300,000 real estate brokers in the country areeligible to do the work though the number of workers in this sector is on therise. The realtors are mostly operating in the two big cities of Hanoi andHCM City.
A survey by the ministry revealed that up to 80 percent of brokers said theydid not participate or had not attended a training course for employees. Themain form of training was that employees in companies teach their experience tonew ones.
Tran Huu Ha, director of the Academy of Managers for Construction and Cities(AMC) said the realtor profession has prospects in Vietnam as it played animportant role in circulation of real estate goods. The growth rate of realestate brokerage averaged 15 percent annually in the last three years,resulting in the rising number of brokers. It is urgent to provide professionaltraining to brokers to help the real estate market stay transparent.
“The real estate market would develop more sustainably if the brokers aretrained, fostered and managed more closely,” Ha said.
“Currently, the laws do not require individuals to have a certificate to workas a property broker. This has created a trend of individuals who do not reallywant to study and research on real estate brokers but sometimes just to dealwith exams.”
He said the professionalism of real estate brokerage would enhance their rolein development and integration. Therefore, in-depth training for estate brokersis necessary.
Nguyen Van Dinh, VARs’ vice chairman and general secretary said many directorsof real estate trading floors were not qualified to carry out their duties andsome housing projects were that were still in the development stage were beingsold without any warnings about the status of the transaction.
In some cases, he said, this had led to the arrest and prosecution of somerealtors for fraud.
“It is necessary to improve the role and legal status of the broker in realestate transactions as well as reorganise training and granting certificates tomake the service professional,” Dinh said.
Brokers should be considered as an official and respectable profession with asystem to manage the people with identification codes.
He suggested that the sector should have an app to look up brokers'information, including details about professional qualifications and careerroadmap. This would create trust for the brokerage community and informationtransparency for customers.
Dinh said the property market now has two type of products including those thatare already built and others still in the development stage. Estate productswhich have not been built would have high risk during transactions.
“Therefore, we propose to supplement article that all real estate products mustbe traded through real estate floors into laws in the future. The tradingfloors would be responsible like notary public offices at the same time. Theywill disclose information to avoid any negative consequences during the tradingprocess,” he said.
Sharing the ideas, Luu Duc Minh, AMC’s deputy director said for a market thatlacks information, the role of real estate brokers was very important. Toimprove the real estate brokerage service and raise the level of the professionto catch up with the international trend, it is necessary to have solutions.
“In my opinion, the most important solution is to quickly improve the legalinstitutions and policies for real estate brokerage,” Minh said.
“At the same time, the Government need to strengthen control over theactivities of the current brokerage centres; publicise planning information andfurther strengthen infrastructure system for real estate brokerage training inthe future.”/.