Linda Ensor
16 July 2008
Cape Town — A fundamental revamp of the law governing estate agents and the sale of property with a view to beefing up consumer rights is in the trade and industry department's legislative pipeline.
The original Estate Agents Act was passed in 1976 and needed to be reworked to modernise it and ensure that it took into account the recent developments in the industry, trade and industry chief director of policy and legislation Fungai Sibanda said yesterday.
A recent development, for example, was that property developers were often engaged in estate agency work but did not fall within the ambit of the act.
The act regulates the interaction between the consumer and estate agents, the maintenance of trust accounts, protection of the consumer against fraudulent agents and the operation of the industry-wide fidelity fund.
The medium-term project is part of a thorough departmental review and reform of numerous laws falling under its ambit.
The far-reaching Companies Bill and Consumer Protection Bill are going through the parliamentary process while the National Credit Act is already on the statute books.
Other bills in the pipeline are the Competition Amendment Bill, which seeks to give the Competition Commission proactive investigatory powers, and the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment Bill, which aims to regulate the commercialisation of indigenous knowledge.
Apart from the review of the legal framework for estate agents, reviews of the trade metrology regulatory framework and the Lotteries Act are also planned.
"We are in the process of developing a policy framework for estate agencies and have consulted with industry and consumer bodies and the Estate Agents Affairs Board," Sibanda said. "It is basically a law reform of some sort bearing in mind that the Estate Agents Act is now 32 years old and there have been a lot of developments in the field.
"For instance, there are a whole lot of new intermediaries not envisaged in 1976 and other developments which are not catered for in the act," he said. "We have also had a lot of people, particularly the historically disadvantaged, coming into the real estate market but we are not sure whether they know what their rights are. So we want to firm up the consumer protection afforded consumers in that industry."
This would involve greater disclosure of information and an enhanced role for the board in education. The board would also need more capacity to be able to undertake inspections.
Sibanda said many consumers were unaware they should transact through registered estate agents only .
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