Consumer Protection Authority aims to regulate real estate operations

The draft includes rules regarding relations between clients and real estate agencies, professional skills of agents, complaint solving, and an ethics and sanction code.

Agencies are against a stipulation on a requirement for professional authorization for agents, which, according to the draft, would be issued by the Education Ministry.

The main impact of the ordinance, if passed, would be felt by small agencies, operating without clear rules. 

“The draft is wrong as a concept. It is not normal that the Consumer Protection Authority be involved in such a draft, because it has no knowledge of the way the real estate market works,” the spokesman of Romanian Real Estate Agencies Association (ARAI), Ion Radu Zilisteanu, told Business Standard.

The current draft could become a starting point for future legislation, according to the Vice President of the National Union of Real Estate Agencies (UNAI), Ionut Butoi.

Furthermore, representatives of real estate agencies say companies carrying out brokerage operations on the property market should be registered as real estate agencies. One example involves law firms who provide real estate advisory services, thus acting as a real estate agency, added representatives.