Radim Koliba, Hot Reality Plus: change of legislation needed
Stavební fórum’s recent meeting on “Recession as an opportunity to improve the services of real estate agencies” resulted in a rather dramatic discussion. The industry as such cannot find a common voice on what has to be done to improve its image and professional standard and how to do it; yet another point of view is offered by the customers, including development companies, which criticize the poor, or at least uneven standard of services provided by real estate traders. The current hard times will certainly accelerate such conflicts of opinion. We bring you a contribution to such a discussion from the director of the real estate agency Hot Reality Plus and one of the key players of the recently established Chamber of Real Estate Agencies.
Some of my colleagues in my branch of business may repudiate me for my statements, some may disapprove of me and I may sound like I am criticizing my own ranks. However, the news about the asset draining of Reality Oskar and the December bankruptcy of the real estate agency Rekin put a spin on the discussions in the field of real estates. Some competitors even felt obliged to make a statement that it is not advisable to rely on small regional firms and that it is more secure to use the services of large companies with bigger capital strength.
However, the Rekin case almost contradicts such statements. This real estate agency closed all of its eight offices without any explanation and did not make any financial settlement with tens of its clients. It simply stopped communicating and its phones are deaf. Some voices associate Rekin’s ruin with the financial crisis, which can be dubbed as the culprit for virtually any failure, but it is obvious that the company proceeded not just unethically, but even illegally – the company even retained the cash deposited by its clients.
What is bewildering about the whole situation is that the Association of Real Estate Agencies of the Czech Republic came to the rescue to help the affected clients and offered them free legal services. I’m thinking – isn’t it a bit too late? Travel agencies were in the same situation a couple of years ago, and only their massive bankruptcies and innumerable spoiled holidays compelled our legislators to take steps to protect, at least to some extent, clients who give their money to the providers for them to use.
The question is: does the real estate sector have to go through the same development? I cannot personally imagine that one day I would not simply go to work, leaving an “empty” company behind me. But as you can see, some people in our segment have this kind of imagination. That is one of the reasons why the job of a real estate broker may have the worst image of all occupations at present, and from time to time you can hear people calling for an increased professional standard of the whole segment, especially by changing the “free” trade of a real estate broker into a “dependent” trade, i.e. dependent on demonstrating the required level of professional knowledge. I fear, however, that mere exclamations are not enough. In the meantime, individual companies are going bankrupt in this time affected by a huge financial crisis, where real estate trading is very complicated, to say the least. There is probably nothing worse for losing confidence, or rather for deepening the distrust in the whole sector.
I have no doubt that at the time of our Presidency, our legislators have other worries, but a change of the legal framework for the real estate business is more than inevitable. At a time when the state guarantees bank deposits and there are numerous restrictions on financial institutions, real estate companies can manage their clients’ money without any state supervision and without any insurance or security. What awaits us in the coming months?