By Dinh Dung in HCMC
Nearly two years since it came into force, the regulation requiring housing products to be traded through a local property trading center has set some order to the housing market. Hundreds of realty exchange centers have been established around the country. Authorities and property companies pinned their hopes on the centers to boost the market; make it more transparent, easier to control and provide a base for information sharing.
However, there still has a long way to go. The property trading centers are enough quantity wise, but the quality of service is lacking, as are market monitoring and penalties for disobeying the rules.
The Ministry of Construction is working on a draft circular to provide criteria for a grading system, and set conditions and obligations that a property trading floor has to follow.
However, many realty firms, even the city’s management organization, question whether grading each trading floor would improve services or if it would be just perfunctory.
Like the one to five star system for hotels, property trading floors would be classified into three levels - 1, 2 and 3 - based on six groups of criteria, including the scale of service, the number of transactions, the scale of facility, the manpower and the database of information.
Nguyen Van Hiep, deputy director of the HCMC Department of Construction, said in a seminar in HCMC last week the draft circular was inadequate and should be redrafted after more planning.
Hiep said the draft circular made the grading system voluntary, so it was just formalistic and would have no meaning as property trading floors without a grading would be able to operate normally.
Do Thi Loan, general secretary of the HCMC Real Estate Association (HoREA), agreed with the deputy director, saying the circular didn’t differentiate between a graded property trading floor and an un-graded one, so what would be the difference between buying an apartment through a trading floor whether it’s graded or not.
Current regulations require a property trading floor to have at least two persons who are certified property brokers, at least two persons who have property evaluation certificates and be a minimum of 50 square meters in area. Most services include brokerage, evaluation, consultancy, advertising and management.
However, the grading criteria requires a facility of 500 square meters for grade 1, from 200-499 square meters for grade 2 and less than 200 square meters for grade 3.
Hiep said there are very few realty companies that meet such criteria, especially criteria that require a planning architect.
Regulations require all property trading floors to report their business activities to the construction ministry’s housing and property market management and local construction department every six months. However, those who are graded will have to report every quarter meaning twice as many reports.
Hiep said there are about 150 property trading floors licensed in HCMC – half of the country’s total. The department has issued some 6,800 brokerage certificates and 3,800 certificates for property evaluation.
Le Hoang Chau, chairman of HoREA, said the grading was not necessary.
“It is customers and the market who will decide the grade and the level of service,” Chau said, adding the ministry needed to urgently check on the activities of the licensed property trading floors instead spending grading them.
The Saigon Times Daily
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