NIESV urges vigilance as foreigners, quacks ‘invade’ estate agency practice

The Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) has called for vigilance over the invasion of the estate agency practice by foreign interests and pseudo practitioners, otherwise called quacks.

The institution notes that foreign estate agency practitioners, mostly from the United Kingdom, Dubai, France and the United States come into Nigeria, check into high-class hotels, advertise their presence in the newspapers, and thereafter invite prospective Nigerian investors to their suites in order to arrange property investment abroad for them.

Worried about this development and its implications for its members whose profession as critical stakeholders in the Nigerian real estate sector is at risk, and the government whose economy is under threat with rumours everywhere of money laundering through real estate investment, the institution laments that the alarm it has raised in respect of this to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has not received any reaction from the anti-graft body.

Speaking on ‘Estate Agency: Have We Lost It?’, which was the theme of the 20th annual Johnwood Ekpenyong Memorial Lecture organised by the institution in Lagos, Jonathan Idudu, the 11th president of the institution, submitted that because estate agency practice is not regulated, it has become an all-comers affair.

Idudu explained that everybody comes into the practice because the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) which registers companies and institutions recognises estate agency as a business concern and classifies it under general business practice. This, according to him, explains why anybody and everybody including plumbers, roadside mechanics, etc, are found in the practice.

From an opinion poll he conducted to ascertain if the institution has lost the practice, he quoted Emmanuel Omuojine, former registrar of the Estate Surveyors and Valuers Registration Board of Nigeria (ESVARBON), as saying that “estate agency is a worldwide matter and does not easily lend itself to regulation and control”.

Olayinka Omotosho, a member of the institution, corroborated Omuojine’s stand with his assertion that “it is difficult, based on the action of CAC, for NIESV and ESVARBON to put their feet down to control the activities of quacks in the practice”.

Idudu was, however, optimistic and commended the efforts of the present leadership of the institution at controlling and regulating the activities of quacks with the setting up of the Association of Estate Agents in Nigeria (AEAN), which has Chudi Ubosi of Ubosi Eleh & Co as its technical committee chairman.

Idudu also quoted Albert Orizu, a senior partner at Knight Frank, as explaining that property owners use quacks either because of their personal relationship or because they believe wrongly that the quacks are cheap, pointing out, however, that when they lose money, they are ashamed to talk about it.

He argued that if the real professionals had taken the initiative early to control and regulate the profession of estate surveying, perhaps there wouldn’t have been any need for AEAN or the Lagos State Estate Transactions Department (LASERETRAD), and estate agency would have been better for it.

By: Saby Elemba