Professionals Vital To Genuine Estate Agency Business

By Tunde Opalana

A luxury apartmentPROLIFERATION of actors or operators in virtually all professions known to mankind thrives in almost ev ery part of the world. Imitators and impostors are always found holding brief where genuinely-trained professionals are required.

In Nigeria, in spite of the presence and operation of all legal machinery, proliferation increases on a daily basis in all endeavours including the business of midwifing the transfer of property (landed or building) from one person to another, otherwise known as agency business.

Property vendoring now attracts professionals and non-professionals alike. Registered estate surveyors and valuers, lawyers that serve as solicitors, property consultants, mortgage institutions, land vendors and uneducated intermediaries are found in estate agency business.

Though, findings of BUSINESS SENSE revealed that every player in the business claimed the genuineness of his/her operation, Pastor Akin Ibiyode, an estate surveyor and valuer, will always refer to an untrained and unregistered member of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) practising estate agency as a quack.

Land vendors, by virtue of handling disposition of landed properties among several parties in the past, see themselves as qualified. Sesan Ajani of Owoseni Land Agency, who went through the tutelage of a popular land owning family in Ibadan, claimed that land vendors were capable of securing safe and genuine landed properties for prospective buyers.

According to him, “we deal directly with the land owners. We are better than most of those that call themselves professionals because we know the landed properties of each family. So, nobody can trick us into midwifing the sale of fake land to another person,” adding that estate agents were closer to the grassroots.

Mr. Wasiu Salmon of Salmon & Associate (Legal Practitioners) queried the spiting of legal professionals as unsuitable for the real/estate agency business.

“By virtue of reading law in the university, a qualified lawyer must have had a full grasp of land law and selling of properties,” he said. He added that even any transaction without concrete legal binding might fail in future.

Mr. Yaya Ajagbe, an estate surveyor and valuer agreed that the estate agency business was an all-comers’ market, where everybody, who is versed in the act of facilitating exchange of commodities (land or building) between two persons, could come in.

Submitting that the basis of agency, in any field, was a contract which was governed by the Law of Contract, Mr. Ajagbe, a registered estate surveyor and valuer, however, said, “when agency now touches land, it is only those that are knowledgeable or skilled in land matters such as an estate surveyor and valuer, would be in a better position to handle such.”

Speaking further, he said, “the underlining word in estate agency is caveat emptor which means, “buyer beware,” stressing that anybody who was acting in the capacity of an agent was wary of that maxim while concluding that “estate agents may not be estate surveyors and valuers; but all registered estate surveyors and valuers are qualified estate agents.”

Corroborating Ajagbe, the chairman of NIESV, Oyo State chapter, who doubles as the Director of Lands, Ibadan North Local Government, Alhaji Kunle Ogunsola, said estate surveyors and valuers were trained to manage landed properties.

Alhaji Ogunsola, who also berated the bastardisation of the estate agency business, asserted that quacks abounded in other professions, warning the public that they could only reduce the risk of falling prey by engaging professionals.

Merits of engaging the services of registered estate surveyors and valuers, he said, included their ability to determine the state of any property, carry out title search on properties, give appropriate rent value or open market value in valuation report and manage properties.

While claiming that registered estate surveyors and valuers were capable of, completely, perfecting transfer of property from one party to another through a Deed of Assignment, added that they could as well on behalf of their clients, engage lawyers to prepare legal framework for the transaction.

Primary Mortgage Institutions (PMIs) by the authority of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s circular of 2002, are also empowered to embark on estate management activities such as selling and purchasing of landed properties.

The nexus binding every practitioner to the ever booming business is the charges on transactions handled. The general belief is that an agent is entitled to 10 per cent of the value of property midwifed but both Alhaji Ogunsola and Mr. Ajagbe refuted this. While Ajagbe said the professional scale of charges for registered NIESV members is subject to negotiation due to the value of the property and the current economic situation obtainable, Ogunsola disclosed that the professional body was, at present, reviewing the scale of charges.

Like Ajagbe, Salmon said negotiation on charges depended on the quantum or magnitude of the property in question, stressing that “there is the right to negotiate up or negotiate down.”

The only antidote to sanitising the business, according to both Ogunsola and Ajagbe were registered professionals which, they believe, would gradually ease the untrained practitioners out of the market.

While Ogunsola charged parents to encourage their children to go into the valuation profession and also admonished secondary school leavers to embrace the profession which he described as highly net worth, Ajagbe asserted that the number of registered NIESV members was not up to 10,000 for a population of over 120 million. Speaking further on insufficiency of professional estate surveyors and valuers, Ajagbe said even “not all registered NIESV members do practise estate agency, many of us are in the classrooms lecturing.”

Ogunsola gave the recipe for becoming a professionally trained estate surveyor and valuer.

According to him, passing five ’Ordinary Level credits in subjects like Mathematics, English Language, Economics and two science subjects would facilitate an admission to study Estate Management in accredited polytechnics or universities.

After the completion of either Higher National Diploma (HND) or a B.Sc degree in Estate Management, a graduate HND holder, from an accredited polytechnic, will sit for the Professional Qualifying Examination Stage 3 (PQE 3) while graduates of non-accredited institutions will sit for PQE 2.

Success in the PQE examination will enhance participation in the Professional Practice Examination (PPE) which will be followed by the writing of a Critical Analysis subject to the approval of a synopsis.

The Critical Analysis writing stage, however, is the entry point for a university graduate with a B.Sc degree in Estate Management.

Those that scaled through the Critical Analysis Stage (either through HND or B.Sc entry point) will now face the Membership Committee of the NIESV for an interview to become an Associate Member of the body and, thereafter, apply for full registration at the Estate Surveyors and Valuers Registration Board of Nigeria (ESVARBON).