Dubai Property Boom: 567 new brokerage firms this year

Real Estate Regulatory Agency (Rera), the regulatory arm of Dubai Land Department, will introduce four new regulations to control brokers with the current property boom setting up 567 new brokerage firms
alone this year to date.

“We are going to introduce four new measures to control the brokers. We had over 8,000 brokerage firms with 10,000 brokers at one time, but today we have 2,205 firms with 5,021 brokers. We saw 567 new firms setting up business this year and we believe the numbers are still high for Dubai,” Marwan bin Ghalita, CEO, Rera, said addressing a seminar at Cityscape on Monday.

The four new regulations that will come into force from next year are:

* The passing marks for the mandatory test for renewal of broker’s license will be increased from 75 per cent to 85 per cent.

* Broker cards will be eliminated, but broker registration will be linked with Emirates ID

* Brokerage start-ups will be allowed only four broker visas to start with and any increase will depend on their firm performance

* Brokers, who fail to do any transaction for six months to 12 months, will have their registration cancelled

The total value of real estate transactions in Dubai rose to over Dh155 billion in the year to September.

The total value of transactions in 2013 were Dh154 billion, with brokerage commission
reaching Dh1.8bn.

Form A mandatory

In response to a concern from industry on property owners not signing “Form A” – broker’s contract agreement with the seller Ghalita said he was looking to making Form A mandatory for any listing of the property.

“If the seller is not signing Form A, the seller will not be able to list the property and sell it through any agent in Dubai,” he disclosed, adding, the multiple listing system would come in place soon which will limit the listings for the seller in the market.

DLD had made unified real estate contracts mandatory from May 2014 with the aim to protect the rights of the three parties – seller, buyer and broker - in any real estate transaction.

In July 2012, Rera had urged brokers to register all their inventories on the multiple listing system (MLS - Simsari) before August-end, however, it later launched eMart replacing Simsari.

“A lot of brokers came to us, asking not to implement the MLS. We are working the system now. All the listings on emart have validated details of the properties and not like online portals where the agent’s fill in the details,” he added.

New app at Gitex

Ghalita said that the agency was working on launching a Dubai real estate app which will be launched in Gitex with the possibility of a roll out for electronic signature.

[Image via Shutterstock]

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