Pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Re­al Es­tate Agents (AREA), Mark Edghill, is sig­nalling that com­mis­sions on prop­er­ty trans­ac­tions may be head­ing high­er.

Speak­ing at AREA’s an­nu­al pub­lic sem­i­nar last Wednes­day ti­tled To­wards a Brighter Fu­ture, Edghill said the vi­a­bil­i­ty of many re­al es­tate agen­cies had been sore­ly test­ed over the past three years, es­pe­cial­ly with the COVID-19 re­stric­tions.

He said the board of AREA be­lieves that now is the time to bring re­lief to this sit­u­a­tion and its mem­bers “by rec­om­mend­ing the ad­just­ment and in­crease of the lev­els of com­mis­sion charged in every trans­ac­tion.”

“This in­crease will work to­wards a brighter fu­ture for the in­dus­try as a whole, by ac­tu­al­ly restor­ing com­mis­sion rates to the lev­els set by AREA in the 1980s and which are present­ly seen across the re­gion and in most in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

“It is our po­si­tion that there is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for re­al es­tate pro­fes­sion­als in Trinidad and To­ba­go to be work­ing at a 50 per cent dis­ad­van­tage com­pared to re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al rates.”

Pro­vid­ing clar­i­ty to the AREA pres­i­dent’s com­ments, a mem­ber of the as­so­ci­a­tion told Sun­day Busi­ness that re­al es­tate com­mis­sions through­out the re­gion and in North Amer­i­ca are in the six per cent range, while com­mis­sions lo­cal­ly are about three per cent.

“We will be launch­ing a sen­si­ti­sa­tion cam­paign in June to pro­mote the new com­mis­sion struc­tures and we would need the sup­port of all re­al es­tate pro­fes­sion­als na­tion­wide to sup­port this ini­tia­tive to re­store the fair mar­ket in­come for our agents,” Edghill told the an­nu­al sem­i­nar, which was vir­tu­al this year.

The AREA pres­i­dent al­so ad­dressed the is­sue of the leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing the sec­tor.

He said af­ter decades of work, AREA at last suc­ceed­ed in 2017 to forge a part­ner­ship with the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs to draft a bill that passed through Par­lia­ment on June 1, 2020.

De­scrib­ing the bill as half a step for­ward, Edghill said since the leg­is­la­tion now awaits procla­ma­tion by the Pres­i­dent, AREA has been af­ford­ed the time to do some se­ri­ous work on its short­com­ings.

He said an analy­sis and com­pi­la­tion of some 90 board-rec­om­mend­ed amend­ments were sub­mit­ted to the of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ear­li­er this year.

“Our in­ten­tion is to lob­by for these amend­ments to be in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the act pri­or to the procla­ma­tion. They are amend­ments we lob­bied hard for in 2020, as well as new op­er­a­tional is­sues and struc­tur­al dis­con­nects cre­at­ed by the act that with­out ques­tion need to be re­solved,” said the AREA pres­i­dent.

He said the as­so­ci­a­tion has a sec­ond chance now to per­suade the AG of the im­por­tance of these changes to the en­tire op­er­a­tion of the re­al es­tate sec­tor and its in­di­vid­ual prac­ti­tion­ers.

Ad­dress­ing the lo­cal re­al es­tate mar­ket, Edghill said that over the past year, there has been an in­crease in the mar­ket ac­tiv­i­ty in res­i­den­tial sales most­ly be­low $2.5 mil­lion and rentals be­low $9,000.

“We con­tin­ue to see the sup­ply of mid­dle-in­come hous­ing de­vel­op­ments to sat­is­fy this de­mand with sev­er­al projects un­der­way and near­ing com­ple­tion,” said Edghill.