REAL ESTATE INSTITUTE HAS WORKED TO RAISE STANDARDS

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30831, 17 August 1965, Page 13

REAL ESTATE INSTITUTE HAS WORKED TO RAISE STANDARDS

A half-century of striving to improve professional standards is marked by the fiftieth conference in Christchurch this week of the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand, representing 1720 members throughout the country. The conference was opened last night by the Minister of Finance (Mr Lake), and will continue until Wednesday.

Formed in 1915, the primary aim of the institute has been to improve the status of “the land agent,” and to bring greater confidence between him and the public with whom he deals.

Parent body was the Dominion Estate Agents’ and Land Auctioneers’ Association, which in 1915 represented only Auckland, Waikato and Wellington. Canterbury was first represented at the annual meeting of 1918, and from that point, the association grew steadily in strength and stature. At the end of the First World War, there was a great land hunger everywhere in New Zealand, particularly in the North Island. Prices rose to very high figures. During this boom, some sales were made at prices that were out of proportion to earning capacity. In a few cases, land agents came in for a good deal of odium over sales made to re-

turned servicemen and others, according to P.B. Foote, in a preface to W. J. A. Thomson’s 1946 history of the institute.

At that point, some of the land agents decided that improvement was necessary. Agents were needed, but their status in the eyes of the community and the standard of their work had to be raised. From its humble beginnings, the Real Estate Institute came into being with punitive powers over its members. Examinations were instituted, a code of ethics was adopted for the guidance and control of members, a journal was published, and other steps taken to improve the agent’s standing. Successive requests were

made to the Government for improvements of the Real Estate Agents Act so that it would give greater protection to the public, and at the same time strengthen the confidence which the institute was seeking for its members. Since 1946, the institute stepped up its efforts, and these were rewarded by amendments to the act in

1953 and 1956. These amendments did effect an improvement, but it was not until 1963, when an entirely redrawn Real Estate Agent Act went on to the Statute Book, that substantial advances were achieved.

The new act, sponsored by the Minister of Justice (Mr Hanan) introduced a fidelity guarantee scheme, operated by the institute itself, on all fours with the fidelity scheme operated by the Law Society. This scheme gives the public complete protection from what the profession hopes does no exist—the unscrupuluos land agent. Before its introduction, members had entered into individual bonds; but the safeguard was immeasurably strenghtened by its being placed in the institute’s control.

This is a very great change for the better from the days when any man with £lO in his pocket and no criminal record could get a licence as a land agent. While the new act does give a sound basis on which the profession can operate, the institute still sees imperfections in the law which it is hoping to correct. The institute’s president (Mr H. Y. Cassidy) sums up the institute’s aspirations in paragraphs of his annual report to the jubilee conference. “During this illustrious year, let the occasion be a mark of respect to that foresighted group of men who gathered together in 1915 and laid the foundation for this great organisation as we know it today,” he says.

As part of what the profession regarded as a great step forward, the act requires a complete audit of the fidelity trust funds, and sets out rigid disciplinary conditions, again to protect the public and the agents. Licences are still issued to agents by magistrates, but only after the applicant has passed an examination set by the institute, and has completed two years’ practical experience in the profession.

“Those wise men and their successors during the early years surely envisaged the conditions that prevail now, and the changes that have occurred, all of which, of course, have produced new ideas, new concepts new techniques and new problems. “I have no doubt that, as in the past, the institute will produce men with confidence, understanding, experience, knowledge and wisdom, with the times creating a new concept of our calling with its ultimate benefits to all.”