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Business Reporter
THE Estate Agents Council of Zimbabwe (EACZ) has urged estate agents to follow professional conduct in their operations or risk being deregistered.

The council regulates the property sector in terms of the Estate Agents Act, which requires that all operators in the sector be registered with the council.

In an interview with Business Chronicle, EACZ registrar Bennias Gweme said the council was scaling up its measures to ensure estate agents operated lawfully.

“Our main objective this year is to ensure that all agents are registered before they operate. We want agents to abide by the Estate Agents Act,” he said.

Gweme said legal action would be taken against those who traded unlawfully.

“We won’t hesitate to deregister any agent that decides to operate illegally. Registering ensures recourse to justice in case of a dispute with the agents,” he said.

He said last year, three estate agents were deregistered.

“Last year in October, 28 companies didn’t renew their annual subscriptions and they weren’t allowed to trade until they had renewed their subscriptions.

“Overally, we deregistered three agents for failure to follow required procedure,” said Gweme.

Meanwhile, the estate agents council has suspended operations by one of Bulawayo’s property management companies, Net Seven, pending finalisation of investigations over an undisclosed matter.

“Members of the public are hereby advised that the following estate agent (Net Seven Bulawayo Branch) has been ordered to stop trading until further notice pending finalisation on investigations,” said the council in a statement.

Every year, EACZ carries out an audit to check for any irregularities in the operations of registered estate agencies in the country.

Zimbabwe’s property sector is reeling from the marked slow-down in economic activity with defaults on rentals and declining occupancy levels resulting in diminishing revenues.

The country’s major property firms have registered declining revenues, attributed to rising default and void rates.

In 2014, default rates in the property sector surged to an average of 60 percent from about 20 percent the previous year while void (vacancy) rates were above 10 percent, against acceptable levels of 6 percent.