Login
iscover
From 1 July 2024, real estate agents and property managers will be subject to updated professional development and supervision rules.
The NSW government stated that the changes “aim to improve professional standards in the industry”.
From July 2024 to June 2025, all real estate professionals holding one category of class 2 or class 2 licence will be required to complete at least five hours of continuing professional development (CPD) training.
If CPD is conducted entirely online, the threshold is increased to 10 hours of mandatory learning.
The training must include a minimum of four compulsory topics set for their licence type.
For sales agents, compulsory topics will include: work health and safety obligations in residential sales and property management, new supervision guidelines for real estate agencies, introduction to strata, and underquoting and price misrepresentations.
Residential property managers will be required to complete the same first three topics as sales agents, with a course on compliance with habitability standards and landlord information statement as the fourth compulsory topic.
Short-term residential property managers, commercial real estate agents, strata managing agents, stock and station agents, and business brokers all have specific CPD requirements too.
In addition to the new training requirements, NSW agents will be subject to new supervision guidelines.
New supervision requirements include:
- Underquoting: Previously, reviews of estimated selling prices were required to be carried out weekly. This has now been changed to “timely”, exempting some properties from weekly review requirements.
- Agent supervision: Licensees in charge overseeing assistant and class 2 agents must verify completion of their work experience tasks in the Fair Trading logbook.
- Operational procedures: These must be created for each individual business or group; identify the laws that apply to the business; address risk to compliance for finances, licensing, qualifications and training, and professional conduct; and document the licensed roles within the business.
- Education and training: The annual training plan must include records of non-compliance with CPD and a plan for training in legislation changes throughout the year.
- Professional conduct: Operational procedures must address conflict of interest disclosure obligations, reporting obligations under the Privacy Act, and the use of third-party platforms.
- Business conduct: Principals must create systems to monitor whether the business is complying with operational procedures, and licensees in charge must record instances of non-compliance and any corrective action taken.
You are not authorised to post comments.
Comments will undergo moderation before they get published.