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The industry’s peak body has vowed to campaign next year for the abolition of everyone-gets-a-certificate training courses.
Real Estate Institute of Australia chief executive Amanda Lynch said “quickie courses” damage the industry’s reputation and need to be eradicated.
Ms Lynch told Real Estate Business that there is something fundamentally wrong about courses that offer no examination and have an “unbelievable” 100 per cent success rate.
“Thankfully, they exist only on the periphery of the industry, yet they run the risk of damaging the entire sector’s reputation,” she said.
“This is why we have been working very closely with the Australian Skills Quality Authority to improve the integrity of registered training organisations offering real estate courses.”
Ms Lynch said the association would also campaign to improve housing affordability and to stop the long-term decline in first home buyer numbers.
One reform it wants to see next year is the introduction of stamp duty concessions throughout the country for both new and established homes, she said.
Ms Lynch also said Australia should emulate Canada, New Zealand and Singapore by allowing first home buyers to access their superannuation.
“Survey after survey of first home buyers has found that an adequate deposit was the biggest barrier to purchasing a property, and allowing access to superannuation with the amount withdrawn repaid over a set period provides a very workable solution,” she said.
Ms Lynch said one move that would hurt the industry would be if banking regulators introduced tighter lending standards to cool the Sydney and Melbourne investor markets.
She said this “blunt instrument” would affect the entire market, not just one or two hotspots.
First home buyers would be hardest hit, as happened when New Zealand introduced similar controls, Ms Lynch added.
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