The T&T re­al es­tate in­dus­try has seen an uptick in ac­tiv­i­ty, most­ly in res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties be­tween $1.5 mil­lion and $3 mil­lion. This was con­firmed by Mark Edghill, the im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Re­al Es­tate Agents (AREA), dur­ing an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian last week.

Edghill, who has served as AREA pres­i­dent for the past eight years, said the in­crease in ac­tiv­i­ty is due to at­trac­tive in­ter­est rates and job se­cu­ri­ty in the mid­dle-in­come brack­et as well as the flex­i­bil­i­ty of prop­er­ty prices.

He not­ed that the pan­dem­ic af­fect­ed spend­ing pow­er and saw an in­crease in in­ven­to­ry com­pet­ing for the same buy­ers/ten­ants.
“If it is a first-time home­own­er, you have the stamp du­ty ex­emp­tion, which is a sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit and sav­ing, which makes it more af­ford­able,” Edghill high­light­ed.

Al­so, he said some­thing that af­fect­ed the re­al es­tate in­dus­try, is peo­ple who were ap­proved for mort­gages be­fore the pan­dem­ic, be­cause of the loss of em­ploy­ment or their change in job sta­bil­i­ty, their mort­gage of­fer from the bank fell through, so the sale of the prop­er­ty was ter­mi­nat­ed.

While the in­ven­to­ry for re­tail spaces is still preva­lent on the mar­ket, Edghill said new busi­ness­es are not tak­ing the risk of oc­cu­py­ing big spaces.

In June, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice re­port­ed an in­crease in land fraud and for the year there were 35 re­ports of land fraud with a to­tal amount of $9,874,283.36 com­pared to last year’s fig­ure of $4,459,525.
The po­lice not­ed that fraud­sters not on­ly use forged doc­u­ments from state agen­cies but some­times pose as le­git­i­mate prop­er­ty own­ers to lure po­ten­tial vic­tims.
AREA’s im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent said, in or­der to pro­tect the 200 plus mem­bers of the as­so­ci­a­tion, it held work­shops with the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit of Trinidad and To­ba­go (“the FI­UTT”) and the Fraud Squad to ed­u­cate the agents on how to be vig­i­lant and on how to iden­ti­fy pos­si­ble fraud.

“In terms of land fraud, it comes back to the same type of ac­tiv­i­ty that will take place with a prop­er­ty, where peo­ple are us­ing fraud­u­lent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. They will take their ID and change the name on it to match the name on the ti­tle of a prop­er­ty or deed. Not on­ly agents can get caught but lawyers as well, be­cause every­thing looks le­git­i­mate when the per­son presents the ID and doc­u­ments,” Edghill ex­plained.

He said it was im­por­tant for agents to con­duct due dili­gence and scru­ti­nise doc­u­ments and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion that look ab­nor­mal.
“You al­ways have sce­nar­ios that do not match, which is a red flag and then you must take the time to fur­ther in­ves­ti­gate what is hap­pen­ing.

“Some­times in the fraud as­pect, you are look­ing at things like if peo­ple are look­ing to re­ceive the mon­ey on a trans­ac­tion, but giv­ing you mul­ti­ple places to de­posit it, or they want cash. Agents have many checks and bal­ances avail­able through the bank­ing sys­tem,” Edghill out­lined.

The for­mer AREA pres­i­dent al­so ad­dressed the is­sue of the Re­al Es­tate Agents Bill 2020.
He said af­ter decades of work, AREA suc­ceed­ed in 2017 in forg­ing 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 the leg­is­la­tion now awaits procla­ma­tion by the Pres­i­dent.
“Sev­er­al amend­ments were rec­om­mend­ed, and AREA is wait­ing on a re­sponse from the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs, on whether those amend­ments would be ac­cept­ed, to en­able the act to be bet­ter func­tion­al. We are al­so wait­ing on in­for­ma­tion on the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion from the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al, which would give us all the rel­e­vant cri­te­ria for qual­i­fy­ing and main­tain­ing a li­cense as a re­al es­tate agent,” he re­marked.
Get­ting the leg­is­la­tion to be laid in Par­lia­ment, Edghill said, was a ma­jor achieve­ment for AREA.
Edghill un­der­scored that the bill de­fines what a re­al es­tate busi­ness is and is not, who can legal­ly en­gage in re­al es­tate busi­ness. It pro­pos­es new guide­lines for re­al es­tate agents, de­vel­op­ers, and prop­er­ty man­agers.

The bill on the Par­lia­ment’s web­site states that both bro­kers and sales as­so­ciates must be li­censed and list­ed in pub­lic and pri­vate reg­is­ters so key in­for­ma­tion about their op­er­a­tions is im­me­di­ate­ly known to the pub­lic and the au­thor­i­ties.
Clause 80 of the bill em­pow­ers the Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs, a port­fo­lio held by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, to es­tab­lish a code of ethics for re­al es­tate agents.

Touch­ing on the in­crease in the num­ber of agents in the in­dus­try, the im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent stat­ed that one of the main chal­lenges is that not every­one is seek­ing to do it the right way or pro­fes­sion­al­ly.
“We have peo­ple who would go through the ROYTEC train­ing pro­gramme and get the ba­sic un­der­stand­ing of how to op­er­ate re­al es­tate, but in­stead of go­ing and work­ing with an ex­pe­ri­enced re­al es­tate bro­ker to gain the prac­ti­cal knowl­edge and on-the-ground ex­pe­ri­ence they will open their bro­ker­age, and then de­cide to of­fer ser­vices to peo­ple with ab­solute­ly no ex­pe­ri­ence and there­fore mis­lead peo­ple.

This could lead to peo­ple en­ter­ing in­to bad agree­ments and some cus­tomers lose de­posits, he em­pha­sised.

AREA now has a new pres­i­dent Sal­ly Singh who was elect­ed dur­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion’s an­nu­al meet­ing, which was held on Ju­ly 26.
Edghill said af­ter serv­ing as pres­i­dent for the past eight years he be­lieves it’s time he steps down to­geth­er to fo­cus on his busi­ness Key West Re­al Es­tate.
“When I took up re­spon­si­bil­i­ty at AREA, I took it very se­ri­ous­ly, and as a re­sult with a lot of peo­ple de­pend­ing on me to lead, it took prece­dence over my busi­ness. I will al­so now be ex­pand­ing in­to con­sult­ing busi­ness de­vel­op­ment, as well as oth­er busi­ness ven­tures,” he ex­pressed.

How­ev­er, Edghill said he will still be rep­re­sent­ing AREA as it falls un­der the 56 ser­vices sec­tors that Trinidad and To­ba­go Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI). He has been the pres­i­dent of the TTC­SI for the past two and a half years.

Asked what he want to see with­in the in­dus­try in the fu­ture, the im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent of AREA said more for­eign in­vest­ment, con­struc­tion, more ho­tels, and the de­vel­op­ment of the tourism sec­tor for va­ca­tion homes.