Real estate brokerage activities should be professionalised and often individual sellers need better training, especially when the market is in need of momentum after the COVID-19 pandemic, experts said.

Speaking at the Viet Nam Realtors festival held in Ha Noi on Saturday, Nguyen Trong Ninh, director of the Housing Management and Real Estate Market Department under the Ministry of Construction said the Vietnamese National Assembly has ratified the Law on Real Estate Business in which recognises real estate brokerage as one of services in this sector, contributing to the country’s development of property market.

“Development of brokers has changed the perception and habits of people participating in the real estate market. The purchasing of property products used to happened spontaneously. People now are seeking the support of real estate brokers,” Ninh said.

However, he said there were many estate broker offices operating with a lack of professional training. Some realtors have only provided home buyers with information, but do not bring convenience and professional consulting services to help customers quickly make good investment decisions. Many localities have not well managed realtors.

Statistics from Viet Nam Association of Realtors (VARs) showed that only 10-12 per cent of roughly 300,000 real estate brokers in Viet Nam are eligible to do the work though the number of workers in this sector is on the rise. The realtors are mostly operating in the two big cities of Ha Noi and HCM City.

A survey by the ministry revealed that up to 80 per cent of brokers said they did not participate or had not attended a training course for employees. The main form of training was that employees in companies teach their experience to new ones.

Tran Huu Ha, director of the Academy of Managers for Construction and Cities (AMC) said the realtor profession has prospects in Viet Nam as it played an important role in circulation of real estate goods. The growth rate of real estate brokerage averaged 15 per cent annually in the last three years, resulting in the rising number of brokers. It is urgent to provide professional training to brokers to help the real estate market stay transparent.

“The real estate market would develop more sustainably if the brokers are trained, fostered and managed more closely,” Ha said.

“Currently, the laws do not require individuals to have a certificate to work as a property broker. This has created a trend of individuals who do not really want to study and research on real estate brokers but sometimes just to deal with exams.”

He said the professionalism of real estate brokerage would enhance their role in development and integration. Therefore, in-depth training for estate brokers is necessary.

Nguyen Van Dinh, VARs’ vice chairman and general secretary said many directors of real estate trading floors were not qualified to carry out their duties and some housing projects were that were still in the development stage were being sold without any warnings about the status of the transaction.

In some cases, he said, this had led to the arrest and prosecution of some realtors for fraud.

“It is necessary to improve the role and legal status of the broker in real estate transactions as well as reorganise training and granting certificates to make the service professional,” Dinh said.

Brokers should be considered as an official and respectable profession with a system to manage the people with identification codes.

He suggested that the sector should have an app to look up brokers' information, including details about professional qualifications and career roadmap. This would create trust for the brokerage community and information transparency for customers.

Compulsory transactions through trading floors proposed

Dinh said the property market now has two type of products including those that are already built and others still in the development stage. Estate products which have not been built would have high risk during transactions.

“Therefore, we propose to supplement article that all real estate products must be traded through real estate floors into laws in the future. The trading floors would be responsible like notary public offices at the same time. They will disclose information to avoid any negative consequences during the trading process,” he said.

Sharing the ideas, Luu Duc Minh, AMC’s deputy director said for a market that lacks information, the role of real estate brokers was very important. To improve the real estate brokerage service and raise the level of the profession to catch up with the international trend, it is necessary to have solutions.

“In my opinion, the most important solution is to quickly improve the legal institutions and policies for real estate brokerage,” Minh said.

“At the same time, the Government need to strengthen control over the activities of the current brokerage centres; publicise planning information and further strengthen infrastructure system for real estate brokerage training in the future.” — VNS