KEY POINTS:
The Real Estate Institute lines up alongside victims of dodgy deals tomorrow to give its views during hearings on real estate industry reform.
Law reform advocate Deb Leask is to speak to the select committee considering the Real Estate Agents Bill - and has described the institute as a "protection racket" after its licensing board cleared an agent who tried to buy her two Napier townhouses for almost half her asking price.
Bayleys was subsequently fined the maximum - $750 - on three charges, to which it had pleaded guilty.
The case prompted Associate Minister of Justice Clayton Cosgrove to regulate the industry and clamp down on "land sharks."
The bill sets up a new independent Real Estate Agents Authority to license agents and take over complaints and discipline. Aimed at giving better consumer protection, it also introduces harsher fines and penalties and requires ongoing education for agents.
It has prompted between 700 and 800 oral submissions and more than 1000 written submissions, most from individual real estate agents.
The REINZ is also due to give its submission to the select committee and will call for a "co-regulatory" approach which would see it retain some of its powers.
Its submission criticises the bill for taking a "scorched earth" approach to the present set-up by effectively making it redundant, despite its 30 years of industry experience.
While it accepts the need for a more independent complaints and disciplinary process, it wants compulsory membership to remain and representation on both the new authority and its disciplinary board.
Its submission calls for a "co-regulatory" approach, with the new authority in charge of licensing, registration and complaints and disciplinary processes with REINZ retaining control over setting practice rules and standards, a code of conduct, education and providing consumer information.
It says the new law goes too far by moving the industry from self-regulation "to a de facto Government department" which gives the Minister of Justice too much power and allows the new agency to both set rules and enforce them.
