The MahaRERA (Maharashtra Real Estate Regulatory Authority) newly established steering committee to suggest guidelines on training and certification of real estate agents has conducted first meeting on April 16 through Video Conferencing. In this meeting the stakeholders have suggested that from May 1st 2022, all Real Estate Agents wish to register with MahaRERA should have the certification. Moreover, it was suggested that the validity of the certificate should be of maximum five years only as the regulatory framework is dynamic and evolving. Therefore, the renewal of course would help learn the change made from time to time.
Anand Gupta, chairperson, Housing and RERA committee of Builders Association of India (BAI) said, "In every developed country, to become a real estate agent there is a standard practice and only after gaining the required knowledge about the industry they are qualified to become agents. This was not applicable here in Mumbai or anywhere in country so far. Also as MahaRERA has decided to do so our demand from BAI is that other states should also start similar practice."
The committee comprises seven members headed by the MahaRERA founder chairman, member of Mumbai Grahak Panchayat, representative of SROs, NAR, CREBAI, technical officer MahaRERA and any other member as co-opted by the chairman, from time to time.
According to MahaRERA, the agents are an essential element of the real estate sector, who connect with allottees and promoters and facilitate most of the real estate transactions. Therefore, they need to have comprehensive understanding of the real estate transaction in order to guide the allottees and prevent disputes.
Interestingly, with MahaRERA already over 29,000 agents have been registered. The committee therefore for these registered agents has suggested that a timeline will be fixed so that they too will obtain training so that when they approach MahaRERA for their registration renewal, the said requirement of mandatory training and certification will be fulfilled.
Furthermore, the members of the committee also discussed about the training institutions. It has suggested that wherever Industry association are involved , such trainings are more effective and useful. It was discussed that Promoter, Industry Associations which are empaneled as SROs and Real Estate Agent Industry Association, both being members of this committee, may be considered for empanelment for imparting training, either through their own training body or any related Educational/Training Institution nominated by them. Since many of these associations are imparting similar trainings in the field of real estate successfully.
The next meeting of the steering committee is scheduled on April 23rd this year to discuss and decide other decisions related to the initiative.
