Estate agents, contractors clash

Dumisani Nsingo Senior Business Reporter
THE Estate Agents Council (EAC) has written a petition to the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing seeking to stop land developers from selling properties, arguing that they should stick to their core business of construction. EAC chairman Mr Oswald Nyakunika said there was a need for the Government to come up with a Land Developers Policy, which would stipulate and regulate land developers to stick to servicing and building.

Failure by most local authorities to service housing stands during the hyper-inflationary period has led to them selling virgin land to private developers.
The performance of the construction sector, which is critical to urban land markets, also plummeted due to the high cost of building material and the rising cost of construction leading to some land developers opting to construct houses and sell them in a bid to enhance their financial standing.

“Technically speaking developers shouldn’t be selling land and houses. It must be Real Estates Agents who should be doing the selling. They hide behind the face that they own the pieces of land and the Act says that if they own the land then they can sell it,” Mr Nyakunika said.

He said EAC has since written a letter to the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing to address the “anomaly”.
“We have approached the ministry to come up with a (Land) Developers Act, which limits what they (land developers) can do and what they can’t do. We are saying they should just build and we sell because people are being duped by land developers where in some cases you find them selling one stand to five people,” Mr Nyakunika said.

Zimbabwe Building Contractors’ Association national president, Mr Obert Sibanda acknowledged that the roles of developers and investors in the country were blurred, with developers also being investors or owners of properties hence increasing the risk of investing in the property market.

“Ideally estate agents should be the ones that should be selling properties but you find that some land developers have overlapped into that industry because of the economic situation. It’s not only the land developers that are engaged in this line of business but the banks are now doing it as well.

“We all want to concentrate on our core business but the challenge is that our economic situation doesn’t permit that. It’s a challenge which in my view needs to be addressed going forward but it can only be such if the economy stabilises,” Mr Sibanda said.

However, Hawkflight Construction managing director Mr Mngane Ncube said estate agents should not seek ways to “reap where they did not sow”.
Hawkflight is one of the country’s leading land and property developers with an on-going housing scheme whereby it builds core unit houses and hands them to prospective home seekers upon completion with the beneficiaries paying between $120 and $130 per month over a period of 10 to 12 years.

The company has built houses in Bulawayo, Gwanda and Plumtree.
Apart from the housing scheme, Hawkflight Construction also sells stands to individuals.

“As land developers we feel the decision by EAC to try and stop us from selling properties is uncalled for. They should know that we inject a lot of money in developing the land and civil engineering and later on building the properties thus we have every reason to sell it to enable us to recover our investments, not to wait for them to do it for us yet they didn’t assist us at the developmental stages,” Mr Ncube said.

Meanwhile, Mr Nyakunika lamented the increase in the number of estate agents being de-registered for abusing Trust Funds.
“In these difficult times the temptation to encroach on Trust Funds has increased among estate agents. It pains me that the number of estate agents that have been de-registered has increased in recent years. In majority cases the main cause is estate agents abusing the client’s money.

“As a result we have also adopted stringent measures when agents submit Trust Funds audits. There are new requirements which must accompany all audit reports,” Mr Nyakunika said.