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The history of Maltese Real Estate has ever been changing. Real Estate continues to grow into a thriving and evermore complex profession, 18 EU member states are striving to launch a new initiative intended to take things to a higher level.  As the CEO of RE/Max Malta and Vice President of the Federation of Real Estate Agents, I greatly appreciate that the Maltese Government is launching a White Paper meant to regulate Real Estate in such a way that it can only be operated by fully licensed professionals.

In my years of experience in this sector, I fully appreciate this move which not only services to recognise the market and its importance, rendering ours a professional industry, but also a means of regulating the profession.

The aim of the White Paper should not only be to have licensed operators as agencies but also as individual licensed agents. As the White Paper prepares to be launched tomorrow (January 14), it will kick off a consultation that I trust will be highly interesting and rewarding. It should focus on the implementation of a framework that will be institutional, legal and regulatory, covering all forms of property exchange. I trust that this will successfully launch an Act or Regulation to control services and protect clients; that it will also establish a Code of Conduct between agencies/agents and their clients.

Real estate training programs

I personally feel there is a very real need to increase professional training programs in Malta, even whilst different EU member states are setting diverse levels at which operational licences can be achieved. As a profession we also need to establishing a co-ordinating organisation or authority which should have the role of monitoring all existing and future agencies, their agents, property consultants and managers.

We have worked hard in this regard and we are prime advocates in this cause. We have been since inception. As a company, we are proud to have our own Code of Ethics which is adopted seamlessly by our team of 260+ agents. We believe in training, investing strongly in providing free programs for our agents, covering varied aspects of knowledge within the trade. We believe in serious business, professional attitude and dynamic improvement, being constantly on the ball. Our hope is that our colleagues in the sector will follow suit.

I would like to publicly thank Dr Jose Herrera for pushing for this project to happen, over a span of several years and making it happen in the here and now. I strongly urge all players in real estate market here on Malta and Gozo to contribute to this White Paper and its development which should certainly be instrumental to further successes for our profession over the coming decades. As a strong advocate in this topic, I will be posting updates on developments as from tomorrow’s launch.