Knowledgeable and competent real estate agent – how to evaluate and why is it important?

“My friend’s cousin can help you sell it cheaply – there is nothing complicated.” It seems that everyone has come across a similar phrase when there has been a need to sell or rent real estate. Although it can be one of the options, more and more people want to work with a professional in the field who knows the nuances and will be able to find the best solution then how to choose your agent and how to assess their competence. If previously there was relatively little control in this area, a little more than a year ago the law came into force that all agents must be registered in the Ministry of Economy register. In order to work as a real estate agent or intermediary, several requirements: • must be registered with the Ministry of Economy;
• must be insured;
• have their own control system for checking whether the funds have not been obtained illegally;
• during the calendar year, 40 hours must be devoted to raising the qualification. Not all agents are able to see the benefits of mandatory training. Unfortunately, this results in them not being up to date with the latest changes in the industry and unable to provide quality customer service. As one example of improving the qualifications of an agent would be knowledge of ratings. If they are in-depth, then it is possible to dispute the assessment received by the client, seeing the shortcomings. An agent must be competent to defend his client’s right to a fair and competent valuation. A person may be excluded from the register of the Ministry of Economy if all the necessary requirements are not met
conditions. Although it is currently possible to re-register, it is not a good indicator of the specialist’s reputation – the information about the exclusion is publicly visible for another 5 years after the decision was made. Currently, work is also being done on amending the law to limit re-registration after exclusion. As this register has been introduced relatively recently, the Ministry of Economy has a long way to go in improving the system. There are various educational institutions that provide courses/lectures in accordance with the regulations of the Cabinet of Ministers, which are registrable for raising qualifications. One such institution is skillbazar.lv, which was created by an expert in the field with 20 years of experience in the industry – Anita Ozoliņa. At the moment, the most popular courses from the offer are: • Contracts in real estate transactions: stumbling blocks, recommendations, weddings (10 academic hours);
• LAND – transactions from A to Z /2.0 (20 academic hours);
• INVESTMENT incubator (15 academic hours), Skillbazar.lv is not only intended for professionals in the field, but if there is a desire to deal with real estate
properties (for example, there are several owned by yourself) or if you are not 100% sure about the profession
suitability, then after completing the beginner’s course “Incubator” in 3 weeks, the basics of the profession are learned (basic laws, instances, placement of advertisements, cold calls, finding clients and how to do it ethically (as well as how not to do it), presentations, creating advertisements). It gives an excellent platform on which to build further knowledge. It is important to know that there is a possibility to report unregistered agents, then inspections are carried out on the basis of the application. The Revenue Service already carries out independent monitoring – following the transactions and comparing them with the history of advertisements (yes, the Revenue Service cooperates with advertisement portals).

Both buy-sell and rent transactions are checked. Knowing about the current requirements as well as the agents’ capabilities, it allows you to more objectively evaluate the agent to work with. Similar to doctors or lawyers, we want a specialist who not only has a lot of experience, but is also in continuous development and knows what’s new in the industry. So why should it be any different with a real estate agent?