Credit referencing system to benefit real estate industry

BABOKI KAYAWE
Staff Writer | Friday June 7, 2013 00:00

 

The development will help deal with challenges agencies and property managers face in pre-assessing risks potential tenants bear. The partnership between the Credit Reference Bureau (CRB) Africa and the Real Estate Institute Botswana (REIB) could reduce hurdles that stare players in the property market in their efforts to recover bad debt.

CRB Africa relationship manager Tsaone Kabomo said at the Blue Tree Golf Resort recently that the credit referencing system offers information that would counter challenges such as exposure to habitual defaulters, lack of holistic information to make prudent decisions and increased costs of renting to consumers due to delinquent debts and unobserved rotation of delinquent tenants within the industry.  

'Subscribers use the credit bureau to reduce credit risk and recover bad debts and being listed in the bureau drives debtors to resolve their credit position,' Kabomo said. This is done through listing bad debts in order to produce a credit report.

She said subscribers would obtain the report when dealing with tenants and customers in order for the former to know whom they are dealing with. Agencies could also be able to trace absconding tenants for unpaid rentals, improvement of tenant management and the ability to advance the industry portfolio and sustainability.

It has come to light that the crisis of fly-by-night practitioners in the industry has abated. Former Botswana Housing Cooperation (BHC) employee, Milidzani Majingo said prior to 1994, before the Kgabo Commission, which focused on land problems in Mogoditshane and peri-urban areas, any individual could claim to be an estate agent, valuer or property manager as there was no control regarding property professionals.  'During this period some Batswana lost their hard earned money to some unsavoury characters posing as property professionals,' Majingo said.

As a result, the public started losing trust in anyone called a real estate practitioner.Majingo said since the enactment of the Real Estate Professionals Act of 2003, complaints from the public regarding the conduct of real estate professionals have dwindled to negligible numbers.

This is in contrast to the fact that the number of these professionals has grown significantly. 'In the late 1980s and early 1990s there were less than a hundred individuals plying the trade of estate agent, valuer and property manager yet the complaints from the public were huge,' according to Majingo.  

The REIB launched a new logo and announced an upcoming exposition themed Green Living Housing.The event will showcase sustainable and low environmental impact building materials, low energy consumption gadgets and devices for the modern home, methods of minimising and recycling water and electricity dependence in and around buildings inter alia.