Philacre aims to purge bad practices in real estate

CEBU, Philippines - In order to attract more investors and boost the country’s real estate industry, a newly organized group of real estate practitioners is now looking at the need to strengthen the image of its stakeholders.

The Philippine Allied Chamber of Real Estate Brokers and Licensed Salesmen (Philacre) has been formalized last October 2008 and it aims to be the voice of the real estate industry as it gets together the multi-faceted segments of the sector, which is composed of stakeholders such as developers, brokers, and licensed salesmen.

“The real estate industry here in the Philippines is dirty because some practitioners are doing unethical tactics and strategies just to get a sale. There must be a need to change, professionalize the industry and clear out the negative image,” said Philacre Inc. president for real estate brokers Anthony Leuterio.

“If people will trust us, we can have more buyers and more sales. We should just help each other and reach out to other practitioners, share stocks and inventories and also seek out more training,” said Leuterio during the recently held gathering entitled: “An Inside View of Real Estate Selling: Regulatory Framework, Current Professional Practices and Issues”held at the Sacred Heart Center.

In an interview, Leuterio said Philacre will serve as a watchdog for the industry to boost up customer confidence and also prevent and stop anomalous sales.

“We should be creating a push for the industry so that it can be revived back to its previous condition. We should echo the concerns of the real estate practitioners and help it survive the downfall that is brought by the crisis,” said Chris Malazarte, one of the committee members of Philacre.

He said that Philacre is the first of its kind organization in the country that advocates the revival of the confidence of people into the real estate business.

“This effort was never done before although the issues that we want to echo have been around but no one wants to talk about it. We are doing these efforts to protect the industry and our business. If we will continue to allow anomalous and unethical practices especially at these times of global crisis, there might be a collapse of real estate selling,” said Malazarte.

“As the economy worsens, more practitioners are going under the table to get a sale and this is adding up to the dirtiness of the industry. If we don’t change our old system how can we protect the business and the profession or change the industry and even protect our buyers? We don’t want these to continue so we conceptualized the group,” said Leuterio.

He said that after forming their group, they will be holding more sets of trainings and skills-upgrade seminars to help the real estate practitioners at these times of slowdown.

He said that Philacre is in partnership with other real estate groups such as CREBA as well as the real estate developers and currently they have the support of 80 percent of the total number of real estate developers in Cebu.

The group as of the moment has around 150 to 300 members, which spans among real estate brokers, licensed salesmen, real estate practitioners, developers and other stakeholders. — Rhia de Pablo (THE FREEMAN)