Complaints against estate agents rise with property prices

The Estate Agents Authority is investigating 15 cases of false or inaccurate claims in property transactions and has taken disciplinary action in one of the cases.

Ten of the cases come from last year - six from the public and four flowing from the authority's own inquiries. Five more false transaction complaints were received this year.

There were 588 complaints last year, up from 496 the year before. This year, 335 complaints have been received.

'With the rebounding property market in 2004, real estate advertising and promotional activities have been on the rise, so it is only natural that there be more complaints against them,' the authority's chief executive officer, Sandy Chan Pui-shan, said.

In one case, Centaline Property was reprimanded and fined $200,000 and estate agent Lai Chor-che's licence was suspended for two months from September 1. The authority started investigating the widely reported case in the second half of last year after serious complaints were received about false claims in property sales at Choi Po Court in Sheung Shui.

Centaline (Holdings) chairman Shih Wing-ching said Lai had since left the company. He admitted that agents were under pressure to come up with interesting property deals to get media exposure.