The real estate agents' watchdog will step up the monitoring of agents' practices as more first-hand residential flats are rolled out later this year. The Estate Agents Authority reported yesterday it had received 135 complaints against agents in the first half of the year, a decline of 27 per cent over the same period last year. It attributed the drop to the "concerted" efforts it and the trade had made. Complaints centred on the failure to conduct a land search or provide a copy of a search and providing inaccurate or misleading property information, the watchdog said. Authority chairman William Leung Wing-cheung said three of the complaints were related to agents making loans to clients in the sale of first-hand properties. There were 11 such complaints last year, a jump from only two cases in 2013. "The authority reined in the problem when it first appeared. We hope the industry will get the message that it is a serious irregularity," said Leung, noting it would take time to achieve zero complaints. Three agents were fined between HK$10,000 and HK$11,000 recently for making loans of a few thousand dollars to customers so they could submit multiple cheques to the developer and increase their chance of obtaining a flat in a ballot. He added that a new circular requiring agents to declare whether they have registered the intention to buy a new flat will come into effect in September. Leung said it could improve transparency and address concerns there might be a conflict of interest if an agent is involved in both trying to sell a flat and planning to buy one. A total of 188 agents were penalised and the licences of 16 were revoked in the first half of the year, the authority said. Leung said more people were sitting exams to become estate agents or sales staff, as prices and volume of properties continued to rise. A total of 2,218 candidates sat the estate agents exam between January and June - a rise of 21 per cent over the same period last year. But fewer than half passed.
