Professionalising the real estate sector

Dealing with unprofessional real estate brokers is something everyone has encountered in some way or another. In most cases they come to our rescue when we are looking for a new place to stay especially when the landlord needs you out of his or her house as quick as possible.Some brokers have perfected the art of extorting money from both the landlord and the tenant at different intervals for the same reason. As a result of both parties being naïve, they have been cheated in the process. The Housing and Property Expo held on May 31st to June 1st, 2012 at Hotel Umubano, aimed at promoting professionalism in Real Estate business thus promote development. One of the exhibitors at the expo being the Real Estate Students Association of Kigali Institute of Science and Technology who are the pioneers of Faculty of Architecture and Environmental Design in the Department of Estate Management and Valuation. In an interview with The Sunday Times, Wilson Kainamura, President of Real Estate Students Association (RESA), explains why it’s important to professionalize real estate business. “The idea of starting up an association was to market ourselves and see how we can merge with the open market and existing practitioners in Estate Management and Valuation to make advocacy for our profession,” Kainamura explains. He further said that the Association carries out workshop and trainings on career guidance in Estate Management and Valuation with people and organizations that deal in the field of Real Estate. “We usually deal with valuers in the private and public sector, estate managers, mortgage officers, real estate investment advisors and many others. The greatest challenge the Real estate field faces is having unskilled people involved in the business,” Kainamura discloses. Estate management is the skill of managing real estate property through use of resources such as money, material, human labor and techniques so as to make the property income producing entity of the highest output within the minimum cost. According to Charles Haba, President of the Real Estate Association of Rwanda (REAR), as real estate practitioners, they are excited about the students forming an association. “As REAR, we support them with practical lessons in the field. The whole rationale is one thing, because our biggest single challenge in the real estate market today is quack brokers, lack of professionalism amongst the practitioners, we see the Real Estate Students Association (RESA) as coming in to narrow that gap,” Haba says. He said: “It’s in our best interest that by the time these students graduate, they will be as ready as possible to start practicing. What we are doing is dealing with Kigali Institute of Science and Technology, to combine the in class theoretical studies that the students do, with practical skills as they study. So they come to Real Estate Companies to do internship, workshops and trainings to get them ready for what lays ahead of them.”