Real estate agents whose business has ceased to exist due to non-compliance with new legal requirements will probably be able to renew it. They will then have time until the end of this year to prove that the conditions for this work have been met. This follows from the amendments to the parliamentary amendment on real estate mediation, which reached the House finals after today’s second reading. It will probably take place at the April meeting.
The group of MEPs originally suggested that intermediaries have until the end of the year instead of the beginning of March this year to prove their expertise. According to the law, real estate brokers had to change their trade from free to tied. However, the draft was not received in time.
The new wording assumes that real estate brokers whose free trade has expired will be able to report a tied trade to the Trade Licensing Office after the amendment takes effect. By the end of the year, they will have to prove to the Office that the conditions of professional competence have been met. If they do not do so, their authorization will expire. New people interested in this job could work as a free trade by the end of the year, but exclusively under real estate agencies and without the possibility of offering money storage.
The proponents justified the amendment by the persistence of anti-coronavirus restrictions, when some intermediaries needed to convert their trade from a free to a bound trial. At the end of January, the Ministry of Regional Development estimated that dozens of entities did not yet have a professional qualification, one to two percent of the total number.
Originally, real estate agents had to prove their expertise by the beginning of last September. Legislators postponed the deadline by half a year last April due to the coronavirus crisis.
The owner of the Maxima Reality real estate agency, Vladimír Zuzák, was critical of the parliamentary amendment, according to whom there was enough time to pass the exam. From the beginning, he said, it was assumed that stricter rules would lead to a certain reduction in the number of brokers. In addition, Zuzák believes that the tests should be stricter and should be passed by all intermediaries in order to improve services in the real estate market. Many brokers did not have to pass the exam. Professionalism could be demonstrated by prescribed education or practice.
Source: CTK
