Property agents are people who help maintain a property and/or facilitate its sale. They work on behalf of both buyers and sellers. India currently has almost 30 lakh property agents; according to some reports. But most of them are individuals who leverage their networks to find business and sellers. But since the realty sector itself is considerably unstructured, it is not easy to verify the validity of such real estate agents.
The importance of these middlemen has increased considerably because of the proliferation of realty business across all territories in India. With a large number of buyers and sellers, the real estate agents offer services to deal with all forms of property transactions including completion of paper work and obtaining numerous official permissions as mandated by municipal authorities.
Why Should One Opt for a Verified Property Agents
Since there is no centralized system of separating property agents from other professionals, it becomes difficult to monitor their activities. Even though some organizations and builders now have professionals donning the role of property agents even when on the payroll of a company, an average property agent is just a person who is ready to offer services for a price.
There have been incidents in the past where property agents have sold unauthorised properties or have not made fair deals with buyers/sellers. Such agents cannot be tracked and usually are single players who operate in a fly-by-night mode. There have been such cases in numerous cities across the country.
There is usually no way to verify and differentiate between fly-by-night operators and the genuine property agents. It is not possible for a lot of people to verify how genuine an operator is unless they spend time to seek the validity of the operator in question.
The Housing Verification
Housing.com has established itself as a reliable online resource to seek property agents in major cities across the country. The portal verifies the properties as well as the agents who are listed on its site. Housing.com team comprises of representatives of the company who do a standard verification of the property agents as well. This verification includes checking their experience in the market, the tenure for which such agents have been active in the market and confirmation of their office location. Assume a person wants to buy properties in Bangalore. This person may want to hire the services of a property agent. Housing.com offers a list of property agents in the same manner as finding a home on its site.
One can go on the portal and choose the option of searching property agents. In the search bar one can type the name of the locality of a home buyer’s/seller’s choice. The map of that locality comes up with markers identifying the agents in the area. These markers highlight a cluster of agents and only when one zooms into that mapped area can one see the individual agent listing.
All agent details are listed on the portal after the representatives of housing.com have visited and verified the properties that they claim to represent. All such details are also listed along with the agent profile.
In Conclusion
Housing.com checks up on the agents in a top down approach. The portal’s representatives visit all properties which an agent holds and thus each of them is verified at source.
