Quicker fix to house sale complaints, Real Estate Agents Authority hopes

The Real Estate Agents Authority is hoping to cut the time it takes to investigate complaints, and aims to keep better tabs on the real estate market with better data.

Faced with continued interest in rapid on-selling of houses by buyers, known as "house-flipping", the REAA provided a written response to Parliament, telling MPs: "During the year we have increased the number of staff working in the complaints area."

That should lead to a drop in the time it takes the authority, which is independent from real estate agents, to handle each complaint against a real estate agent for alleged shonky behaviour.

The authority has got proactive in its investigations on house-flipping, and has investigated more than 300 of those sales.

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House-flipping is a common feature of the hot Auckland housing market, although cooling sales and prices may change that.

Last month, data from Homes.co.nz showed almost 700 properties in Auckland were sold twice in 2016, with an average profit of $87,000.

In the past year, 15 per cent of total complaints to the authority took more than a year to handle.

"We anticipate there will be a reduction in overall time taken to process a complaint, and with the percentage of complaints completed within one year will be 90 per cent compared with 85 per cent for the 2015/16 year."

The authority told MPs it was building a "data warehouse and data mart" to allow it to better keep tabs on the real estate market, as well as developing new feeds of "external data".

"As we build our capability in this area, we will be better positioned to understand the causes of problems and complaints," it told MPs.

"We will use these insights to develop campaigns and initiatives that will aim to reduce or help prevent the occurrence of identified problems and issues."

It hoped to then be able to develop public campaigns to help prevent "problems" from occurring.