The complaints related to customer service, skill and care, disclosure and misleading advertising. (File photo) Photo: 123RF
The Real Estate Authority is fielding a record number of complaints about real estate salespeople amid challenging housing market conditions.
The authority's 2025 annual report noted a 35 percent increase in formal complaints in the year to June 30, to 487.
It said 9 percent of licensees subject to complaints had findings of misconduct or unsatisfactory conduct made against them.
The authority said complaints related to customer service, skill and care, disclosure and misleading advertising.
Poor communication was also a common theme.
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But the authority said many did not raise issues that justified strong regulatory intervention.
Chief executive Belinda Moffat said the results indicated that most real estate licensees were maintaining high standards of professional conduct.
"REA is holding to account those who don't."
She said the increase in consumer dissatisfaction needed to be a focus for the industry, and some cases raised complex and serious matters.
"Licensees are expected to maintain high standards and to have the skills to navigate challenging market conditions. Fairness, transparency, skill and care are critical expectations of the conduct regulatory system we oversee."
She said the market conditions were currently challenging for salespeople and consumers.
"Prices are quite uncertain. We are seeing some improvements in price in some areas and other areas that price has really dropped, so people are trying to understand how do they either buy into or potentially sell out of this current real estate market.
"We're also seeing quite long times to sell, financial pressures on different parties and, with that, I think some of our consumers are having higher levels of dissatisfaction... there is more stress."
Salespeople would need to use different skills to navigate the market and communicate well with consumers, she said.
"Being a licensed real estate professional really requires high skill. It requires a lot of knowledge.
"They do need to be really well educated and prepared."
The authority offered tools to help, she said.
"Also they have to be thinking about treating all people fairly, making sure that people have been given time to do their due diligence on a house, if they are a buyer or if they are a seller, they've had time to consider the offers and make decisions along the way."
She said the increase in complaints highlighted the complexity of the real estate transaction process.
The provision of quality information was important to support good decision-making, she said.
There are 15,692 people with active real estate licenses in New Zealand including 12,300 sales people, 1930 individual agents and 605 branch managers.
But that is almost three times the number of monthly residential property sales.
There were 6346 sales across the country in September, according to the Real Estate Institute.
"We were particularly pleased to see the 18 percent increase in branch managers this year given the important role they play as supervisors of salespeople," Moffat said.
In 2023, there were 15,870 licences, down from 16,902 in September 2022.
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