First Visayas real estate leadership confab slated for May 11

CEBU, Philippines — At least 500 professional real estate salespersons from the Visayas will convene this Thursday, May 11, 2023, for the first Visayas Real Estate Leadership Summit.

Organized by the Accredited Real Estate Salespersons in the Philippines Inc. (ACRES Phils.), the confab to be held at Radisson Blu Hotel Cebu aims to draw out plans on how to address the fight against unlicensed developers, brokers and sales agents.

The first Visayas Real Estate Leadership Summit is a gathering of industry experts, real estate service professionals, and government regulators to tackle several issues that continue to hound the real estate service practice, thus limiting the growth potential of the country’s real estate sector.

“The gathering of all professional real estate salespersons is meant to show our strong campaign against this unlawful practice, support government regulators, and at the same time an invitation, especially for the unlicensed sales agents to become licensed sales practitioners,” said ACRES Phils.

According to the organization, these scammers target overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and the upcoming summit is an opportunity for the industry to unite and take a stronger stance against this illegal practice and protect the OFWs, who are the no. 1 market of the real estate sector.

OFW remittances account for eight to 12 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. OFWs mostly invest their hard-earned money in the property market. In 2022, money sent home by OFWs grew 3.6 percent to $36.14 billion in 2022.

Moreover, the Visayas-led summit also aims to strengthen and foster better partnerships between real estate brokers and salespersons to address evolving needs of the market in this post-pandemic business climate.

ACRES Phils. believes real estate salespersons also need strong industry backing as they are the ones at the forefront of actively selling real estate properties across the country. In fact, 80 percent of the real estate sales come from the licensed salespersons.

ACRES Phils. has invited the first Professional Regulatory Board of Real Estate Service chairman Dr. Eduardo Ong, seasoned management and real estate consultant, educator, and licensed real estate professional as one of the speakers of the Visayas Summit.

Ong, who is also a college dean professor for BS Real Estate at Lyceum of Alabang, will also be joined by officials and representatives from the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development (DHSUD), Professional Regulation Commission (PRC), and Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag-Ibig).

ACRES Philippines is the country’s first and largest organization of accredited real estate salespersons seeking to work harmoniously and collaboratively with professionals in the real estate service, regulatory agencies, real estate organizations, property companies, policymakers, and advocacy groups.

The organization was founded in 2021 and registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

ACRES supports the endeavors of salespersons in furthering their learnings, ethical standards, protection of their rights to free and fair practice, upliftment of their well-being, and due representation and inclusion on matters of their trade and prosperity.

ACRES Phils recently held its Mindanao leg of Real Estate Leadership Summit, which was attended by hundreds of Mindanao-based real estate salespersons. — (FREEMAN)