Real estate: temptations of the order, needs for regulatory training and discipline obligations … Why so much state?

Free tribune

The real estate professions “seem to be unable to organize without the state-of-the-state intervention of the State, and the State feels it well,” said Henry Buzy-Cazaux, founding president of the Institute of Real Estate Services.

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It is a strange period as to the link between the real estate professions and the state when you dwell on it. He had never been projected so many regulations likely to organize professions, and not just any. We are talking about primary objectives, affecting the control of the orthodoxy of practices, competence and training, discipline, service standards, in short at the heart of trades. In detail, no less than four sites are open, with more or less maturity. Thus, the Minister of Housing, Valérie Létard, in reaction to frelated real estate diagnoses, proposes the creation of a professional order of diagnosticians and will entrust a parliamentarian an exploratory mission on this subject. Before it even expresses its idea in its plan to relieve DPE (energy performance diagnostics), the deputy of the Lionel Causse Lionel, formerly president of the National Housing Council, reflected in the drafting of a bill in this sense.

We know part of the diagnostic unions seduced by this design. Among the trustees and in the political class, even music, moreover old, with the principle of an order, which some would like to extend to all the activities today framed by the Hoguet law. Finally, the government is summoned by the Council of State, invited by FNAIM to judge the delay in the publication of an implementing decree of the Alur law of 2014, to enhance the training obligations for employees of the transaction and management before authorization to exercise. The decision of the highest administrative authority could concern another text of the same law tomorrow, called upon to appoint a control commission for the same transaction and administration of goods.

Disparity of the real estate profession

Do we measure what’s going on? The professions concerned, as estimable that they are, seem to be unable to organize without the state of the state of the State, and the State feels it well. Who is responsible for this situation? Two large culprits no doubt. First the French reflex, and not only French, to invoke public power for all causes. The state is presupposed to hold solutions to all problems. We deplore that a fraction of the professional body of diagnosticians or condominium trustees are lacking in their obligations? The government must find the remedy. Admittedly, an order refers to the professions themselves, but they will ensure that they are organized on state delegation and under its leadership, a government commissioner necessarily sitting within each order. What does that mean? That these professions did not know how to regulate themselves without such a framework of public authority. In the same way, when the 2014 legislator -Cécile Duflot at the time Minister of Housing -is encouraged to force real estate agents and property administrators to minimum training, it is by professional organizations. They are also the one who estimated a control commission.

Do these requests testify to the weakness of these professional bodies? Why do they need public crutches? One might think that they lack courage, or sense of responsibility. The subject is not there: the problem is the disparity of the profession, with a color chart of considerable requirements. In this context, professional organizations are struggling to install standards and need the competition for public authorities. This is what the state does: it creates a standard. We are thus witnessing the draft decree relating to training in a fed debate within the professional community; Between supporters of a smaller number of hours of training; Two days, and the supporters of a longer training, five days, with an internship in a company of the same duration. We even know that some would be satisfied that the text never comes out …

A significant proportion of non -unionized professionals

The Minister of Housing will settle and the height will be laid. Order? Same observation: between the most total promoters of the freedom, which find until the law of January 2, 1970 excessive, and the most orthodox, it is a big gap, which is found in practices: the least scrupulous coexist with the most rigorous. Then, none of these regulations can be effective without the commitment of the professions concerned and as such they are more on the side of deregulation than of regulation. Order? He would entrust the profession of trustee or diagnostic for the care of self -evident, to ensure that the training deemed essential are followed, to sanction the false steps, to settle disputes with customers and between professionals, and, moreover, to finance his own organization by the contributions of its members. The same applies to training obligations before entering the professions for employees: the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who issue the authorizations to exercise, are unable to verify compliance with the future obligation. As for the control commission, it will be made up of union representatives, placing them at the heart of the internal repression system.

And then the unions have a problem: a significant proportion of professionals is not in their ranks and only a public system of ordinary law can lead to the improvement of the whole professional body. Without this, no total guarantee for the consumer. In short, the deregulator state must rely on the real estate professions, which must in return have the realism and the modesty to appeal to him and to cease to imagine that they can without his involvement lay the foundations of virtue.