Pat Davitt, chief executive of the Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers (Ipav), has been appointed to the board of directors of the rather curiously titled National Association of Realtors (Nar).
Based in the United States, Nar is a real estate body that represents more than 1.5 million agents around the world, which raises the question as to why it doesn’t call itself the International Association of Realtors. Leaving that to one side, however, Nar would appear to have the best interests of its agent members and their clients at heart.
“Property is crucial to the daily lives of people and businesses, their wellbeing and security,” says Davitt. “Yet, right across the globe, the industry is facing challenges as governments grapple to get to grips with a shortage of residential property.”
“We [Nar] will be looking at the various markets across the world, at how they compare and to, among other things, get a deeper understanding of the effects of various interventions by governments, and try to identify best practices.
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“Ireland is, in fact, one of the most regulated countries. Also uppermost in our discussions will be the use of IT across the sector and the systems of training people to prepare them for the markets of the future,” says Davitt.
Speaking in his capacity as chief executive of Ipav, Davitt adds that the Government made “the right decision” to end the ban on evictions for rental properties at the end of March.
“Any further extension of the ban would simply be prolonging the inevitable,” he says, “and it would further exacerbate the situation where private landlords are exiting the market, thus reducing the amount of available rental accommodation.”
Regulations introduced in recent years have brought “severe unintended consequences”, he says. “We would be in a far better place now if no such regulation was brought in, particularly rent controls and rent pressure zone [RPZ] regulation, and instead the whole of policy effort concentrated on building more homes.”
“Had we managed to build more homes, we would now have lower rents in general for tenants and fairer rents for those landlords who, because their rents were on the lower side when RPZs came in, have been kept artificially low since.
“We would further call on the Minister [for Housing Darragh O’Brien] to encourage and incentivise landlords to bring property into the rental market by allowing them to charge market rent on these properties immediately,” says Davitt.
Jim Kinney, Nar’s global ambassador to Ireland, says the organisation is delighted to have Davitt’s experience in the Irish and European property markets available to the board.
“Increasingly the property market is becoming more globalised and this sharing of knowledge and expertise has never been more important,” says Kinney.
