Tighter regulation for property brokers

New rules concerning how sellers offer property are on top of the agenda for property brokers.

Currently, sellers can offer property through as many agents as they like, leading, brokers say, to inflated prices. Instead, Dubai agents would like to be able to charge sellers a fee to deter them from listing with others.

“The best thing they could do is try and control sellers,” says Gregory Antioch, a senior sales negotiator at Smith and Ken Real Estate. “At the moment, if a buyer goes through three or four different agents, the property owner thinks ‘great, I can force the price up’. But if they set a standard by which agents could charge sellers for listing their property, then people would think twice.”