Question - Access Canberra

1. In relation to the requirement for licenced real estate agents to annually renew their licences within the ACT, how are the notices of renewal being communicated to real estate agents.
2. How much notice are licensees being given in relation to the renewal of their licence/licences.
3. What is the percentage of licensees that fail to renew their licence before the renewal date.
4. Is the Government aware of any licensees who have failed to renew their licence/licences because of failure by Access Canberra to notify them of pending renewal.

(1) In the ACT real estate agents have a common expiry date – 30 June. On application, real estate agents can select a licence term of either1 or 3 years. The expiry date is printed on the real estate agent’s certificate. Courtesy renewal reminders are transmitted via email.

(2) Courtesy renewal reminders for real estate agents are usually transmitted a few weeks prior to expiry. Due to technical issues, the recent renewal reminders were emailed to real estate agents on Tuesday, 27 June 2023.

(3) Access Canberra has advised that the information regarding licensees who failed to renew their licence before the due date is not in an easily retrievable form and would require a manual process to check individual licensee files. The effort to collect and assemble the information sought to respond to the question would require an unreasonable diversion of resources.

(4) Licence expiry has been communicated to real estate agents, and the Agents Act 2003(the Act) makes provision for situations where someone has not renewed prior to the expiry of their licence.

The Act provides for continuation of existing licences until a renewal application is decided.

Additionally, if a real estate agent does not renew before expiry but submits a renewal application within 3 months after the day the term of the licence ends (30 June), when the application is decided, the licence is backdated to the day after the licence expired. In essence real estate agentshave a 3-month window after a licenceexpiry date to lodge their renewal application.

Access Canberra will monitor renewal applications received over the next 6-week period to identify whether licensees are actively lodging an application to ensure their continued renewal. Should there be a significant lack of renewal applications, AccessCanberra will send asecond renewal reminderand engage with the Real Estate InstituteACT (REIACT) to assist in reminding licensees to do so.

This is the same process undertaken by Access Canberra in January 2023. Following amendments to the Act in 2022 which, among other things, stratified real estateagents into class 1 and class 2 agents and introduced assistant agents (formally salespersons), it was identified that there was a significant decline in assistant agents submitting applications to renew. To ensure that the lack of renewals was not caused by any misunderstanding caused bythe new regulatory arrangements, a second mail out was undertaken. This was successful in having registration holders submit renewal applications.