RORY SALAZAR | Finance | CONTACT
A Real Estate Institute of Australia (REI) survey of 8,350 real estate agencies across the country has found that over 95 per cent of those surveyed said skilled-real estate agent shortages were having a “significant” impact on their business.
The survey’s damning findings come as no surprise after auction clearance rates fell to their lowest level in more than 3 years on the weekend, despite houses being materially cheaper than they were even 3 months ago and ergo easier to sell.
REI Vice-President, Ms Sara Jansen-Quaffes, told The Advocate that, “with buyer sentiment drying up, what agencies are realising is that they’ve employed absolute dumbshits as agents. They’ve spruiked their hair with gel, paraded around in a suit and slim-tie, waved a gavel about and just shouted large numbers at the feeding frenzy of what used to be huge crowds of buyers.”
“But they’ve never cultivated any skills in selling homes because the homes have been selling themselves for nigh on 2 decades.”
The survey’s findings have prompted the REI to urge Anthony Albanese to turbocharge Australia’s skilled migration system and use the September jobs summit to better address the skilled-agent shortfall.
Head of the Australian Real Estate Agents Union and former real estate agent himself, Mr Mark Knobs, said that upping the skilled-agent intake was a “no-brainer”, and placed the blame of the current skilled-agent deficit squarely on the former Morrison government’s capping of Australia’s total skilled-worker migration intake at 160,000 a year.
Backed by the Property Council of Australia, Mr Knobs is spearheading a powerful group of landed gentry in lobbying the government to prioritise above all else the temporary and permanent skilled-worker visa applications of competent real estate agents.
And the move is now gaining traction in Canberra.
“In light of plummeting auction clearance rates, clearly there is a deficit of skilled real estate agents in this country,” Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil told The Advocate.
“Which is no surprise given that any unskilled cretin could fall arse-over-backwards into the gig and take home massive commissions solely because they were lucky enough to live through the largest housing bubble in Australia’s history.”
Detailed projections by the federal government’s skills forecaster, the National Skills Commission, has found that across all industries Australia will need 1.2 million more skilled workers within four years to keep up with demand, and that over half of these will need to be real estate agents who know how to actually work for a fucking sale.
