Two of the biggest frustrations estate agents experience with the Property Practitioners Regulatory Authority are the ongoing education and training issues and the backlog in issuing Fidelity Fund Certificates (FFCs).
To deal with the FFC issue, the PPRA has appointed attorney Johlene Wasserman as Executive for Licensing and Registration - placing her in charge of issuing all new FFCs, renewals and exemptions.
Wasserman is an experienced conveyancer and an accredited mediator, with an LLB from Northwest University and LLM in Commercial Law: Dispute Resolution from UCT. Before joining the PPRA, she held the position of Senior Manager, Governance, Compliance and Enforcement at the Community Scheme Ombud Service (CSOS).
Wasserman says empowering stakeholders in the property industry through training, education, and awareness is essential. However, most important is enabling property practitioners to provide a service to their clients by issuing their FFCs on time in keeping with the PPRA’s legislative mandate.
Technology
Wasserman says the goals are to minimise ongoing website downtime, clear the backlog on all outstanding FFCs, ensure that the correct FFCs are issued and upgrade the system to include all 12 categories of property practitioners.
The timeline will depend on how quickly the developers can upgrade the system. However, she hopes to get this done as soon as possible.
The backlog in issuing FFCs and other related issues has caused serious disruptions for hundreds of agents who couldn’t operate legally. Clearing up these issues would go a long way to restoring the industry’s faith in the PPRA.
Queries
The PPRA recently issued a list of all PPRA staff dealing with FFCs and asked that property practitioners only deal with people on this list.
“We have seen over the last few weeks that property practitioners said they have sent WhatsApp messages to ‘so-called’ staff members to assist with the issuing of their FFCs - only to find out that they have never worked at the PPRA, or they worked at the Estate Agents Affairs Board many years ago.
“We also request that you do not send WhatsApp messages but instead send a formal email to one of the people on the list - or call us. There are no other staff members assisting with your FFC queries at the PPRA,” says Wasserman.
She says that property practitioners are entitled to use the services of a third party to assist in obtaining FFCs. However, agents should make absolutely sure they are dealing with legitimate companies and follow the proper channels when providing FFCs.
Wasserman says she aims to ensure every property practitioner is assisted within the given timeframes. To ensure this, all FFC queries can be sent directly to her at Johlene.wasserman@theppra.org.za.
Writer: Sarah-Jane Meyer