MIEA’s MAREC SUMMIT: “Change or Die”.

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MIEA MAREC Launches with #Myrealagents PSA and 4 New App Services under Lim Boon Ping’s 2020 leadership.

MIEA’s MAREC (Malaysia Real Estate Conference) Summit 2020 kicks off their 34th annual conference on 28 February 2020 with multiple announcements of technology focused initiatives to improve the industry practices and with a stream of 32 speakers and break out sessions spread over the 2 days at the Berjaya Times Square Hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

We sat through the long speeches and summarized the important bits that you may find important to know.

Here’s what you need to know that was announced in the MIEA’s MAREC Summit 2020 event;

  • #MyRealAgents – MIEA’s new PSA to take on the 2014’s Itsillegalanditsyourfault campaign that was launched by LPPEH.
  • MIEA Agent Data app – MIEA’s new tech initiative to offer recent transaction info (chargeable).
  • MIEA Insure Tech – Proffesional Indemnity (PI) for individuals (additional protection layer on top of brokerage PI’s).
  • MIEA Fintech partnership with Finology – Instant loan check to help qualify serious buyers.
  • MIEA MLS program – B2B platform for Exclusive listings only.

2020 MIEA’s President, Mr Lim Boon Ping officiating the launch of MAREC Summit.

Let’s dive deeper into each topic below, with MIEA’s great ambitions, we’ll observe and update this post later to see if any of the ideas are fully realised. Either way, we believe it could improve industry standards, one step at a time or all at once.

#Myrealagents

Screenshot taken from myrealagents.com site, with only a linkback to LPPEH’s search site, it’s mostly just basic information.

MIEA’s Launch of their PSA (Public Service Announcement) #Myrealagents is just a take on creating awareness for buyers to deal only with legitimate Agents with a valid Tag.
Their long campaign definition: “to raise awareness especially among first-time homebuyers and renters on the need to choose Registered Estate Agents or Negotiators for their property needs due to the continuous number of cases of Malaysians being cheated out of their hard-earned savings or their interest being compromised by unscrupulous illegal brokers.”

It’s a mouthful, but their hearts are in the right place to protect buyers. We just hope that the RM200k budget will be spent wisely to get the message across to the unsuspecting buyers as this event was only targeted to Agents.

To make an observation, it looks a lot more of a re-launch PSA campaign that was started by LPPEH in 2014 with the support of MIEA, PEPS and RIS. Though, we have to acknowledge that the relaunch is a lot better than the former.

The previous campaign had an odd name, “It’s Illegal and it’s your fault” with the idea of name-shaming those who may have fell prey to unscrupulous agents. The campaign website is expired and the only thing that survived on was the facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Itsillegalanditsyourfault/

LPPEH’s 2014 PSA campaign (close sources shared that close to RM1 mil was spent on it). Today, apparently there are still many buyers who fall prey to scammers under the pretentious guise of Agents.

MIEA Agent Data app

“A game-changer” application to capture property transactions when the Earnest Deposit is collected in a matter of weeks instead of the 3-4 month data released after the transactions are done. Not sure how much data points would need to be captured first before the app would add value, as MIEA will not be using data from official transactions. It was mentioned that this service is would be a charged at a low rate but MIEA has not released any official numbers on it. We learned that it would be similar to what brickz.my or Edgeprop.my/transactions has to offer.

To our understanding, the usual methods for Agents to do a comparison check is to take the official transaction data between a range of 1-3 years worth of transactions when comparing properties that are for sale. This is to see if the trend of prices are on a steadier growth/slow expectancy, but knowing a transaction as recent as the past 3 weeks will not make much of a difference, as more past data is required to properly estimate the right price of sale, so the 3 months waiting period for the official data is not a dealbreaker.

We tried downloading the app and had issues signing up as it kept freezing at the signup page. Does it work for you guys? You could download MIEA Agent Data App from your local appstore/google play.
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. We’d like to test the app out and give it a fairer review.

MIEA “Insure Tech”

Trying to jump on the bandwagon of moving fast to keep up against disruption, MIEA is partnering up a local Insurance player to offer Professional Indemnity (PI) insurance for the client’s account to individuals holding REN, PEA, REA licenses. As the deal was inked at the same time as the event, more details about the said Insurance plan will be available within the next 2 months according to Lim Boon Ping.

It’s not a mandatory requirement for Agents to get this plan as there’s already an existing PI insurance covering all real estate staff at the Real Estate Agency level, covering at least RM50-100K protection against losses against the staff/company.

A quick breakdown of what most typical Professional Indemnity Insurance for Agency coverage looks like:
COMPENSATION FOR COURT ATTENDANCE
(A) ANY PRINCIPAL, PARTNER OR DIRECTOR
OF THE NAMED INSURED
(B) ANY OTHER EMPLOYEE OF THE NAMED
INSURED

DISHONEST, CRIMINAL OR MALICIOUS ACT OR OMISSION OF EMPLOYEE IN THE AGGREGATE FOR THE POLICY PERIOD
INQUIRY COSTS IN THE AGGREGATE FOR THE POLICY PERIOD
MITIGATION COSTS IN THE AGGREGATE FOR THE POLICY PERIOD
PUBLIC RELATIONS EXPENSES IN THE AGGREGATE FOR THE POLICY PERIOD

Finology

From the guys behind loanstreet.my and loanplus, comes a dedicated service to Agents who are looking to add value to their client by offering them loan checks within minutes. No mention of pricing for a check, but the service would give the Agent and Client confidence if their wanted property is within their budget range for the loan to be approved or not.

MLS platform

MLS, also known as Multi Listing Services is ) is a database established by cooperating real estate agents to provide data about properties for sale. An MLS allows Agents to see one another’s listings of properties for sale with the goal of connecting homebuyers to sellers. Under this arrangement, both the listing and selling Agent benefit by consolidating and sharing information and sharing of commissions.

We find this would be the most interesting announcement yet made to the public, as it’s something that everyone has always wondered if it worked in Malaysia and expectations are running high to see this feature become a reality to help give Agents an edge by enabling quicker deals over a co-agency / co-brokering.

MIEA expect to launch their MLS platform partnership with Cloudron in May 2020, within 2 months after their MAREC Summit in Kuala Lumpur.

The MLS platform would only take in exclusive listings. At the point of data entry, all the details of the property are recorded and will be made available to all Agents on the platform for co-brokering. This may be a hurdle itself for Agents as Malaysia’s real estate market does not practice Exclusive Listings widely.

Most MLS’ tend to offer similar propositions, but yet there are many databases that are subscribed to. to so many database’s itself in the US for example, the most useful ones are usually the ones with the biggest database. For MIEA, this would be quite a feature to pull off, but we will be rooting for them as it does bring up the professional standards of Estate Agents in Malaysia.

Let us know in the comments below if you have your thoughts about any of the services that MIEA plans to launch.

TheRooftalks.com is a media platform reporting on news and lifestyle on the Real Estate marketing in Malaysia.

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  1. Soma Sundram

    A great article capturing the full essence of our thoughts in developing these apps. We are looking fiwr feednack and ideas to help us to move this for the benefit of members.
    Soma Sundram
    CEO -MIEA


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