Management wars
28/02/2004 NST- PROP By Andrew Wong

All’s not fine on the property management front. In a move that seems to have been incited by Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s remarks back when he was Deputy Prime Minister in September last year that many of our public amenities and buildings are in an appalling condition, several quarters have called for the Government to regulate the personnel involved in managing properties.

They propose this be done by amending current legislation so anybody involved in the art and science of property management is controlled by the Ministry of Finance’s Board of Valuers, Appraisers and Estate Agents, or BVAEA.

Is this the best approach to take, or will the move hinder - as some laws have been known to do - the clear objective of properly and effectively maintaining our country’s built assets?

Two formidable camps are currently arguing out the two schools of thought. One side is made up of two professional bodies, the Property Consultancy and Valuation Surveying (PCVS) section of the Institution of Surveyors Malaysia or ISM, and the Association of Valuers and Property Consultants in Private Practice or PEPS. On the other side of the fence is an alliance formed by the Malaysian Association for Shopping Complex and Highrise Management (PPK), the Real Estate and Housing Developers’ Association (Rehda) and the Property and Construction Committee of the Associated Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry Malaysia (ACCCIM). Also with the alliance is Kumar Tharmalingam, president of the Malaysian chapter of the International Real Estate Federation (Fiabci), who the ISM-PEPS team said, also supports “a deregulated state for the property management profession” although it is in his personal capacity and not via his office.

Before examining the arguments of both sides which you’ll find from page 8 of today’s issue, it has to be noted that the feud between the two camps has long been waiting to happen. Abdullah’s September observations were timely insofar as the need for a wake up call in the better management of properties is concerned, but the undercurrents bringing the debate to a head have been around for far longer.

In November 2000, the BVAEA said it had been instructed to set up a committee to look into the possibility of amending the Valuers, Appraisers and Estate Agents Act 1981 so that “certain category of persons” could “carry out property management, apart from valuers”.

The call was repeated the following year by then Finance Minister Tun Daim Zainuddin who urged the BVAEA to liberalise the profession to enable the number of skilled managers to be increased.

“This practice, now within the ambit of valuers, must be enhanced and made more widespread,” Daim had said.

The reaction to Daim’s statement was one of awkward silence among valuers, but celebratory cheer by real estate agents and other professionals who don’t carry valuation licences.

The BVAEA declined to make an official comment, as did the then-president of PEPS, Elvin Fernandez, citing “the sensitive nature of the topic” as his reason.

But time, it seems, can desensitise. Last week, Fernandez, now chairman of ISM’s PCVS section and Tangga Pergasam, current president of PEPS, gave PropertyTimes the first look at a joint memorandum aimed at what Fernandez said would “put things in their right perspective” and set the industry “on track to world-class management standards”.

Their proposed route has led to this debate, and in an effort to bring you balanced coverage, I spoke to representatives of the two warring sides.

Who’s going to emerge victor and chart the future of property management?

Maybe you want to pick a side; maybe even take a wager on it. Bear in mind one important thing, though: both sides are at loggerheads not because of some personality conflict or selfish private agenda. They’re at it because they want to map out a strategy that will lead to an overall improvement in the management of our built environments, so that our developed status can be represented. They just have different ways of going about attaining the objectives.