The General Authority for Real Estate intensified its oversight of the real estate market during September, through joint field visits and auditing of thousands of advertisements and real estate offices, in addition to expanding the scope of electronic monitoring on digital platforms and channels.
The Authority, in cooperation with relevant government agencies, carried out 37 joint inspection tours during the month, which included visiting 464 real estate establishments in a number of regions of the Kingdom, with the aim of ensuring compliance with real estate legislation, most notably the Real Estate Brokerage System, in addition to verifying the competencies of the participating government agencies.
The authority explained that field work is one of the paths it relies on to regulate the real estate market, noting that its supervisory teams carried out about 14,900 field supervisory audits of billboards and real estate offices during September.
The audits resulted in the detection of a number of violations, including practicing real estate brokerage or providing real estate services without obtaining a valid license, in addition to not taking the necessary care to verify the accuracy of the information obtained from the property owner or the beneficiary.
The violations also included the failure to clearly state the licensee's name or license number in real estate advertisements. As part of its market oversight, the General Authority for Real Estate received 1,542 real estate-related reports through its various channels during the same period, all of which were addressed and resolved.
In terms of digital monitoring, the number of electronic surveys carried out by the Authority exceeded 30,674 thousand operations, as part of its efforts to monitor digital channels and real estate platforms and to verify the regularity of advertisements and digital real estate brokerage practices in accordance with regulations and bylaws.
The General Authority for Real Estate called on all brokers and real estate service providers to adhere to the rules and regulations of the Real Estate Brokerage System and its bylaws, and to review the violations in order to avoid the prescribed penalties, which include warnings, suspension or cancellation of the license, in addition to financial fines of up to 200,000 riyals.
