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The ACI
In early 2013 the Spanish Association of Real Estate Consultancy Companies, ACI (La Asociación Española de Empresas de Consultoría Inmobiliaria) was founded with the aim of professionalizing the Spanish real estate sector to instill in it transparency, stability, trust and liquidity.
A new beginning?
The belief is that with greater transparency in the Spanish property market there will be the chance for the sector to regain some of the trust that has been lost due to previous practices as well as undoing some of the damage that has been done to the sector’s reputation particularly since the onset of the financial crisis.
Founding members
The ACI was founded by the real estate consultancies Aguirre Newman, Knight Frank, CBRE and Jones Lang LaSalle. The companies employ a total of more than 1,200 people in Spain and represent approximately 80% of the Spanish real estate sector’s transactions as well as managing over 7million m2 of property in the country.
Action Plan
The association plans to professionalize the sector by providing both the country’s Public Administrations and its real estate companies with the tools, guidelines and knowledge which have been accumulated by the ACI’s members. Doing so, it claims, will provide the Spanish property market with stability, something that will benefit the country’s citizens.
Transparency
Transparency is what the Association feels is key to realizing its objectives. In Article 3 of Law 30/1992 of the Legal Regime of Public Administrations and of Common Administrative Procedure transparency is given as one of the principal operational guidelines.
The ACI wishes to operate according to that principal and to do away with the current opacity in the Spanish real estate sector which gives free reign to a wide range of speculative and corrupt practices that represent the problems that come with a lack of transparency.
Current situation
In a recent study that looked at the clarity of information provided in the 51 countries that receive the most investment in their real estate sectors Spain came in 16th place. Until very recently Spain was also one of the only European countries that lacked a transparency law with the accompanying guarantees for consumers.
The latter problem appears to have been dealt with thanks to the passing of the Projected Transparency Law (Proyecto de Ley de Transparencia) in July 2012. However, there is a still a long way to go for the Spanish property market to be truly transparent and, through this, be able to again become an attractive investment for foreigners and Spanish citizens alike.
It will be the ACI’s challenge to facilitate and speed up this process.
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This is welcome news and something I’ve been saying for a long time 🙂 I hope it’s not a subscription only membership based operation along the lines of the AIPP, there needs to be a properly run vetting system in place, and not just for those willing to pay subs. The big boys will probably all have to join and, a speedy redress remedy for customers needs to be in place too 😉
Personally I wish it came from or via the Spanish Government rather than a group of estate agents, it is Spain that needs to come clean and regulate the property industry 🙄
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I share some of Angie’s sentiments. You can bring countless laws they are meaning less if there is no enforcement and a timely remedy.
So ACI will sort the mayors at town halls, get crooked struck off from the college and ensure that they do not practise and deal with the useless judges ??? I wish them luck.
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