If you are a property owner, you will probably be aware of the regular publicity, mostly adverse, about estate agents’ estimates of likely selling prices. The publicity is usually along the lines of would be buyers being misled, invariably by price estimates that have proven to be too low.

As a property seller, on the face of it, you should not be too worried about these alleged practices. However, in reality, there is a considerable downside to a vendor and not just because intending buyers may be antagonized. The real damage to you, as the seller, is the risk of missing the target altogether. By definition, the best buyers pay the top price. The chances are that the best buyer or best buyers won’t even get to see your property if the price estimates given are too low. Even if they do happen to inspect your property, they are likely to gain a negative view about its value, if that value has been deliberately understated.

“Bait” advertising is a common deceptive practice in many fields. “Quote ’em low and watch ’em go” is a well known retailing mantra. It’s also a pretty successful principle seen, for example, in the Boxing Day department store sales. It doesn´t make much sense as a technique, though, where the aim is to avoid giving any price discount. Estate agents caught engaging in this practice have been brought to account, deservedly. Some reputable estate agents, such as Mr John Keating of Woodend, have been outspoken publicly about the deceit inherent in this practice and the damage that it does to the standing of the estate agency profession. Mr Keating advocates that reserve prices, in the case of property sales by auction, be advertised in advance, so that no bid made at a public auction by an intending buyer is below the price at which the property will be sold. Mr Keating reports that his experience with this practice is its positive reception by buyers while securing, at the same time, optimum results for sellers.

Mr Keating’s approach has yet to be followed by estate agents at large but is being watched with considerable interest. His advocacy of published reserve prices for property sales by public auction does not yet have wide support and, indeed, he has been pilloried by some. A small but powerful group, not exactly tolerant of anyone who fails to share their views, have sought to punish Mr Keating by seeking his removal from his own professional organization, the ultimate sanction for misconduct.

This may be a case where the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Mr John Keating, to his credit, has opted to be the test pilot for a practice that has been standard procedure in the past, in the case of government sales of crown land. However, in the private sector, it is still a novelty. While time will tell, one can only express dismay at the attempts in some quarters to shut down debate on the subject, not to mention the parallel attempts to punish Mr Keating for his views.

Speaking of deceit, the latest regulator to enter our field has had quite a lot to say publicly about some estate agency practices. Last weekend, Dr Claire Noone, Director of Consumer Affairs Victoria, wrote that one of the ways that she prevents problems from happening in our field is by licensing estate agents – “making sure they have the credentials for the job”. What Dr Noone has not said is that members of the public are unlikely to know whether or not they are dealing with an “estate agent”. Dr Noone fails to point out that most of the “estate agents” dealing with the public are not, in fact, estate agents but are agent’s representatives.

There is a substantial difference between the level of qualification required, on the one hand, to obtain an estate agent’s licence and, on the other hand, to be granted registration as an agent’s representative. In practice, it is agent’s representatives that have most of the dealings with the public, simply because their numbers are so much greater than is the number of licensed estate agents. Dr Noone should make clear which are the credentials that she is talking about.

Our field is served well by a legion of hard-working agent’s representatives, many with abilities equal to those of licensed estate agents. We have yet to see Dr Noone or any of her ilk, let alone the dispiriting succession of Victorian government ministers responsible for her department, do anything to rectify the deceit inherent in the perpetuation of a dual standard of qualification.

Can you imagine dealing with a lawyer who is not a lawyer? Or with an accountant who is not an accountant? Our message to Dr Noone is to stop writing about how well she does her job and to recognize that the professional standing of estate agency will be raised by higher qualifications and not by bureaucratic interference and regulation.

There are some professions, lawyers and architects for example, that have government support for the setting of high professional standards of qualification. Each of those fields is distinguished by the extraordinarily high minimum standards required to be allowed to practise as a lawyer or an architect.

It is an important criticism of Dr Noone and her department that they believe implicitly that higher standards of estate agency practice will come about through punishment rather than through the raising of academic standards. The result of their casuistry is that, while pretending to be acting in the public interest, they are in fact scornful of the interests of the users of estate agency services.

It is, of course, open to the estate agency profession to follow the lead of other, less regulated professions such as accountants and valuers. Accountants and valuers, through their respective professional bodies, set impressively high standards that obviate the need for licensing or registration. The Real Estate Institute of Victoria has, so far, declined to make any move in this direction.

Estate agency draws upon so many disciplines that one could argue that its pre requisite qualifications should be higher than those of other professions, not lower. Those disciplines include law, accountancy, architecture, building, town planning, economics and valuation itself. That is an irony, because estate agency and valuation are two parts of the same profession and are interdependent. Estate agents require comprehensive knowledge of valuation principles and practice. Would you believe that Dr Noone’s course for agent’s representatives contains nothing to do with valuation? It’s understandable once you realize that she allows estate agents to offer worthless advice in the form of “ten minute free valuations”.