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Institute Of Estate Agents: fine paid: chapter closed   Article Date :30 Jul 2005 IEASA settles with Competition Commission. The Institute of Estate Agents has paid the final instalment of its R522 400 fine to the Competition Commission for having published recommended fee guidelines between 1999 and 2002. IEA national president Bill Rawson says that he hopes that this unpleasant chapter in the industry's history is now closed. The fine was calculated at R100 for each IEA member, and was borne by the regional institutes through which they are affiliated to the national body. The IEA published fee guidelines for several decades, with the knowledge of the old Competition Board, which was replaced by the present Competition Commission in 1999. They were last published in 2002. In 2003 the Commission made it known that it regarded tariffs and guidelines as a form of price-fixing, and in April 2004, after taking legal advice, the IEA abolished its guidelines with effect from 1 June 2004. It was nevertheless fined for having published them in the past. "The Commission took action against us shortly after we had abolished the tariff," says Rawson, "and after being presented with some very hard facts we came to the conclusion that it was better for our organisation and its members to pay a fine and bring the matter to an end." Rawson says not all IEA members were happy with the decision to pay the fine. However, he says, they might have been even more unhappy with the consequences if the IEA had refused to agree to pay. "We were in a situation where each individual member could have been investigated, charged, and, if convicted by the Competition Tribunal, fined up to ten percent of their past year's annual income. Each member would have been faced with legal costs, and tremendous stress, and the negative publicity that such a case would have generated would have been very damaging. "Though it certainly went against the grain, our national board decided that a fine equivalent to R100 per member was a very small price to pay to avoid that and bring the matter to a close." Rawson advises estate agencies to check their printed mandate forms, agreements of sale, and leases, and remove any remaining references to the IEA tariff. END CLICK HERE TO RETURN TO THE MAIN NEWS PAGE