The Federation of Estate Agents is no longer affiliated to the Malta Developers’ Association, saying it wanted to have its own voice.

Kevin Buttigieg of ReMax, who took over as FEA president a few months ago, said he had always been against the affiliation agreement signed in June 2015.

“Our clients sometimes buy properties from developers, so if there is a problem, there would be an obvious conflict of interest,” he said.

At a hurriedly-called meeting a few days ago, the federation council decided to end its affiliation with the association though Mr Buttigieg stressed this did not mean the two entities would not work together in future.

“Of course, we need to work hand-in-hand with developers but we do not need to be under their wing,” he said.

Mr Buttigieg flatly denied that the decision to end the affiliation was anything to do with the federation being left out of the recently set up Property Malta Foundation.

Nevertheless, he had strong opinions on it, saying the federation had not been consulted on the creation of the new entity – aimed at encouraging foreign property buyers to Malta – and that none of its eight members were from the real estate agency sector.

The foundation, which had its first meeting on April 12, has four trustees nominated by the government and four by the MDA.

“Not one of them has ever marketed Malta overseas while the federation’s members have spent hundreds of thousands of euros doing this, without any financial help from the government,” Mr Buttigieg said, adding that the federation intended to ask the government to reconsider its inclusion.

The decision to pull out was not welcomed by Dhalia chairman Chris Grech, noting that the MDA had both financial and political backing, which the federation never had.

“I agree that the federation needs to have a voice but the sad reality is that if it wants to be heard by the authorities it needs to be stronger. This is why we agreed to be affiliated with the MDA in the first place as it has been so successful as a lobby group.

“The regulation of real estate agents – pioneered by former federation president Douglas Salt – is supposed to be presented to Parliament before the summer recess so we need a strong presence to ensure that all those cowboys jumping on the property bandwagon can be controlled,” he said.

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