Real Estate agents have heaped scorn on claims that 2,000 people are living in garages, saying the “unsubstantiated” claim risked turning a serious topic into farce.

In a statement, the estate agents section of the Malta Developers Association strongly condemned Simon Debono for having touted the figure during a conference on rental affordability held last weekend.

Mr Debono had said that authorities were keen to hide the extent of housing problems and he claimed to have a list of 2,000 people living in garages who “wear jackets and ties and go to work every day”.

On Monday, real estate agents disputed that claim.

“The fact remains that nobody knows the real stock of property available privately for rent, least of all Simon Debono, as such an exercise will run into the millions of euro to perform,” they said.

Both the Finance Minister and parliamentary secretary for housing had been made aware of the matter and would be looking into ways to collect such data, they continued.

Citing unsubstantiated figures, the MDA’s EAS said, the claimed data  “only serves to ridicule what is supposed to be a serious debate on issues in the rental market currently being discussed post white paper.

“It also does nothing to help the few genuine cases, a far cry from 2,000 as recently stated, of people living in substandard housing”.

The EAS also called on Mr Debono, who is ostensibly the secretary general of the Federation of Real Estate Agents, to “desist from presenting himself as a spokesperson for the Real Estate industry”.

“He fully knows that former members of the federation now form the EAS, rendering the EAS the spokesperson for the industry,” the section said.

The EAS was set up in February of this year, with a vast majority of the FEA’s members having quit that organisation to create a new one under the auspices of the MDA.