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Property Reporter
INTEGRATED Properties founder and managing director Mike Juru was re-elected the Real Estate Institute of Zimbabwe (REIZ) president at the association’s Winter School and annual general meeting, which ended in Victoria Falls on Sunday.

He took over from Siza Masuka an Associate Partner at Knight Frank last year.

Mr Juru is the immediate past Vice President for the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce, and board member of ZimTrade.

He has won several awards, which include the IOD’s Director of the Year.

He will be deputised by Propertywise Realty managing director Alex Milling.

REIZ superintends over the training and development of professionals in Real Estate (Estate Agents and Valuers) and the maintenance of professional standards.

Mr Juru, who has been a member of the institute for the past 23 years, said his thrust going forward was to come up with a code of corporate governance for the Real Estate Sector.

“Our immediate task is to come up with the standards in valuation, property management and property sales.

“We also intend to come up with measures that will enable transparency in the sector to make Zimbabwe’s
property sector compete at the global stage,” said Mr Juru after his re-election.

“The above will need support from the private sector, regulators and Government as the impact will be felt across all economic sectors.

“The real estate sector is critical to the economy as it creates an enabling environment for all other economic activities to perform. And further, it is the bedrock that supports the financial services sector.”

The REIZ is concerned with the huge variations in valuation by its members on properties, a situation that needs urgent attention through standards and enforcement.

Internationally, when valuers assess the value of a property, a variance of between 5 -10 percent is acceptable. But in Zimbabwe, the difference at times is more than that, a challenge that the REIZ leadership needs to give urgent attention to give confidence about the profession, its skills and capacity to meet the market expectations.

Apart from the common purpose of selling, there are many other reasons why properties have to be valued.

These include speculative valuing for investment purposes, valuing for the purpose of calculating tax, while financial institutions require professional valuation services for the purposes of assessing the value of collateral assets pledged for loans.

Valuations are also required in cases of disputes such as in matrimonial or corporate divorce or sharing of deceased estates.

In most cases the people who want the property to be valued want the valuations to be inflated or deflated to suit their interest.

However, some of these valuation reports have only served to worsen the disputes because of the huge differences between them.

The institute came into being at a meeting of the Auctioneers and the Estate Agents in Bulawayo on December 5, 1944 where the two agree to form an Institute embracing all the members of the two associations.

This was followed by an inaugural meeting of the Southern Rhodesia Institute of Estate Agents and Valuers on February 12, 1945 where the first members were elected.