The concern was expressed by the director of the real estate agency Linear Comunicação, Alberto Domingos, denouncing the behavior of the 'mixeiros', who evade the tax authorities and negotiate without any specific training.
The coordinator of the 1st Angolan Real Estate Market Seminar (Semia) 2023, taking place this Thursday in Luanda, said that the event aims to promote good practices in the sector and at the same time "reduce the excessive informality that exists in the sector".
"And we also intend, in this event, to draw attention to the importance that the real estate sector has to be regularized. Our intention is that our speech reaches the authorities so that they think about the creation of a regulatory agency for the real estate sector", he noted.
He considered that the Angolan real estate sector "is strategically viable from an economic point of view, which moves large financial amounts", but noted that, unfortunately, it is not regularized", he lamented.
"For this reason we have been seeing the phenomenon of so-called 'mixeiros' or informal intermediaries who, at their mercy, negotiate because they have no training", he pointed out.
"For the sector [the 'mixeiros'] have many implications: the first is that they contribute to tax evasion, [later] the negotiation on their part is very violent, people looking for properties submit to everything that they decide and for the sector, this creates embarrassment", he added.
The Semia, which brings together several operators in the sector, takes place under the motto "The Real Estate Sector as a Lever for Employability and Economic Growth in Angola".
According to Alberto Domingos, the motto of the meeting highlights the scope of the sector, which is not just limited to construction, but also to the intermediation component.
"Besides this, the sector has another aspect which is the issue of real estate investment funds, financial transactions can take place even if there are no new constructions, the real estate sector is very vast", he maintained.
Regarding the warning from the National Bank of Angola (BNA) on housing loans, the director of this agency in the real estate sector said that this directive from the Angolan central bank, from a practical point of view, "is not working as it should".
Access to housing credit from a "formal or documentary point of view is a good measure taken by the BNA, but from a practical point of view it is not working as it should", he said.
"We have information on a very small number, no more than 50 credits granted and, for a country like ours, with a population of 30 million inhabitants, it is a very small number", he criticized.
He also defended the need to disclose more information regarding access to mortgage credit, noting that on the part of commercial banks "there is a distance between them and companies in the real estate sector", which "makes it difficult for the population to access credit ".
