Sales involving non-local properties not supervised by local law

Residents encountering ‘illegal’ sales of real estate outside the territory of Macau are not protected by the current law of the Special Administrative Region and thus the city’s Consumer Council can only transfer such suspicious cases to related organisations outside Macau, according to the Council’s reply to legislator Ho Ion Sang’ written interpellation.
In its response to the legislator, the Consumer Council said the current Real Estate Agent law only regulates operation of local real estate agents which involves local properties, suggesting operations involving properties outside Macau are not supervised by the law.
‘When the Consumer Council receives complaints of property agents breaking the law, [the Council] will transfer the cases to the Housing Bureau. However, if disputes happen outside Macau, such as on the Mainland, the Consumer Council can only transfer the cases to the consumer protection organisations there, based on the current law and the co-operation agreement with the consumer organisations on the mainland’, the Council wrote.
In addition, it said that it had received six complaints and enquiries about purchasing real estate on the Mainland during the first three quarters of 2014. According to a reply from the Council to an enquiry by Business Daily recently, only one of such complaint is about the contract, while the others are enquiries about the related procedures and regulations.
In fact, the legislator indicated in his interpellation that many local property agents were promoting the sale of mainland property without pre-sale permits from the mainland authorities, querying whether the government is following up on the issue as these should be classified as illegal sales.
The Council, claiming that this is not under the scope of the current law, said that the Housing Bureau had reminded local real estate agents that they should obey the regulations outside Macau when they provide services involving non-local properties.
The mainland authorities decree that developers can only launch the sale of property that is still under construction after obtaining a pre-sale permit. This permit will only be issued in Guangdong Province when two-thirds and more than seven storeys of a project are completed.