FOLLOWING a final round of consultations, the Real Estate Bill of 2023 will be presented to the National Assembly, according to Attorney-General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall.
Nandlall made this disclosure during an episode of his weekly Online programme, ‘Issues in the News’, where he stated that the stakeholders in the industry have been given copies of the draft Bill.

Nandlall said: “We have given a copy to the real estate associations of Guyana, and we have requested of them to examine it, and to give us their inputs and recommendations, in writing, and, hopefully, we can engage them one final time before we complete work on the Bill, and take it to the National Assembly.”

Against this backdrop, the Legal Affairs Minister stated that the Bill should be debated and enacted before the August recess.

Nandlall went on to add that this Bill should be part of the Laws of Guyana before the mutual assessment of Guyana’s Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) framework by the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF), and the Financial Action Task Force (FTAF) commences in September.

Meanwhile, during the programme, he indicated that the Real Estate Bill of 2023 is set to fill the gap for the lack of regulatory framework for this sector.

“Billions of dollars pass through this sector annually, and the sector operates without any statutory or regulatory framework. That vacuum has been identified as a deficiency, and we are to fill that gap. And this Bill is intended to do that,” Nandlall said.

To this end, he indicated that the Bill is a comprehensive one, which has some 83 provisions and several schedules, and was crafted following consultations with real estate operators in Guyana.
He added that drafters of the Bill consulted legislation of this type across the Caribbean, and also looked at Guyana’s environment. According to Nandlall, they came up with a Bill that adequately and robustly provides the type of regulatory framework that is suitable for Guyana.

The Attorney-General further added that the Bill defines real estate, and has a system to register operators within the sector. And it also lists the qualifications and disqualifications for registration, and creates a register for all the operators in the sector.

The Bill also establishes an association and a board to run it, and will determine how the association will function.

“It has provisions dealing with issues of indemnity insurance, and then it establishes a licensing committee that will license operators. It has how the committee will be constituted, and the tenure of its members, and how members are to be appointed and removed. And the affairs of this body are going to be documented and laid in the National Assembly,” he said.

The Bill also speaks to professional misconduct and the duties and obligations of real estate agents, and also includes clauses on disciplinary matters, and how disciplinary proceedings can be instituted and will be conducted against errant operators in the sector.

In June 2022, at the launch of the Realtor’s Association of Guyana, it was said that as the country’s real estate sector continues to grow, the industry needs heavy regulation.
Minister Nandlall indicated that while legislation was in the pipeline, the government would only play a regulatory role, and would only pass a law to establish a structure to regulate the players in the industry.