RETI and CCIM Partnership Targets Higher Standards in Jamaica Real Estate

A new alliance between the Real Estate Training Institute (RETI) and the CCIM Institute is being positioned as a boost for compliance and a step away from informal ways of doing business in Jamaica’s real estate sector.

CCIM Institute President Adam Palmer said the arrangement should help create stronger expectations for professionals and encourage more ethical conduct among practitioners. “Part of being that community and door-opening includes professional standards, an understanding of professional ethics, and we set those guidelines as well,” Mr. Palmer told JIS News.

He said ethics instruction is an important part of the CCIM designation programme, which prepares real estate professionals to take more measured, businesslike decisions. “CCIM teaches you how to do it the right way,” Mr. Palmer stressed.

Senior Director and Principal of RETI, Dr. Tina Beale, said the partnership fits into the Real Estate Board’s wider programme of change, with professional competence treated as central to meeting regulatory requirements. “We recognise that compliance is not just about what’s the rule of law, but that education is the starting point to achieving compliance,” Dr. Beale said.

She said Jamaica’s property market has long had difficulties with informal practices, among them weak documentation and uneven standards.

In response, the Real Estate Board has been working with stakeholders to craft technical standards for various parts of the real estate industry. Those standards are slated to come into effect later this year.

Dr. Beale said the proposed framework is meant to draw on global measures while reflecting how the Jamaican market operates, strengthening professionalism without losing local context. “Those technical standards combine international benchmarks with our local practice, as well as address shortcomings in our local practice, to ensure that what we are doing is in full alignment with our regulatory framework,” she explained.

She added that the CCIM partnership should support that work by helping to produce better-trained real estate practitioners and lifting standards across Jamaica’s industry.