Perhaps the next step is to innovate?; 1

As a student studying development, management and appraisal of property projects, the media focus as of late has been a little worrying. While the industry at large looks to be looking at an upswing as I discussed in Reflections Of An Optimist, a simple search titled “stand fraud Zimbabwe” churns out 83200 results on the google news tab. A surprisingly high number.

What is even more surprising is the universal acknowledgement of this reality in the public domain. The chain of messages and news articles seeking to sensitise people on due diligence required in property deals come and go but one fact still remains. The culprits still look like the real deal.

Property fraud is particularly damaging as it not only affects the citizen duped but quite literally victimises all players involved in the development process. The cost racks up for councils who will often need to demolish the homes built at cost while the construction companies involved find themselves in murky legal waters.

Naturally, the more I’ve became aware of the phenomenon the more I’ve thought action is being taken to mitigate and isolate the culprits in the real estate markets. The Estate Agent’s Council of Zimbabwe (EAC) regularly shares a list of registered and de-registered agents and firms. They even go as far as to collaborate with law enforcement in order to exercise the hands of lady justice.

I admire the effort but given we still are facing a crowded battlefield, perhaps we could add something to our defensive tactics. This blog series will briefly outline two ways with which we could crank the heat. One would be client facing while the other, in a later blog post, would be based in administrative solutions.

A client facing solution

I’ll admit to having already started work on developing a prototype for this solution. Let’s call it AgentCheckZW. AgentCheckZW has three parts. We have serving infrastructure, communications infrastructure and client infrastructure. There should be a diagram I made when the idea was brewing attached to this blog.

Diagram showing how communications infrastructure is centre role in data flow, receiving and sending data from both the server infrastructure and the client infrastructure.
Diagram 1. Data Flow: Flow between required infrastructure

The serving infrastructure is the most important part of the solution as that is where everything lies. Serving infrastructure refers to the databases controlled by EAC and or the Real Estate Institute of Zimbabwe (REIZ). These databases hold information regarding an agent’s registrations status, it is from this infrastructure that we will be serving our clients with verification tools/data.

Next up is communications infrastructure, this part of the piece is necessary to allow our frontend of the solution to communicate with our databases. Our API will take instruction in the form of search parameters, sanitise it and then forward the instructions to the database. It will then take the response from the database, “Ntando is a registered Real Estate Agent”, and send it through to our front end to be displayed. The use of an API here is to allow for its use a tool to be used in multiple projects that require it instead of adding code to directly communicate with the database every time a new app comes up. A little efficiency nugget.

Lastly is our client infrastructure, the front end of the solution. This is where the client would ask say “Is Ntandoyenkosi with registration number ZW91EAC a registered Real Estate Agent?”. As we have used an API, instead of going through the application route solely, we could build a WhatsApp chatbot in order to increase the solution’s accessibility to the public. The response as laid out before comes through the API and is served to the front end. Simple, yes?

Assumptions and Requirements

One major assumption I’ve made is that both REIZ and EAC store their information in a database let alone an online database. The database itself may need to be hosted on the cloud for uninterrupted access. I know some tech savvy guys are already wondering about the cost of such a project but then again, what’s an $800USD bill to the saved thousands of dollars in lost tax income and hard-earned client dollars. Every solution at the end of the day has a cost to it.

I should add that the current system involves a client having to call the EAC in order to make a verification of an agent. AgentCheckZW is in this case better as the client costs in the process are reduced while it becomes easier to easily identify agents using their EAC IDs or QR codes as an authenticator.

In Ending

I know I said I am working on this but this blog post is set out to firstly and hopefully expose the solution to a wider audience, my bedroom walls have heard enough. Secondly, in exposing the possible solution maybe there’s hope to be had in someone actually taking the mantle and running faster than I ever will, perhaps collaborate on the solution. What do you think?

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