While Mehrdad Bazrpash, the Minister of Roads, claimed that “only property owners can post property ads on the Real Estate System with identity verification,” a media team registered the Ministry of Roads building in the system under their own name, and it was listed for sale on Divar and Sheypoor with a verified mark from the Real Estate System.
Officials from the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development of the 13th government introduced the National Real Estate and Housing System as a successful tool for realistic future housing policy planning and requested the 14th government to continue it. However, investigations reveal that this system is fraught with serious flaws and incorrect information, to the extent that anyone with any postal code and national ID can register any property anywhere in their name and receive a verification mark from the system.
Meanwhile, Ministry of Roads officials have made it mandatory for citizens to register their property information in this system, linking the provision of educational services, housing, and checkbooks solely to the registration of information in the National Real Estate and Housing System. Additionally, in May this year, the Director General of the Housing Economy Office of the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development announced that if identity verification and postal code of properties are not provided, the property sections of platforms like Divar and Sheypoor will be blocked.
Despite all the claims about the completion of this system and the registration of 11 million households, investigations reveal significant errors and incorrect data in the system, which was intended to improve the housing situation in the country according to the 13th government officials.
This media team, aiming to verify the system’s information, registered the central building of the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development in Abbas Abad with the national ID of one of their colleagues, and to their surprise, the system verified the national ID and postal code of the property.
In the next step, this team listed the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development building for sale on the Wall and Sheypoor platforms using the same incorrect information. Both listings received immediate online verification from the Real Estate and Housing System.
Further investigations by the media team reveal that the Real Estate and Housing System, which was supposed to be completed by the government and serve as a policy guide in the housing sector, has not only left the task of completing it to the public and contains major informational gaps, but has also become an obstacle to the activities of citizens themselves. In this regard, this team has examined additional faults of this system in this report.
While the Land, Housing, and Rent Market Regulation Law can be praised and encouraging due to its primary goals of supporting tenants and regulating the housing and land market, there are numerous obstacles in the implementation of this law that, if resolved, could significantly advance the objectives of the law. Below are some major issues of this system and the challenges in executing the law and the competitive problems of this system:
Non-fulfillment of commitments by the Ministry of Roads
Before the passage of the aforementioned law, some online property advertising platforms signed an agreement in a meeting with members of the Digital Economy Committee, including Isa Zarepour, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, and representatives from the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development. According to this agreement, each party committed to implementing certain measures to reduce false information in the property and housing sector. Although the platforms have fulfilled all their commitments, the failure of the other party to uphold their commitments has led to problems in this area.
The agreement outlined the following requirements for the platforms and government agencies:
-Implementation of a pre-sale property inquiry service,
-Sending an OTP code to the owner if the ad is registered by a non-owner,
-Removal of ads for the sale of housing support quotas,
-Finally, creation and activation of the Real Estate and Housing System web service on the platform.
Of the four mentioned requirements, the first two were the responsibility of the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development, and the last two were the responsibility of the platforms. However, nearly a year after the agreement was signed, no action has been taken by the Ministry. This means that not only has the OTP verification code for the owner not been created by the Ministry, but the “Pre-sale Property Inquiry” service, which according to the agreement should have been designed and implemented within two weeks, has also been forgotten.
In contrast, investigations from the Divar platform show that this platform has adhered to its commitments and, accordingly, has removed all ads related to housing quotas from its platform. According to Divar’s data, from early February 2023 to the end of July 2023, a total of 17,000 property ads were rejected and not allowed for publication due to this reason.
Divar has also taken action since October 18, 2023, to create and activate the Real Estate and Housing System web service, allowing users to obtain property ownership confirmation by entering their national ID and postal code if the property is registered in this system.
However, investigations show that the Real Estate and Housing System cannot even match the national ID and postal code. This means that anyone can register any postal code under their name as the owner with any details such as area, year of construction, etc., in the system, as there is no verification or restriction for incorrect registration of this information.
Challenges in Implementing the Land, Housing, and Rent Market Regulation Law
The “Land, Housing, and Rent Market Regulation Law” was issued by the former President on May 15, 2024, for implementation. It is clear that for online ad platforms, having a reliable structure for identity verification and the authenticity of the ads can lead to increased transparency, accuracy, and quality of ads and consequently their commercial credibility. However, the stipulation in paragraph (4) of Article (5) of this law, mandating online ad platforms to use the “National Real Estate and Housing System” without specifying the exact mechanisms for its implementation, can pose a serious challenge for various digital economy businesses.
Nevertheless, the current implementation of the system, due to its numerous deficiencies, not only fails to achieve the goal of “preventing the publication of false ads by virtual platforms,” but could also lead to new types of violations in ads in the long run. The prerequisite for implementing this provision is the existence of the tools mentioned in it; otherwise, enforcing it is unreasonable. In this regard, the legislator mentioned two tools for implementing this provision, which are discussed below:
-Receiving OTP Confirmation of Ownership
The legislator considers the use of the “Real Estate and Housing System” alongside the “Owner Confirmation System”: meaning that after registering information (postal code and national ID) in the Real Estate System, the user must immediately enter the confirmation code sent to the actual owner to verify that the owner has indeed purchased or rented the property or is aware of it. The absence of the “Owner Confirmation System” alongside the “Real Estate and Housing System” has significant negative consequences; it allows non-owners, such as real estate agents and ordinary individuals, to misuse any postal code they have to register ads in their name.
-Completing the Database of the National Real Estate and Housing System
So far, not only have the necessary tools for the task, such as the platform for receiving owner confirmation from relevant executive agencies like the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development, not been implemented, but the National Real Estate and Housing System also faces numerous challenges due to structural problems and database deficiencies, the most important of which are:
-Possibility of Incorrect Information Entry by Users
The system does not have reliable initial information about residents; therefore, if your information has not been previously verified in this system, despite being the owner, you cannot obtain the ownership confirmation from the system. In fact, to activate the system’s features, you have to enter the information manually, which takes a considerable amount of time.
To test this process, we attempted to register an ad on the Divar platform using the postal code and ownership information, but the system did not verify this information. After that, we registered this information in the system and re-entered the national ID and postal code through Divar. This time, the information was confirmed by the system. Importantly, it is possible to enter all property details, including area, year of construction, and floor, incorrectly, and the system has no basis for verifying this information.
Possibility of Receiving Confirmation with Any Available Postal Code
After entering information into the system, we conducted another test. This time, we entered a random postal code instead of the previous one with the same property details. To our surprise, the system confirmed this postal code, allowing a person who was not an owner to register as the owner of a property with an unknown owner in the system. Immediately after this, we returned to Divar and, by entering a mismatched national ID and postal code, were able to obtain a confirmation from the Real Estate System and register a property with an unknown owner.
Thus, anyone can use any available postal code (all postal codes are available in the GNAF system and in public areas) to publish any ad or property with that postal code and confirmation from the Real Estate System on advertising platforms.
Interestingly, this team tested by registering the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development building with a personal national ID and incorrect property details in the Real Estate System, and then listed this building for sale with incorrect details (even inconsistent with the previous incorrect details) on Divar with the Real Estate and Housing System confirmation.
It is noteworthy that at any moment, the applicant can edit the information in the Real Estate System; thus, the applicant can immediately delete or edit the information from the Real Estate System after obtaining the confirmation and publishing the ad, without affecting the confirmation displayed on the ad.
Mismatch of Information in Various Systems and Documents
Another challenge the Real Estate and Housing System faces is the discrepancies between the information recorded in official property documents and the requested information from the system, as well as the GNAF system information. For example, sometimes the postal code recorded in GNAF differs from the postal code in the official document. Additionally, the official land deed does not include information like the year of construction and unit number, but the system requests this information. These inconsistencies can lead to confusion and errors in determining the exact details of the property.
Inadequacy of Verification Criteria
The system’s web service does not return any information to the platform. Therefore, the ad platform cannot verify the accuracy of the property details registered in the platform, such as its geographical location, like the city or district. For example, a user can use the national ID and postal code of a property registered in the Real Estate and Housing System located in Isfahan to register an ad for a property in Saadabad, Tehran, and still receive a confirmation of ownership.
Worrying Number of Unapproved Requests
Many ads, despite correct ownership and the owner’s efforts to register the ad, face non-compliance warnings, which could be due to the system’s informational and operational deficiencies.
According to Divar, to test the system, they required confirmation from the system for listing property ads in Qom for a period of 5 days (June 9 to 13, 2024), resulting in an 80% decrease in ad publication.
It is important to note that creating a mandate to use a government system with incomplete databases that even cannot verify registered data such as ownership status, area, year of construction, etc., not only can violate competitive laws but also causes significant harm to users and private platforms.
Suspected Misuse of User Data
Reports from users who have registered their information in the Real Estate and Housing System indicate that after registering a property ad on the platform and entering the postal code and national ID in the system’s web service, they received an electronic notice about the property tax for vacant properties. It seems that the system, after learning about citizens’ attempts to register ads for buying or renting, has deemed their property as vacant and is requesting tax from them!
The notice states: “Based on information received from the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development, your residential unit is declared vacant; therefore, the applicable tax for the year 2021 has been calculated and is available through the service portal.” A contact with the support center of the Real Estate and Housing System confirmed that the system’s information is directly linked to the tax authority’s data.
Ultimately, it should be noted that rather than addressing its shortcomings in managing the housing market through the liberalization of government-owned land, controlling inflation, facilitating building permit issuance, property tax on empty land, improving housing loan mechanisms, and other appropriate regulatory tools, the policymaker is blaming the virtual platforms for the increase in housing prices.
It is expected that with the coming of the new government, this approach will be corrected, and the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development and other responsible agencies will properly organize the housing market in the country.
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