Copy and paste the following text into the message box. Please feel free to add to this message.

Sustainability declaration adds costs to real estate sales

The new sustainability declaration requirements impose an unwarranted extra cost on homeowners and delay the residential sales process, as the complex form must be completed before a home is marketed.

Given that the declaration can affect the selling price of a property it unjustly discriminates against the elderly, mentally handicapped, physically handicapped and financially disadvantaged. These socioeconomic groups have lesser capabilities and/or fewer resources to call upon to ensure the declaration is completed to a standard that fairly places their property in the market place.

Consumers who are selling their homes face unfair and substantial fines for failing to accurately complete it. They also face the huge cost of civil lawsuits if the form is inaccurate in any detail.

Commercial providers have already sprung up to capitalise on this further layer of bureaucracy to complete the forms for homeowners - with no guarantee of any greater accuracy. The form completion expense may have to be incurred several times during the sales process given that the information must always be up-to-date.

Real estate agents also expose themselves to liability if they inadvertently, for example, fail to include a declaration in marketing material or the declaration contains outdated information.

On behalf of homeowners and real estate agents, I urge you to abolish this ill-conceived and costly procedure.

Yours faithfully,