Real estate companies in the Gambia have been accused of engaging in “false and misleading” advertisements by the consumer watchdog, GCCPC.

The Gambia Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (GCCPC) made the damning statement in a study on the state of consumer welfare in the real estate industry.

The study found that some of the real estate companies had engaged in misrepresentation with regards to locations of properties and sizes of lands that were sold to buyers.

Other failings mentioned in the study include getting access to ownership of title documents or properties after sales, inadequate disclosure and high penalties for consumers opting out of services. 

The consumer watchdog said it received 13 complaints about real estate companies last year from consumers

The complaints were about “payments being finalised by consumers, after which they are either unable to obtain their transfer documents or are not shown their properties. 

“In some instances, they are shown the property and they later find out that the said property is already owned by someone else. All these are violations of section 8(3) of the Consumer Protection Act 2014.”

The Commission called on the Ministry of Lands and Local Government to regulate the real estate sector.

It also recommended that “the stakeholders in the transaction process to be adequately trained and held accountable for their actions, and the introduction of a digital real-time land ownership database.”