"In NSW, the Opal and Mascot Towers defects scandals have galvanised a wide ranging response on the issue of quality in apartment building. Together with the tragic fire in London’s Grenfell Tower, the shine has most certainly come off the so-called swing to urban living typified by high rise apartment buildings.
The overwhelming focus in this reaction has been on exposing the failure of the apartment developers and builders, together with allied professions – engineers, architects, certifiers – to ensure build quality. But critical though these professions are, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the role of another major actor in the apartment market: the sales agents."
This is all the more surprising given the central role sales agents – called project marketers in the jargon – play in the whole high rise apartment development process. These are the people who convince buyers to take the plunge to commit to buying into the developer’s vision of a new home, in most cases off-the-plan before anything has actually been built.
But rather than being passive players in this transaction, new research – based on interviews in mid-2020 with over 30 professionals involved in the apartment development and sales sectors – has exposed the highly active role these sales agents play in mediating the process. In many ways, understanding their role also helps explain why it is possible to sell a lemon to so many consumers.