An investigation into the effects of gender, age, experience and local business market on the issuance of different disciplinary sanctions on real estate brokers - a Swedish case

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the effects of a number of broker characteristics – gender, age, previous experience as a real estate broker on the housing market as well as activity on a specific local business market – for different disciplinary sanctions issues by the The Swedish Estate Agents Inspectorate (FMI) between 2000 and 2016. FMI includes a Disciplinary Board, which consists of members appointed by the Government. The supervision entails ensuring that real estate brokers fulfil their obligations in accordance with the Swedish Estate Agents Act. The FMI's supervision can lead to a decision that the estate broker should be removed from the register or that the estate agent should be issued a disciplinary reminder or a warning. The reasons for the disciplinary sanctions differ and the study investigates factors possibly related to different types of complaints resulting in a disciplinary reminder or a warning.The study relies on data from FMI consisting of the collected decisions on sanctions issued 2000-2016. The number of registered brokers went from 4,574 to 6,910 during the period, and the complaints from 253 to 453. However, the number of disciplinary reminders, warnings or removal from the register stayed relative stable with an average of 65. Statistical methods are used to investigate the correlation between broker characteristics and the reasons for complaints leading to sanctions.