The Association of Appraisers' Offices was caught by the Fair Trade Commission for forcibly collecting a portion of appraisers' revenue and penalizing those who did not comply.
The Fair Trade Commission noted on the 9th that it identified the Association of Appraisers' Offices for forcibly collecting and distributing a portion of appraisers' revenue under the guise of performance fees, and it issued a corrective order along with a penalty surcharge of 99 million won against the appraisers who refused to pay.
Previously, in order to enhance competition in the appraisal market, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport expanded the standard and individual land price investigation and evaluation tasks, which had been operated mainly by existing appraisal corporations, to include individual appraisal offices starting in 2021. Afterward, the association set criteria for selecting the offices to carry out the public price tasks and submitted a ranking list to the Korea Association of Appraisers.
In 2022, the association collected 10% of the work revenue from appraisers in the public price investigation and evaluation tasks and distributed it among other appraisers. It then decided to collect a differentiated performance fee of 12.5% to 49.4% based on the years of participation in the 2023 public price tasks and distribute it to appraisers who did not perform the work.
Additionally, it was decided to collect and distribute 50% of appraisers' revenue in the Seoul land price evaluation tasks in 2022. The association requested the organization to exclude appraisers who refused to pay the performance fees from other appraisal tasks and was found to have imposed disadvantages such as suspending membership for two years.
The Fair Trade Commission judged that such actions fall under the prohibition outlined in Article 51, Paragraph 1, Item 3 of the Fair Trade Act, which prohibits 'unjust restriction of business activities of member businesses by a business organization.' Additionally, it issued a warning regarding the association's acceptance of the association's request to exclude performance fee non-payers from the list of recommended appraisers.
A Fair Trade Commission official stated, “We will continuously monitor actions that unjustly restrict the business activities of member businesses by business organizations and strictly enforce the law if violations recur.”