The Malaysian Institute of Estate Agents (MIEA) recently announced the appointment of Soma Sundram Krisnaswamy as Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Soma is a respected member of the real estate fraternity and brings with him his considerable experience in the real estate sector as well as his longstanding passion to champion causes that are important to the fraternity.

Eric Lim, President of MIEA said "the association has grown by leaps and bounds and MIEA needs to consolidate its activities and expand its services to meet the needs of its growing membership.

"MIEA plans to play a greater role in enhancing professionalism and integrity among practitioners and we have developed programmes to enhance our practitioners' level of service to the public".

After a rigorous search, the MIEA Board concluded that Soma's leadership and considerable experience made him an outstanding candidate for the role.

"Soma has demonstrated throughout his career the ability to work successfully in different environments, from establishing the MIEA National Real Estate Awards (NREA), developing our Negotiators Certification Course syllabus for real estate negotiators and co-developing a regional platform for real estate, the ASEAN Real Estate Network Alliance (ARENA) of which he is the first Secretary General", Eric added.

Soma started his professional career with SK Brothers Realty in 1987 and served MIEA in various roles since 1992. He was MIEA's President from 2007 to 2009 and is the youngest recipient of the MIEA National Real Estate Leadership (Lifetime Achievement) Award which he received in 2013. The Board of Valuers, Appraisers, Estate Agents and Property Managers Malaysia (BOVEAP) also recognized Soma's contribution to the real estate fraternity by awarding him Estate Agent of the Year in 2016.

Over the years, he has also trained over 33,000 members of the real estate fraternity.

Soma said "I have served MIEA in different capacities over the last 26 years and am delighted to have been chosen to galvanize and propel the vision of the MIEA leadership into the next exciting phase of our journey. We plan to make MIEA a united, progressive & relevant Institute that engages its members.

"We also aim towards hosting more positive engagements with government bodies such as the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Housing and Local Government to look at current issues affecting the housing market".

He commented that he looks forward to working with all stakeholders in the real estate industry to drive meaningful change.

One of the key programmes to meet MIEA's goals is to enhance skills through training and education, with MIEA embarking on a rigorous and compulsory Continuous Development Programme (CDP) for Real Estate Negotiators to renew their REN Tag for 2019. The CDP programme offers a range of topics for RENs to choose from and is held three times a week throughout the country.