Notes:

¹ The EAA’s working days are from Monday to Friday.

³ From the next working day following the receipt of the application, the required fee and documents to the day the licence/statement of particulars of business is issued (ie. the day the licence is available for collection). This service target does not apply to applications which require the EAA Licensing Committee to determine whether the applicant fulfils the "fit and proper" requirements or other licensing requirements as prescribed under the Estate Agents Ordinance. A longer duration is needed for such cases for the EAA to make enquiries and for the applicant or any third party (such as the Official Receiver's Office, trustees-in-bankruptcy or the Police) to respond before EAA approves or rejects the application.

⁴ From the next working day after an application is cancelled or rejected; for bankruptcy cases, from the next working day following the receipt of the instructions from the Official Receiver's Office or the trustee-in-bankruptcy.

⁵ "Witness" means a person other than the complainant(s) and the complainee(s).

 

⁶ Commences from the date of the EAA’s written response to the complainant(s) upon receipt of sufficient supporting documents from them or (if there is no complainant) from the date of the EAA’s first allegation letter to the licensee(s) concerned to the publication date of admitted breach(es) on the EAA website for Fast Track Cases or to the date of the first disciplinary inquiry hearing for Normal Cases and Complex Cases.

 

⁷ The EAA’s investigation generally focuses on the compliance of the Estate Agents Ordinance and its subsidiary legislation and the conduct of estate agents and salespersons in their estate agency practice. If a case is related to any parallel investigation of criminal offence or non-compliance with any law or regulation by other regulatory bodies, or if the case is related to any parallel civil action, or if the case concerns a property/properties situated outside Hong Kong in respect of which the investigation process and collection of evidence often involve matters of other jurisdictions, this performance pledge is inapplicable. With respect to cases where this performance pledge is not applicable, the EAA will commit to use its best endeavors to process such cases as soon as reasonably practicable so that (if there is sufficient evidence for a case to proceed to disciplinary proceedings) the first disciplinary inquiry hearing could be conducted as early as possible.

 

⁸ Situations out of the EAA’s control, such as an inquiry hearing date is yet to be confirmed by the Disciplinary Committee after the case is ready for inquiry hearing or the unavailability of the complainant(s), the witness(es) and/or the licensee(s) concerned for the purported inquiry hearing date after the case is ready for inquiry hearing etc., are disregarded for the purpose of this performance pledge.

 

⁹ The performance target for conducting the first disciplinary inquiry hearing for Normal Cases and Complex Cases is 80% within 10 and 13 calendar months respectively.

 

¹⁰ From completion of investigation or, in the event the case is submitted for an inquiry hearing or dealt with under the New Scheme for Disciplinary Cases, the date of the letter notifying the complainee of the result of the hearing.

¹¹ Exclude cases that have to be submitted for inquiry hearings. With respect to those excluded cases, the statutory requirement is that the EAA shall “within the period of 21 days beginning on the date of the relevant decision, notify in writing the licensee and any other person against whom the decision is made of the decision...”.