Real Estate Institute of NSW (REINSW) president John Cunningham met with local agents when the peak body’s annual roadshow came to town on Tuesday.

The event to connect REINSW members was held against a backdrop of a number of changes to laws affecting consumers in the past year.

As part of a NSW government move to crackdown on underquoting, the sale of property by the “offers over” method was prohibited.

Mr Cunningham said underquoting had been an issue in Sydney and had unfortunately reflected on the whole state.

He said there had been no complaints about it from Dubbo.

“Dubbo is a marketplace where we feel from the feedback we’ve got that consumers have good faith in the agents, both sellers and buyers, there’s a lot of transparency in transactions here,” he said.

“So it’s a bit of a model in fact for NSW and how it operates.”

Mr Cunningham said whether one agreed with the law changes or not, they were in place and the challenge was to work with it.

“I don’t think it’s a big issue in Dubbo as I said, but they had been using the terminology ‘offers over’ in their marketing, which has now been extinguished from the marketplace,” he said.

“So the agents (are) now working their way through that as to how best deal with that with the consumers.”

Another change was swimming pool certification requirements.

The REINSW president said swimming pool compliance was catching a lot of people short even though it had been mooted for the past three years.

New rules that began on April 29 affect everyone selling or leasing a home with a pool.

“So the recommendation to everyone is to get your pool compliant, don’t wait around,” Mr Cunningham said.

“Go and see your local agent who’ll be able to help you go through that process regardless of whether you’re selling or leasing.”