For decades, real estate associations repeated the same script: without mandatory registration, without compulsory pension funds, and without their disciplinary apparatus, the market would be left in the hands of improvisers, criminals, and adventurers.
The argument was always the same. They would be the guardians of legal security. The rest, a threat to access to housing.
But there is a problem: after decades of mandatory oversight, the Argentine real estate market remains opaque, expensive, fragmented, difficult to audit and riddled with operations, commissions, and values that often do not appear fully reflected in official records.
So, the question is inevitable: what legal security have they guaranteed?
Real estate mediation is a commercial activity. It consists of connecting supply and demand in exchange for a commission. It is not a medical science, it is not nuclear engineering, and it is not a discipline that requires the blessing of a corporation to exist. However, the Argentine system has managed to transform a commercial activity into an obstacle course: qualifying title, registration, fees, bonds, pension contributions, territorial controls, disciplinary tribunals, and mandatory funds.
All to obtain the privilege of working
Bureaucracy has labeled this scheme as “professionalization.” In practice, it functions as an entry customs, a toll for permanence, and, in some cases, an exit barrier managed by the same institutions that thrive on keeping their members captive. That is not professionalization. It is corporatism.
And the most serious thing is that the system not only restricts the freedom to work. It also punishes transparency. In any reasonable market, invoicing, declaring income, registering real values, and ensuring traceability of operations should be the most convenient. In the Argentine real estate market, the opposite happens too often.
Each transparent operation activates a chain of agencies ready to claim their share. Tax burdens, registration fees, pension contributions, bonds, income presumptions, inspections, and overlapping obligations emerge.
Formality is a high-risk sport in the real estate market
Greater visibility means greater exposure. Higher invoicing brings more mouths to feed. Greater traceability makes it easier for corporations to presume income and demand contributions.
Then they are surprised by the informality they themselves helped create. The result is perverse: telling the truth can end up being more expensive than hiding it.
When that happens, the problem ceases to be individual. It is no longer enough to point out the operator who did not invoice or the owner who declared a different value. The problem becomes institutional because the system created the incentives for transparency to be an economic disadvantage.
The costs do not disappear by magic. They are paid by owners, buyers, tenants, and users through more expensive services, less competition, higher commissions, and fewer alternatives to choose from.
The associations claim to protect the consumer, but every barrier they raise reduces the competition that could benefit them. They claim to defend transparency, but they manage a system that makes transparency more costly. They claim to guarantee legal security, but the market they control remains opaque. The contradiction can no longer be hidden behind a credential.
The mysterious 98%
Organizations defending the corporate model publicly stated that 98% of real estate transactions go through registered brokers. The figure is extraordinary. It is also extraordinarily uncomfortable for those who disseminated it.
Firstly, because presenting that percentage as a sign of social trust is a joke. It was those same institutions that ensured that anyone wishing to operate legally had to submit to their titles, registrations, payments, and jurisdictions.
Closing all doors, leaving only one open, and then celebrating that 98% entered through there does not demonstrate preference. It demonstrates coercion.
But let’s assume the percentage is true. If the collegiate system really controls almost all market operations, there should be a tax footprint compatible with such dominance. There should be a reasonable relationship between the number of registered members, registered taxpayers, operations performed, issued receipts, and declared invoicing.
Does it exist? How many real estate commissions are actually invoiced? How many receipts are issued? How much money do the associations and pension funds collect? What proportion exists between the real size of the market and the activity that appears registered? Where is the data?
To start answering these questions, a formal request for access to public information was submitted for ARCA to report the number of taxpayers, invoicing, and the volume of receipts corresponding to the activity identified under code 682091.
