Weeding them out

Published 18th Jun 2009

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is cracking down on estate agencies and individual agents who have broken the rules - naming and shaming them in an online public register for the first time - allowing consumers to see first hand which ones to steer clear of...

If an agent has been given a warning about bad practice or has been banned from working in the past for whatever reason, you will now be able to find out about it before committing yourself to using their services.

When Which? carried out a survey into consumer opinions on estate agents, the results were damning, but hardly surprising. More than 70 per cent of people felt that they had been misled by an estate agent and just one in 10 thought they could be trusted.

A catalogue of dodgy practices by agents included giving preferential treatment to buyers who use their mortgage services, inventing offers to convince sellers to increase the sale price, and of acting against the sellers' interest by failing to pass on important information about offers.

The new OFT blacklist will weed out those residential agencies who have behaved badly in the past and had action taken against them under the Estate Agents Act 1979.

Under the Act, the OFT can issue warning and prohibition orders against individual estate agents or agencies who have broken the law. Offences range from fraud to violence to operating without belonging to an independent redress scheme. The OFT has the power to ban agents if they are found to be breaking the rules.

Mike Haley, OFT Director of Consumer Practice said, "Under the law, estate agents must ensure they act in the best interests of their clients and that buyers and sellers are treated honestly, fairly and promptly.

"The online register gives consumers direct access to important information explaining where we have taken action against estate agents," he added.

You ca browse the register online alphabetically or by date and it will allow you to have a better knowledge of the history of an agency before you decide to use them, possibly saving you trouble in the future.

You can also use the information on the register to report any suspected breaches of an existing warning by an agent to the OFT.

Source: ' TMC '

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