Bully-boy agents slammed

Published 27th Aug 2007

One of the UK's leading online estate agents today called on the Office of Fair Trading to look again at competition in UK estate agency...

This follows a number of cases of BrightSale customers facing punitive and arbitrary fee increases from traditional estate agents, and follows comments from a leading estate agent who appeared to call on traditional agents to band together to freeze out competition from full service online agencies like BrightSale and private sales websites such as Tesco Property Market.

The issue was highlighted by the case of a Mrs Hunt who listed her four bedroom property in Tenby with BrightSale in August.

Mrs Hunt was shocked when her traditional high street agent then contacted her and threatened to increase her commission charge from 1.75% to 2.25% unless she removed her property. Mrs Hunt explained that the threat came as a complete surprise:
"I had no idea that they could do this. We were surprised to learn of the increased commission due if the "sole agent" contract was altered to "multi agency" as this had not been highlighted when the contract was originally signed.

“The first I heard about it was when I tried to list my property with BrightSale. My traditional agent only got me four viewings in six months, despite a significant price reduction. I feel that I should be free to try a different approach without being penalized."

Established agents to blame
BrightSale Managing Director Mr Andy Etches said: "It is not fair for people to be treated to such bully boy tactics by established estate agents trying to restrict competition. We would urge all home sellers to insist that they are free to use an online agency, alongside a traditional one, without a threat of punitive commission hikes.

“We believe that competition crushing contracts are not in the best interests of consumers or the industry as a whole. In many cases, they are only being signed by home sellers because they are not receiving all the information about how restrictive they can be."

The situation has been further inflamed by comments from Mr Paul Smith, the Chief Executive of SpicerHaart who in his column in Estate Agency news (August 2007) called on traditional agents to "stick together" and consider "reverting to sole selling rights and include a clause which prevents the seller from using an Internet Property Retailer at the same time".

Not in the interests of consumers
Responding to Mr Smith, Andy Etches said: "For such a senior figure in the estate agency profession to call for contracts which prevent the use of online agents is regressive to the development of competition and to the evolution of estate agency in this country.

“Sole selling rights' contracts are iniquitous and clearly not in the interests of consumers. We don't see how any contract which allows an estate agent to claim a fee even when a home owner sells his property to his neighbour following a private chat over a garden fence can possibly be defended as fair to consumers."

In the light of BrightSale's recent experiences and Mr Smith's comments BrightSale has written to the Office for Fair Trading asking it to look again into the issue of issue of restriction of competition in estate agency. BrightSale makes a number of specific recommendation to try to ensure that competition is allowed to deliver better estate agency services in this country.

Source: ' Move Channel Ltd '

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