An Office of Fair Trading draft report into the state of the property market has slammed the estate agency profession for dishonesty when presenting properties to the buying public. One of the most recent highly publicised cases was that of the agent selling a cottage neglecting to mention the nuclear reactors next door.
However, the report also includes a study which shows that customer satisfaction with estate agents has increased over the last 5 years from about 73% of users up to about 88%. These improvements in customer satisfaction may though have been achieved on the back of a previous crackdown in 2002 when there was a surge in complaints to the OFT about agents’ exploitation of buyers and sellers in what was then a booming market.
But the new draft report also found that 24% of agents were found not to be complying with relevant consumer laws when they were visited by Trading Standards (TS) officers. But this could be misleading, as TS would predominantly visit agents where a complaint had been made.
With the market in decline and agents fighting a war for survival not only with each other but with the Internet and more savvy consumers selling for themselves, we may see a rise in complaints and a drop in satisfaction.
Estate agents bottom lines are also not being helped where they provide other services such as finance, HIPs and conveyancing. As people will find the cheapest they can online and where mortgages are concerned are probably more likely to use their own bank for more certainty.
The end result may well be fewer Estate Agents on the high streets, together with a drop in the numbers of related professionals.
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Tags: economics, house price crash, house price news, House Prices, housepricecrash, housing market, News
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And Gordon Brown replied
Keeping people in poverty