On November 30th last year, the National Trading Standards Estate and Lettings Agency (NTSELAT) Team published their updated guidance on the Consumer Protection Regulation as it applies to our industry.
For several years, agents in England and Wales have been required to disclose any information that might be relevant to a property purchaser in making a decision. However, the rules lacked clarity regarding the specific details to be gathered and when they should be published. NTSELAT, led by James Munro, set out to provide clear guidelines on the information that agents must collect and include in as they list a property.
The information needed for ‘Parts B & C’ of the requirements covered property type, construction, room numbers, parking, and utilities, and more complex information including construction risk, rights and restrictions, flood vulnerability, planning consents, and accessibility.
While gathering and inputting this information presents agents with some challenges, the decision driven by NTS was to provide more relevant insights to inform major purchase decisions with the view that more upfront information has the potential to improve customer experiences and, to reduce fall-throughs and accelerate transactions.
With Rightmove’s recent announcement that they’ll be rolling fields covering Parts B and C on all listing pages in the coming weeks, this means two things. Firstly, it’s really easy for anyone, including NTS, to have a window into whether an agent is compliant with the regulations. Secondly, Material information isn’t going away. Rightmove is clearly demonstrating a collaborative effort with NTSELAT to drive industry-wide adoption.
Rightmove and potentially other portals may initially allow listings to go live with missing elements marked as ‘Ask agent’ and right now, it’s unclear whether this will be a long term solution or whether they’ll actually take a position in the future to not allow non-compliant listings to be published.
As set out in the Rightmove announcement, the buck doesn’t stop with portals, it stop with agents. Non-compliance can result in significant fines and even a prison sentence.
Compliance just got more serious – and very public.
Gemma Young is CEO of Moverly, the material and upfront information technology platform
