Estate agents in fair trading probe
ENGLAND'S estate agents, whose business is worth £4.6bn a year, are to be investigated by the Office of Fair Trading, it was announced today.
The study will be carried out by the OFT's Markets and Policy Initiatives division. It will take a year to investigate whether fees charged by estate agents represent good value, and whether the Estate Agents Act is working well enough to protect consumers.
It will cover all aspects of buying and selling residential property in England and Wales as well as looking at how similar markets work in other countries, and assessing whether competition is working effectively.
The OFT receives more complaints about estate agents than any other trade, apart from second-hand car dealers.
'Tricks of the trade' expected to come under the microscope include: Flyboarding, or putting For Sale signs on properties that are not for sale as a form of cheap advertising; describing an overgrown back garden as 'semi-rural', or referring to Battersea as 'South Chelsea'; doctoring photos to remove power stations or pylons from pictures of the house and pretending that other buyers are interested.
