Estate agents need to improve

The Office of Fair Trading has reported widespread unhappiness with estate agents among both property buyers and sellers.

It calls for greater price competition between estate agents and higher standards of customer service.

This report's been a long time in coming, so estate agents have learnt to live with predictions that some sort of tougher regime would be imposed on them.

Self-regulation

The report wants more power to ban agents and it also wants better self-regulation but doesn't call for the imposition of a licensing regime.

The OFT's report recommends that people should shop around. It wants fees to be quoted in money terms as well as a percentage.

Viewers

Some Working Lunch viewers have piped the OFT at the post, coming up with their own conclusions.

Peter from Guildford says the practice of charging percentage fees is at fault - the agents have an incentive to ramp prices.

"The key issue are to make sure that the rogue agents are identified and action is taken upon that," says Daniel Gordon

Jean from Solihull says it's better to advertise and sell your home yourself, avoiding the fees and the agents.

The OFT has offered no strict licensing regime which forces agents to submit to regulation by a trade body or the government.

"We compared the situation internationally and in countries where there are licensing regimes consumer dissatisfaction remains very high," says Daniel Gordon from the Office of Fair Trading

"The key issue are to make sure that the rogue agents are identified and action is taken upon that."

Disappointed

Sellers commonly complain that estate agents do not do enough work to justify their fee or cause sales to be delayed.

As for buyers, their top gripes are about misleading property descriptions and offers not being passed on to the sellers.

"Well I think a number of people will be disappointed, says Stephen Carr-Smith

Only 36 per cent of agents have registered with Stephen Carr-Smith the Estate Agent Ombudsman who deals with these complaints.

He told Working Lunch what he thought of the OFT's findings:

"Well I think a number of people will be disappointed."

"From a consumer protection point of view what's important for them is that if something goes wrong they have access to an independent body that can put a certain amount of independent scrutiny on the activities of estate agents."

"Now if they have that which they don't at the moment then that's almost as good in my view of licensing estate agents."

There's a threat to force estate agents to sign up to the ombudsman scheme if things don't improve, but no action of that sort planned as yet.

So this industry which takes two and a half billion pounds a year in fees and handles nine out of ten sales, will still be left to sort out its own regulation.