Sector expertise/Estate Agents & property consultants

Chelgate understands the pressures and issues that face estate agents in today’s market. We have implemented promotional programmes for various estate agents over the past two decades, ranging from practice promotion through to marketing individual properties.

Estate agents currently face a new threat, this time from Government. In November 2007, it started consultation which is likely to lead to regulation changes to place a greater burden upon estate agents. These proposed changes are in five parts:

• Redress scheme powers
  Proposed regulations will require all estate agents to belong to an approved customer redress scheme to deal with complaints about buying and selling property.
  
• Record keeping requirements
  Proposed regulations will require estate agents to keep additional information relating to client’s prospective liabilities to the estate agent and an estate agent’s personal interest in a transaction, together with additional information relating to offers to sellers.
  
• Applications to revoke or vary prohibition orders
  Proposed changes to legislation removing the automatic revocation of prohibition orders (where the convictions that caused them are considered spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974).
  
  Proposed amendment to the fee to be paid by estate agents when applying for a prohibition order to be revoked or varied.
  
• Details of all offers to be sent to sellers
  Proposed requirements that sellers should be given details of all offers received from prospective buyers. This would also mean that sellers would not now be able to specify to estate agents that they do not ant to receive details of certain types of offers.
  
• Statutory terms in estate agents’ contracts
  Government wishes to seek views on alternative versions of the current statutory definitions of the contract terms: ‘sole agency’, ‘sole selling rights’ and ‘ready, willing and able purchaser’ when used in estate agents’ contracts.

The consultation about these proposed changes started on 9 November 2007, and will finish on 1 February 2008. An electronic version of this consultation document, including its annexes, is available in PDF format here.