All agents should be made to join an approved body thus immediately introducing minimum competency standards

Redress and Regulation

The UK Government has recently announced that legislation is to be introduced making it compulsory for all Estate Agency Firms to belong to an independent redress scheme. For the first time this will give consumers some protection. Until now, membership of any scheme has been voluntary although the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) led the way in April 2006 year by making it compulsory for members to belong to the Ombudsman for Estate Agents.

It does therefore look, at long last, that the total lack of a level playing field is starting to be addressed but is this really going to be enough? Currently, the Estate Agency Profession is totally unregulated and anyone can set up with no experience, no qualifications and no insurance. Bearing in mind you can then be dealing with someone’s largest asset; the situation is quite frankly ludicrous. For many years the NAEA, which represents approximately 10,000 or one third of the selling individuals in the UK, has been calling for the Government to introduce some form of regulation. The Association is the awarding body for what are the only accredited qualifications in pure agency. These awards are now a minimum entry requirement into the Association which also requires, as appropriate, compulsory insurance, annual accountant certificates and on going training of 12 hours per year.

Interestingly since introducing these awards, the take up has been tremendous (some 2,500 passes in under three years) with an increasing number, of more experienced professionals, also studying for the higher level diploma award. The other effects have been to lower the average age of the membership to 35 and to improve the balance of gender within the Association.

In October 2006 the NAEA also introduced model terms and conditions of business for our members. These have taken some two years of working with the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to produce and, for the first time, offer agents the use of consumer friendly and OFT compliant terms. Hopefully in time these terms will be adopted by the industry as a whole.

Whilst the Association has therefore been working hard to “raise the bar” thus improving the fairly poor perception of agents in the UK, there still has to be a question as to whether the latest Government is enough? Whilst welcoming the slight redressing of the balance, the answer is no. Surely it is better to hopefully prevent the problem in the first place than rely solely on redress. All agents should be made to join an approved body thus immediately introducing minimum competency standards, an overseeing body and redress all in one go. Unfortunately, the only people who cannot see this are the Government despite calls by the profession, the media and most importantly the consumer.

Internet - threat or opportunity?

The UK media have recently been full of stories about the potential demise of agents suggesting that the public can now make use of the internet to either sell for themselves or use one of the plethora of web sites offering to advertise your property for virtually nothing. The majority of UK agents have embraced this technology and indeed many are at the forefront with leading web site designs and up to date technology linked services. Currently well over 90 per cent of those selling in the UK (up to 1.5million transactions a year), use a traditional agent.

However everyone has to be aware of the “new boys on the block”, which include supermarkets coming into the business and undercutting normal fees. Those who compete and offer excellent levels of service will, without doubt survive; those who do not could be in trouble.