Propertymark has updated its Property Information Questionnaire (PIQ) in light of the new guidance for sales and letting agents from the National Trading Standards Estate and Letting Agency Team (NTSELAT) as part of their work to provide greater clarity on what constitutes material information.
The PIQ is part of Propertymark’s Sales Protocol Toolkit which was developed to help consumers and agents to speed up transactions, reduce fall-through rates and ensure compliance with the Consumer Protection Regulations when buying and selling property. The is also a version to support letting agents and landlords when renting property to tenants.
For sales transactions, by having this information available, potential issues that could cause delays in the process or that would impact the buyer’s decision to purchase the property can be ironed out before the sale is several months down the line. A sale falling through at that stage is incredibly costly for all parties involved. However, if potential buyers can see this information before they commit, it can prevent that from happening.
The lettings PIQ, also helps in a similar way, however the additional information helps to highlight any potential information that the agent and tenant would need to be aware of. Propertymark represented members on the NTSELAT Material Information Working Group and hosted a webinar in January to support members and agents to understand the new guidance and framework for presenting material information.
The documents can be downloaded via the Propertymark website here. Commenting on the release of the update PIQ documents, Nathan Emerson, CEO of Propertymark said:
“Propertymark’s updated Property Information Questionnaire documents substantially enhance the previous versions of our PIQs by including Parts B and C of the Material Information guidance from National Trading Standards. Our PIQs have undergone some extensive reworking, not only including the updated Material Information guidance, but being restructured in a way that we believe is more useful for our members. We all know that ensuring information about the property is as accurate as possible as early as possible in the process can prevent issues that may stall and slow transactions later down the line.
We strongly encourage all agents to use the PIQ to ensure that not only do transactions go through more smoothly, but agents comply with the Consumer Protection Regulations and have all the information in one place that can assist with the marketing of property.”
