The Property Ombudsman has welcomed government plans to clarify what information estate agents should disclose in sales as part of reforms to the home buying process, announced earlier this week as part of the government’s proposals on home buying reform.
The independent ombudsman service says it investigated 617 cases related to material information in 2024 that consumers felt would have affected their decision to purchase a property, adding:
“Our casework shows that hundreds of buyers and sellers are falling foul of inconsistent practice every year, resulting in added costs and aborted sales.”
Issues not disclosed during purchases investigated by the ombudsman include the condition or dimensions of a building or land, flood risk, restrictive covenants, utilities supply, access rights, service charges and planning permissions. In one case, a buyer discovered a property by auction had severe fire damage – which hadn’t been mentioned in the listing.
Another found a property listing had the wrong address, none of the stated missing permissions that had been included in the listing, no lease in place despite being advertised as such, and a valuation that was subsequently discovered to be more than double the market value.The agent had failed to check or verify any of the claims in the listing before it was made public.
Property Ombudsman Lesley Horton (pictured) commented:
“We welcome any moves to make such an important and complex transaction clearer for consumers. Speaking to businesses, the industry is also supportive of clear guidance which is explicit about what information agents and sellers must disclose.”
Previous guidance on material information was based on consumer protection from the Unfair Trading Regulations published in 2008, subsequently replaced by the new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. There has been no established list of information that must be disclosed in a property listing since this change.
