Estate agents often complain that national media report a ‘crashing’ property market and ‘extortionate’ rents but that this picture rarely reflects what’s happening on the ground.

And now they have a champion. Senior industry figure Kate Faulkner has broken ranks and criticised both national newspapers and big data firms for publishing doomsday reports that, although they make good headlines, are often not accurate.

Faulkner says this kind of rhetoric has persuaded many first-time buyers that they cannot afford to get on the property ladder, even though prices on the ground in many areas of the nation are affordable.

“Why is the industry not focusing on how to afford a property in their local area and why is everyone continuing to tell people it’s ‘impossible’ to buy?,” she asks.

Her latest property price report reveals that house prices are more affordable than they were 13 years ago in many places including Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, the NE, West and Yorkshire.

“The Nationwide HPI report shows that affordability wise, in the last quarter of 2007, in the North East, mortgage payments took up 40.5% of FTBs pay, now it’s just 19%,” she says.

“And even in London, it’s fallen from 69.6% to 56.2% – of course still incredibly tough in the Capital – but when you look around the rest of the UK, the idea that affordability is still the issue it was before the credit crunch is nuts.”

Property market

Faulkner also claims that the problem of saving up a deposit is also over-egged.

“Nationwide have produced a really good chart showing how many years it would take for FTBs between five to 15 years to save a 20% deposit,” she says.

“What this doesn’t tell people though, is you don’t need a 20% deposit, especially in areas around the Midlands and North.”

Find out more about Kate Faulkner.

The post Stop saying the property market is broken when it’s not, says Faulkner appeared first on The Negotiator.

Located in the heart of the National Forest in Leicestershire, this Wheatcroft Homes development has received strong interest with four of the nine new homes already reserved.

East Midlands developer Wheatcroft Homes is transforming the former warehouse site into a mixture of three and four bedroom family homes, including both semidetached and detached properties, which all boast scenic views overlooking the Ashby Canal.

Catherine Haward, director of Wheatcroft Homes, said, “We are delighted to finally reveal what these fantastic family homes are going to look like inside. They have been designed to maximise the stunning countryside views, by installing large windows and balconies and they aren’t directly overlooked by any other properties – a real benefit for future residents.

We are delighted to reveal these fantastic family homes. They are designed to maximise the stunning countryside views, over the canal.

All properties at Swing Bridge Wharf will have high end features including handmade bespoke kitchens, solid oak or quartz worktops, ceramic tiled floors, ceramic Belfast sinks, Duravit sanitary ware and Hansgrohe taps.

Swing Bridge Wharf is being marketed by local property agent, Newton Fallowell.

The post Swing Bridge Wharf launches appeared first on The Negotiator.

Leaders Romans could be cooking up a storm in the property market with its new Chief Financial Officer, Paul Aitchison.

The Leaders Romans Group (LRG)  – one of the UK’s largest residential property services groups, with 160 branches, 50,000 rental properties under management and annual revenues in excess of £120 million, backed by the private equity firm Bowmark Capital – has announced the appointment of Paul Aitchison as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

Paul has over 16 years of financial experience across several sectors, most of which were backed by private equity.

Restaurants

Paul’s experience includes eight years as Chief Financial Officer for Cote Restaurants and during his time there he oversaw the growth of the business from its very first restaurant to over 75 when he left in 2016.

Since then he has been an interim financial consultant; CFO of Empowering Learning Ltd.; Time Plan Education Ltd.; and CFO of Social Entertainment Ventures in London.

“I have led several management buyouts and acquisitions and put in place numerous bank loan facilities and refinancing arrangements,” he says.

“I have also implemented a number of systems that have increased efficiencies within the businesses I have managed – having always viewed finance as an important support function for the people on the ground making sales, I’m looking forward to helping LRG continue in its efforts to grow.”

Read more about Leaders Romans.

The post Leaders Romans appoints former restaurants boss as its new CFO appeared first on The Negotiator.

The trade body that represents the short-term lets industry in the UK has refuted claims that online platforms such as Airbnb are restricting supply to the traditional lettings market.

Merilee Karr, who chairs the UK Short Term Accommodation Association and runs her own agency UnderTheDoormat.com, claims there is “no research that demonstrates a concrete link between short-term rentals and a lack of housing supply in the UK”.

She also rejects recent calls for greater regulation of the sector, saying: “We believe that industry measures and host education will more directly address residential amenity concerns than any new regulations,” she told the Evening Standard newspaper.

Her comments followed research by London councils published earlier this week revealing that 74,549 flats and houses are available for short term rental in London.

This represents one in 50 properties in the capital or just over 2% of its housing stock, although the research only included ‘whole property rentals’ rather than rooms within houses or flats.

Airbnb

The analysts looked at all the largest short-term rental platforms including Airbnb, ooking.com, HomeAway, Niumba and TripAdvisor.

“The market [for online short-term lets] is growing out of control,” says Darren Rodwell, executive member for housing at London Councils.

His organisation is calling for greater powers to control the explosion in short-term lets in London, force landlords to register their properties and stop irresponsible homeowners allowing their properties to be used as ‘party houses’.

“Borough are hearing more and more complaints about short-term lets linked to anti-social behaviour,” adds Rodwell.

The post ‘No link’ between short lets and supply problems in traditional rental markets, says trade body appeared first on The Negotiator.

The father of a former soldier Danny Butcher (pictured, above), who killed himself after signing up to a ‘property investment’ coaching course has called for the sector to be regulated. He failed to get a bricks-and-mortar investment business off the ground.

Alan Butcher has launched a change.org petition that has already been signed by 650 people asking the government to regulate the ‘wealth creation/property training’ industry.

Some action has already been taken. An industry accreditation scheme, The Property Investors Bureau, is in the process of being set up with support from Landlord Action’s Paul Shamplina, and will offer a redress scheme backed by the PRS.

Until then, anyone can set themselves up as a property investment trainer without the need for any qualifications or oversight.

Run rampant

This lack of regulation despite the high costs of completing the courses, has “created an opportunity for unscrupulous individuals to run rampant”, says Alan.

His son’s case featured on Monday’s BBC Inside Out programme about Property Investors, which charged Danny £13,000 to attend its ‘property academy’ course.

The company claims to be the largest of its kind in the UK and is fronted by former illusionist Samuel Leeds. He says those attending both his free and paid-for courses are warned not to get into debt when paying for them.

Despite attending the course, Danny was unable to get a property business off the ground and, after failing to win a refund from Property Investors, took his own life.

“The only thing I can do for Danny is to try and make people aware so they don’t end up wasting their money and putting themselves in a bad place,” his father told the BBC.

“If it does that, what’s a meaningless loss of life won’t be quite so meaningless.”

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The estate agent who left a leading upmarket estate agency after a vendor claimed that their security had been compromised by pictures he posted on Instagram has been named.

Daniel Daggers, who is one of the UK’s most prolific and followed property Instagram users, has been on gardening leave since resigning from Knight Frank last year, the company has confirmed.

40-year-old Daggers had risen to be a social media star while working for the agency within its ‘super prime’ London office, building up a following of 30,000 followers on his Instagram account.

He is one of several social media estate agency stars working for Knight Frank who have become more well-known than the company they work for, a recent trend in the UK market copied from the US.

Calling himself ‘Mr Super Prime’, his Instagram account includes pictures of Daggers with wealthy clients, colleagues and friends, and information about his awards and sales successes.

£95m mansion

In one post he claims to have sold properties worth £241 million during 2018/19 and listed properties worth in excess of £1 billion. His sales have included a detached house in central London for £95 million and a Mayfair penthouse for £33 million.

But after 12 years with Knight Frank, Daggers is now on garden leave and will leave the company next month after a client complained one of the property pictures he had posted on his Instagram timeline had invaded their privacy and created a ‘security risk’.

Vendors in the super-prime market for properties selling at over £10 million are notoriously paranoid revealing details online about their addresses, wealth and personal lives.

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Forbes magazine says it has seen an internal email sent to 200 staff at Purplebricks in Canada offering them extra holiday if their friends or family post upbeat online comments and star ratings about the company.

The email urges people to post comments such as ‘I think Purplebricks is great’ or ‘Purplebricks is the future of real estate’ on Facebook and post five-star reviews on Google.

An investigation by the magazine found that staff has to screen-shot their friends’ or family’s posts and then forward them to the company’s marketing department in order to be eligible for additional paid holiday.

But the internal email also warned agents not to post any comments or reviews themselves because it would go against both Google and Facebook’s terms and conditions and land the company in ‘hot water’.

The reason given for the unconventional push is that when Canadian hybrid agency ComFree was bought by Purplebricks and rebranded in 2018, its old reviews could not be transferred and therefore a ‘push’ was needed to rebuild its online ratings.

Purplebricks in Canada has issued a statement regretting the ‘isolated and misguided’ initiative and that it would ‘never happen again’.

The leaked email could not come at a worse time for Facebook and Google, both of which along with other sites such as eBay are under pressure around the world to tackle ‘fake reviews’.

This includes in the UK. Last year the Competition and Markets Authority found 26 Facebook groups where people were offering to write fake reviews in return for payment, although these are have subsequently been removed.

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Richard Selwyn has worked in lettings since the mid-1990s in and around Hertfordshire and has been a passionate member of ARLA Propertymark until, late last year, he unexpectedly resigned as its President Elect.

Here he talks to The Negotiator about why this happened, what the future holds and why he hasn’t returned to running an estate agency.

Have you cut all ties with Propertymark?

“My father passed away in October and I had to look at what was most important over the subsequent months including looking after my mother and dealing with my own emotions; so I spoke to David Cox [Chief Executive of ARLA] and said it wasn’t fair on ARLA or myself to carry on being President Elect or involved with Propertymark.

“I would like to go back at some stage because I believe passionately in everything that the organisation offers.”

Why have you set up your own consultancy?

“My original plan was to reintegrate with agency after selling my business but there were some contractual constraints. My experience of running my own agency and being involved with ARLA Propertymark confirmed to me that there is a demand for the business consultancy that I am now offering.

“Standards do vary in our industry extensively and I felt that it would be good to give something back, and ultimately no two businesses are the same and I am keen to roll up my sleeves and be really hands-on.

“I’ve already been busy with a couple of clients doing mystery shopping, marketing initiatives, compliance checks and even staff interviewing.”

Will you be helping agents with proptech too?

“I have come across most of the proptech companies out there and my opinion is that the future will be a mixture of old school values, technology and exceptional service offerings.”

Would you recommend to your clients that they exit the high street?

“I don’t think it’s essential for an estate agent to be on the high street; social media and both traditional and online marketing can reach most of the market. Agents do have to review their costs.”

Will ROPA create a greater demand for people like you?

“It’s important that agents recognise that regulation is coming probably in two to three years and they need to start adapting and preparing for it now including training and looking at their processes.”

The post Richard Selwyn reveals why he quit ARLA and launched a new business appeared first on The Negotiator.

An estate agency in the Wirral has been told to pay fines and costs totalling £24,118 after being found guilty of 11 housing and consumer protection offences, including seven counts of failing to protect tenants’ deposits within a government-approved scheme.

The court case is also an example of how councils are using Selective Licensing schemes to more easily track and then prosecute agents who do not adhere to the law when dealing with tenants and rental properties.

Andrew Smith, a director of eight-year-old firm Andrews Estates Limited in Neston, near Ellesmere Port, pleaded guilty on the company’s behalf to failing to protect tenant deposits, and also giving false information to the local council and an unfair trading offence relating to the company’s website.

The prosecution followed a joint operation between Wirral Council and the local Trading Standards team, which found that the unsecured deposits were from tenants living in properties covered by the area’s Selective Licensing scheme.

“Landlords are required to manage their property in accordance with the law,” says Councillor Stuart Whittingham, Wirral Council Cabinet Member for Housing and Planning (left).

“The failings of this company put potentially vulnerable tenant’s deposits at risk, which is unacceptable.

“The purpose of the selective licensing scheme is to ensure properties are being managed correctly and this case demonstrates what an invaluable tool selective licensing is.”

The estate agency involved and its director were fined for offences committed under the Housing 2004 and Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.

Andrews Estates Ltd has no connection to Andrews Estate Agents Ltd, the national chain which has a similar exterior branch design and colour.

Read more about deposits.

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A legal firm has released sickening images of a worm-infested home left by a rogue tenant to highlight the plight of landlords facing long eviction waits and a referencing system that often misses repeat offenders.

Maggots can be seen engulfing the fridge and freezer, which the tenant left unplugged intentionally, while mounds of unopened debt letters pile up on kitchen counters.

It took a shocking SEVEN MONTHS for the tenant to be evicted from the two-bedroom home in Barking, Essex, despite the appalling state of the property.

Rent arrears totaled £6,250 but, as the tenant was an EU national with no UK assets, the landlord recouped nothing at all and has been left with a bill totaling thousands of pounds for cleaning, repairs and waste removal.

Rogue tenant

The landlord later discovered the tenant is a repeat offender, having been evicted from other properties, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake.

While a letting agency dealt with tenant referencing checks on behalf of the landlord, she now questions its thoroughness given that previous issues weren’t flagged.

LegalforLandlords represented the landlord in gaining possession of her property, having initially attempted to handle the issue herself.

The first hearing was scheduled two months after approaching the firm for help, with court backlogs causing delays.

But this hearing was adjourned by the judge, with a new date listed for July 2019, at which possession was granted and a bailiff appointment set for September 2019, again due to the huge number of cases being dealt with.

Sim Sekhon (pictured, left), Managing Director of LegalforLandlords, said: “We’ve handled many cases where tenants have left properties in a state of squalor, but this is definitely one of the worst we’ve seen.”

Read more about evictions.

The post Legal firm reveals trail of horror left by ‘worst rogue tenant ever’ appeared first on The Negotiator.

More young people are ditching their takeaway coffee habit and spurning gym membership to save for a deposit on their first home, the latest English Housing Survey reveals.

Help to Buy, record-low mortgage rates and the Bank of Mum and Dad have all evidently helped to boost numbers getting on the property ladder. New government figures show there are now as many 25 to 34-year-old home-owners as there are renters.

After more than a decade of decline, the proportion of this age group in owner occupation has risen to 41%, while the proportion in the private rented sector has dropped from its peak of 48% in 2013-14 to 41% in 2018-19.

Funding sources

According to the latest English Housing Survey, the average first-time buyer was 33, unchanged from the previous year. Most (85%) funded the purchase with savings, while 34% got help from family or friends, and a lucky 6% used an inheritance as a deposit.

Joseph Daniels (left), founder of modular developer Project Etopia, says Help to Buy, both the equity loan and the ISA, and Stamp Duty relief are behind the march of the younger first-time buyers powering a recovery in home ownership.

However, he warns that falling home ownership among the young still threatens to become a national crisis, rooted in high property prices and stretched affordability.

“House building will need to keep pace with growing demand and buyers face very different propositions across the country with prices still unaffordable in many parts of the UK, particularly in the south of England,” says Daniels.

The new survey shows that of the estimated 23.5 million households in England, 64% are owner occupiers while the proportion of households in the private rented sector remains unchanged for the sixth year in a row; in 2018-19, the private rented sector accounted for 19% of households.

Read the English Housing Survey report in full.

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The detailed discussions between the four estate agents involved in the Berkshire cartel case have been published by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), along with shocking evidence given by the individuals involved.

These are largely emails sent between people working at Michael Hardy, Prospect, Richard Worth and a branch of Romans and are the lion’s share of the evidence gathered by the CMA to come to its decision on the cartel case.

The discussions took place between September 2008 and May 2015 and were part of a ‘concerted effort’ to fix and maintain a level of commission fees for property sales in five areas.

These were Wokingham, Winnersh, Crowthorne, Bracknell and Warfield.

The combined £605,519 fines levied on three of the companies, Michael Hardy, Prospect and Richard Worth were revealed in December following a year-long investigation.

• Highlights of the report include inconsistencies in the evidence given by a Romans director during two interviews, who was also accused during the investigation of not cooperating with the CMA during it early stages.
• A director of Richard Worth initially refused to be interviewed but later relented.
• The cartel was prompted largely by the severe downturn in the economy and property market created by the financial crash of 2008 and started around the time of the failure of Northern Rock building society.
• The initial agreement was to set a minimum fee of £2,500 or 1.75% and a multiple agency fee of 3%. The average fee was between 1.7 and 1.8% but did drop down to 1.5% where competition was weakest.
• At least one of the agency directors believed their agreement ‘stopped short of cartel’.
• Romans put one smaller agency, Prospect, under severe pressure to join the cartel or suffer severe consequences. It was told that Romans could easily survive a downturn but that smaller agencies would not as the market contracted.
• Evidence shows agents emailed each other to point out when different branches were not ‘playing ball’ and had been charging clients 1.25% commission, for example, rather than the agreed 1.75% and above.
• Ignorance played a role – one agent says in an email “‘I’m not sure the exact definition of a cartel, but I do think the top 3 or 4 agents could quite easily agree a higher minimum fee.”
• One Romans director told other agents that agreeing common fees ‘was fine’ because not all agents in the area were involved.
• Wokingham was the focus of the cartel because it was where the four agents competed hardest for instructions.
• The agents kept the cartel going after 2012 when the recession ended because of competition from low-fee online agents.
• Four meetings a year held to discuss fees and keep branches in line continued until 2015.
• Within at least one of the agencies all the branch managers were aware of the minimum fee arrangement.
• Directors told staff who emailed in about the cartel ‘not to put things in writing’ and delete emails ‘like it never arrived’.
• All parties spent considerable amounts of time and effort monitoring competitors within the cartel ‘being sneaky’ over commission rates, as one email puts it.
• The cartel operated a fine system via invoices that forced participants who did not stick to the fee agreement to compensate competitors for lost business, although not all participated.
• The cartel (and exploring the setting up of similar arrangements in other areas,) was made part of a personal performance objective for one Romans director.

Following the investigation, and the admission by all four agencies of their involvement in the cartel, Michael Hardy was fined £142,843, Prospect £268,765 and Richard Worth £193,911. Romans was not fined because it had come forward to the CMA about the cartel and therefore was able to benefit from the authority’s ‘lenience’ rules.

Read the latest CMA document in full.

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The collapsed directly-operated part of rural estate agency Humberts has been purchased from its administrators Begbies Traynor by a consortium of its franchise owners trading at Humberts Group Limited.

Last month the directly-operated part of the business, which was bought by travel company Natural Retreats in May 20187, went into administration after running out of cash.

The franchisees are believed to be a group of at leaset four franchisees led by Humberts’ Norwich branch.

A statement from the new owners of Humberts says the sale attracted ‘interest from both national and international parties, and proceeded to a best and final bid, upon which a sale at an undisclosed sum was agreed’.

Lettings book

The purchase, which is for an undisclosed sum, includes the company, its goodwill, trading name, lettings book, and intellectual property of the brand.

The franchisees, which have been trading as normal as the main company entered administration, say they will issue a statement shortly setting out a ‘new vision for the company’.

Tim Stephens MRICS (left), who operates the Norwich Humberts office said: “We are delighted to conclude this deal and to take this long established and trusted brand into a very exciting future, particularly after the hedging of the Brexit negotiations and uncertainties for the economy prior to the Election.

“We are very positive about the next 12 months and look forward to building the teams and growing the business to its former levels and beyond.

“We would like to thank all Humberts’ clients for their continued support and loyalty and we look forward to working with them and new clients in the future. We also would like to thank the administrators, Begbies Traynor, for their smooth handling of the transition”.

Humberts Group Limited was established four days ago specifically to complete the purchase and has four directors; William Bankes, Simon Lewis, Duncan Ley and Tim Stephens.

The post Breaking: Humberts is bought out of administration by its franchisees appeared first on The Negotiator.

A Spanish medium-term lettings platform that launched in the UK two years ago claims to have achieved extraordinary growth within London’s private rental market.

Badi, which bills itself as a room rental app for homeowners and tenants, also offers whole properties to rent on its website and app.

The company says it has now logged 100,000 listings on its platform within London since 2018, which has helped boost its overall listings growth by 450%.

“Our substantial growth in the UK has proven that there is a clear demand for an improved product in the room rental space,” says UK general manager Steven Hiltermann (left).

Badi operates in Barcelona, Madrid and Berlin as well as London, has plans to open operations in the US and says it wants revolutionise traditional lets in the same way Airbnb changed short-lets.

Its platform is popular with younger renters and it offers similar tech to Airbnb.

In many ways presents itself a lettings agency. For example, most of its properties and rooms are advertised at a cost ‘per month’ as traditional lettings are and the average stay is five-and-a-half months.

But its website makes no mention of tenancies, and both landlord and tenant are left to organise their own deposit arrangements.

“After several years of strong growth, Badi has surpassed more than 300k listings in Europe,” said Carlos Pierre, founder and CEO of Badi.

“Based on the success we’ve experienced here, we look forward to expanding into new markets that will allow us to make city living accessible for people across the globe”.

Badi likes to compare itself with Airbnb and says it is growing faster during its early years than Airbnb did. The company has a $45 million war chest to spend on expansion from several high-profile VC funds and has 120 employees.

The post This lettings platform wants to ‘do an Airbnb’ in the longer-term market appeared first on The Negotiator.

The Negotiator has been shown a new proptech platform that claims to revolutionise how prospective buyers make offers on a property for sale.

Called Offr, it’s a tech platform that enables estate agents to move the offer management process online and help them and vendors control and understand more about each offer and who’s making it and how prepared each buyer is to move to SSTC.

It’s a white-labelled widget that sits on an agent’s website and enables approved buyers to make an offer at the click of a button. This, it is claimed, will drive more traffic and buyer engagement to agents’ site.

Created by an Irish tech firm which has recently moved its operations to London, it is backed by an investment of €1 million from two Irish banks and has been in Beta mode for the past 18 months.

Its launch is being spearheaded by Phil Farrell (pictured, above), who as well as being an estate agent with 27 years’ experience, is well known in Ireland for his property column in the Irish Independent.

Ten million

“We estimate that there are eight to ten million offers made in the UK every year on residential property but no one is capturing this information and managing it,” he says.

“To speed up the house buying and selling process it’s essential to bring information about potential buyers into the offer process earlier and, among many things, weed out the tyre kickers.”

The platform came out of auction house Allsop’s move into Ireland during the late noughties and the online tech developed by the company to handle online bids for properties. Its former director in Ireland and until recently the force behind BidX1 online auction site, Robert Hoban, is a co-founder with Farrell along with tech guru Niall Dawson.

Offr is due to officially launch in May or June this year in the UK and is already being tried out by several high-profile agents. It plans to charge £300 a month to agents who want to list unlimited number of properties, and an undisclosed per-property charge for those who don’t.

Read more about proptech.

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Zoopla says its first ‘Zooploma’, a guide for first-time buyers to give them support and advice to get on the property ladder along with recommended suitable properties, been a roaring success.

The portal says that over 176,000 home hunters have signed up to the initiative since its launch on Boxing Day and that these registrations represent over five times the number of first-time buyer mortgages completed in November 2019.

The Zooploma is a series of 30 easy-to-digest emails sent over ten weeks which help guide first-time buyers through their home buying journey.

Zoopla plans to follow the success of the Zooploma with other guides for prospective home buyers and renters at different stages in their property journey.

The second, set to launch in the coming weeks, will focus on the rental market andthers is also a commercial opportunity for the portal.

The Zooploma guides give brands the opportunity to advertise relevant products for each specific audience, such as mortgage calculators or listings for new build homes.

Adam Knight (left), Head of CRM at Zoopla, said: “First-time buyers are a significant proportion of the market, accounting for almost 40% of all property transactions.

“Understanding their challenges and helping to support and guide them through the process is central to our ethos. These consumers are a crucial business driver for agents and therefore a key priority here at Zoopla as we look to further support agents and drive quality leads to them.”

Read more about the Zooploma.

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A driver has admitted causing death by careless driving after a senior member of staff at Savills, Andrew Mann, was killed when he hit his lorry on a road in Dorset.

Mann, 40, was a member of Savills planning team and was based at its Wimborne offices in Dorset. He leaves behind four children.

He is understood to have been on his way to work when the accident happened at 8.45am in the morning on Tuesday, April 30^th last year.

During an inquest into the accident in May it was established that lorry driver Wayne McKay, 41, had turned into an entrance way to prevent a dog entering the carriageway on the A31 road near the village of Sturminster but McKay failed to see Mann approaching on his Kawasaki motorbike.

During the trial it was revealed that Mann then hit McKay’s Citroen drop-sided lorry at a likely speed of 60 miles an hour.

Multiple injuries

Mann was pronounced dead at the scene and a post mortem later revealed that he had died from multiple injuries.

During the trial prosecuting counsel Jessica Price revealed that McKay had been focusing so hard on saving the dog’s life that he had not seen Mann approaching on his bike, even though under normally circumstances he would have been visible to him for nearly eight seconds prior to the accident.

The case was heard at Poole Magistrates Court but District Judge Stephen Nichols has transferred sentencing of McKay to Bournemouth Crown Court because he felt the court’s sentencing powers were not adequate.

Read more about Savills.

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Trading standards has told the BBC that it is extremely concerned by the ‘quick sale’ sector of the estate agency industry and that it has evidence that some vendors could be losing up to £30,000 when they use such services.

These extraordinary allegations were aired during Saturday’s BBC Radio 4 Moneybox programme (see above), during which it was claimed that some quick sale agents are continuing to exploit desperate vendors.

Senior Trading Standards investigator Alison Ferrar (left) told the BBC that, although most of the agents involved in the sector offer a fair and legitimate service, some do not.

“We have a few of these company’s on our radar at the moment and we’re keeping a watching brief over the rest,” she said.

Ferrar said that if agents in this sector were found to be exploiting some vendors, action would be taken to close them down.

One of the key complaints against quick sale agents is that they reduce asking prices without informing the vendors which, apart from the lost equity, makes it more difficult to sell the house at a later date with a traditional agent at a higher price.

The programme’s reporter claimed that doing this would be considered a breach of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading regulations.

Mark Hayward (left), Chief Executive of NAEA Propertymark said the situation was ‘appalling’ because the practice puts a ‘price blight’ on a property.

Hayward said vendors should report agents to their redress scheme to seek compensation, as well as reporting them to either national or local trading standards.

Listen to the programme.

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Moving home is moving rapidly towards a digital future and one of the ‘casualties’ of this upheaval will be the conveyancing solicitor, whose job is to change radically in the coming months and years.

The Regulator the Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) says the biggest shift will be away from pushing forward a sale, and instead focussing on charging clients for advice.

It also predicts that review websites like Trustpilot will soon play a greater role in soliciting instruction from home movers.

“Technology will radically improve transparency for consumers about what they are buying and the progress of their transaction,” the report says.

“Because of the Internet of Things, properties will maintain up-to-date logbooks with little human intervention.”

 HIPS again?

The regulator also says giving upfront information about a property at the point of marketing – rather than waiting until later – will be key.

The CLC’s new paper on the future of industry traces how the conveyancing process will change, highlighting questions that regulators, lawyers, estate agents, lenders, technologists and others – will have to grapple with.

Chair of the CLC Dame Janet Paraskeva (left), says: “I think many lawyers will be heartened by the prediction that there will be a greater focus on advisory work as the market changes and that it can be used to create a point of differentiation.

“However, while we can predict certain shifts in the market with confidence – such as the inevitable move to electronic conveyancing – how they play out over the next decade remains uncertain.

“I hope this report will fuel a discussion across the property industry and that conveyancers will grasp the opportunity to shape their future.”

Have your say

Comment by email at Conveyancing2030@clc-uk.org or visit https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/Conveyancing2030

Read more about the CLC.

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Just four months after allegations in tech magazine Wired that Purplebricks has in the past ‘gamed’ its online reviews, the hybrid estate agency has been given a customer service gong by reviews website Feefo.

Described as ‘an independent seal of excellence that recognises businesses for delivering exceptional experiences as rated by real customers’, it is the second year in a row that Purplebricks has won the plaudit.

Nevertheless the award in controversial. As well as the investigation by Wired magazine, last week it was revealed that in Canada its local marketing department was paying staff if their family and friends posted upbeat reviews and five-star plaudits on Facebook and Google.

And from mid-2017 to April 2019 Purplebricks UK and industry reviews website AllAgents.co.uk were involved in a long-running dispute over reviews.
Feefo says the agency won its Gold status after some 5,000 reviews were posted with an average score of 4.1 and that over 3,000 were five-star reviews.

“This is a great achievement for the whole team and demonstrates our commitment and relentless focus on delivering great customer service,” says Vic Darvey, CEO of Purplebricks (left).

“Feefo’s model is based on the feedback of real customers, ensuring the integrity and honesty of their online reviews, and allowing us to learn and consistently improve. We look forward to another successful year.”

Feefo Gold Trusted Service awards are given to businesses who have collected at least 50 reviews between January 1^st, and December 31^st, 2019 with a Feefo service rating of between 4.5 and 4.9.

Feefo says it ensures that all feedback is authentic, by matching it to a legitimate transaction.

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