eMoov founder and chief executive Russell Quirk has launched another online petition, this time calling for mandatory licensing of estate agents.
The move is in response to last week’s annual report from The Property Ombudsman which said it had received 16,265 enquiries from consumers seeking advice, with 3,304 formal complaints resolved - 32 per cent up on the previous year. Compensation payments instructed by TPO totalled £811,134 - a record.
Quirk says that these figures are “completely unacceptable" and "it's clear that standards are poor,” and says that while kebab shops, taxi drivers and pension sellers are licensed, those managing the home selling process are not.
“The public tend to move home very infrequently, have limited detailed knowledge of the ins and outs of moving and often encounter a protracted, problematic and stressful experience which can be exasperated by those unprofessional agents that display little support, poor communication and, at worst, bad advice and even dishonesty” he says.
His online petition is here https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/168500.
Back in July, shortly after the result of the Brexit Referendum, Quirk launched another online petition, calling for the scrapping of EPCs which had been “derived from an EU diktat” and were “of little help to either buyer or seller and have not proven to reduce energy consumption.”
By yesterday evening, three months after launch, it had received only 551 signatures.
A petition on the parliament website requires 10,000 signatures to even warrant an official response from the government, and needs 100,000 to be considered for a parliamentary debate.
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Licencing isn't needed as there is already heavy legislation in place what with the 79 EA Act. CPRs and BPRs. AML etc etc etc.
But in consumer best interest it was interesting that recent WHICH research showed only 4 in 10 homes sell via portals. Thus lone online only agents are not acting in consumers best interest in reaching all buyers
Good morning Russell!! Glad you are spouting again.
I read this as "Good morning Brussell, Glad you are sprouting again." But then it's just my eyes!
Let me guess, all agents should be pay to be involved in licensing programme except the toilet parasite online agents, because they are not estate agents.
A typical hypocritial wolly!
maybe a hypocrite, but I totally agree with him, all agents online or high street (and in fairness anyone involved with a sale of a home, which would also include private seller's) should need to be liscensed, it's nothing to be scared of, and would give us a shred of credibility. Yes we have various acts we have to abide by, but the average consumer does not know that. I had one who had been duped by her estate agent who ended up buying her property (not declared) and she lost £70k. She didn't know what she could do and in the end could not be bothered to do anything about it (obviously didn't need the money that badly), but it will stop this sort of horror story happening, as well as many others that we have all heard down the years.
So 2015 so soemwhere in the region of 1.2-1.3m residential sales of which there were roughly 1500 upheld complaints regarding them- or the equivalent to roughly 0.12%.Is it really that shocking- sounds quite impressive to me. What's more, average payout was roughly £245 showing that a lot of these rulings were over smaller issues with discretionary awards.
No attention is paid to mandatory membership of a Redress scheme massively increasinbg membership and therefore, as logic would dictate, an applicable increase in reported incidents. I'd be intrigued to see the increase in reports offset against the increase of membership for the last 2 years- I wouldnt be surprised to have seen membership climb much faster than reports showing, actually, what a legitimate industry we really are.
What is more, one of the greatest battles of all industry 'regulators' (everything from ARLA/RICS to SAFEAgent to Deposit schemes and Redess) has been growing public awareness and uptake. Yet, now they get this, suddenly this means that we are a bunch if ill-behaved, miscreants keen to do ittle more than line our own pockets at the expense of (seemingly) everyone.
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