It’s been another hectic week for the industry, and here is what has caught our eye.

First: Home buying consultation

The industry is still awaiting a government consultation on speeding up the home-buying process.

In perhaps uncharacteristic speed, conveyancers have established a working group to deliver their response to the forthcoming ‘call for evidence’ on the home-buying process from the Department for Business Innovation and Skills.

The Conveyancing Association says the call for evidence is now “due later in the year”. It plans to present its own White Paper and debate the call for evidence at its annual conference in December before delivering what it is describing as its initial response.

In its Budget statement back in March, the Government said it wanted to make the home-buying and selling process “better value for money and more consumer-friendly”.

It is thought that key proposals could be mandatory early provision of more information about the property and that when an offer is accepted, the deal becomes binding.

Readers were less impressed.

Typhoon commented: “Perhaps if a few more actually deigned to speak to estate agents in the first place, the issue would not be as bad as it is currently.”

Smileplease said: “Conveyancers are the worst to ask as many do not see a problem at the moment.

“We cannot change attitudes of them. Buyers pulling out are a problem to a degree.

“We already have companies like TDS TPS why not make it a legal requirement for buyer to put down £500 deposit. Forfeit if they pull out.

“Would not solve all the problems but does help.”

Second: eMoov bored of the ASA?

Readers were intrigued after online agent eMoov was subjected to  another Advertising Standards Agency complaint.

The complaint, a follow-up to one made earlier in February, has been resolved informally.

Last June, the ASA upheld two complaints against eMoov while earlier this month it upheld three

We asked eMoov founder Russell Quirk about recent comments he made on LinkedIn which suggested that complaints made about eMoov and  “numerous other agents” were vexatious. He described it as “a revolving door of administrative bull sh*t”.

Quirk told EYE that this was not a criticism: “[It is] just a fact that multiple ASA complaints are levied against many agents (largely by competitors) and therefore these things should be seen in context. It appears to be competitor angst rather than anything else.

“I suspect that there are not many competitor businesses online, high street or otherwise that would come out of ASA scrutiny entirely unscathed given that the ASA are very adept indeed at probing quite specific semantics around marketing messages in great detail.”

Frownplease quipped: “Is there a limit on the number of informal responses to the same complaint?”

Thetrumanshow69 offered an alternative view: “As high street estate agents, we don’t half complain a lot about the online agents rather than raising our own game. I worked for a short spell for an online agent but quit as it wasn’t for me, in my mind, it wasn’t real estate agency, no selling, no real completion, just vendors who wanted a cheap deal.

“This isn’t really a bad thing, its their choice at the end of the day, and no they wont get best price advice as a high street agent would give but on the other hand you have some corporates over valuing by tens of thousands sometimes to win instructions to justify fees, not best practice either.

“The vendors that don’t sell through an online agent will come back to the high street and wont make the same mistake again, so I do really doubt the longevity of these type of businesses but they certainly do not worry me as I think we are targeting different sectors of the market.”

Third: Section 21

When does an eviction start? One reader has expressed confusion over the wording of a section 21 notice as the form says the eviction starts from rather than on a certain date.

 Ammik said: “We hardly ever serve notice on a tenant. But we’re just getting around to serving one of these new fangled Form 6A’s on a post 1 October 2015 tenancy.

“What’s caught our eye is the use of the word ‘after’ when referring to date:

You are required to leave the below address after [INSERT DATE] 1 . If you do not leave, your landlord may apply to the court for an order under section 21(1) or (4) of the Housing Act 1988 requiring you to give up possession. 

“You are required to leave the below address after, not on..? When after..? We also love the encouragement(!) not to leave.”

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