The Property Ombudsman is to issue updated versions of all its Codes of Practice in order to address emerging industry issues, primarily ‘portal juggling’.
The practice involves the manipulation of property portals. TPO said today this misleads consumers by removing and re-listing homes on the portals, enabling agents “to hide price cuts and give the impression a property is new to the market when it is not”.
TPO’s new Code will say: “All advertisements must be legal, decent, honest and truthful in accordance with the British Codes of Advertising and Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing.
“Manipulating internet portals (and other channels of marketing) to give the impression a property is new to the market, when it is not; inflating your market share by listing properties multiple times; listing properties that are not currently available to buy; or claiming to have sold a property which was sold by another agent; is misleading.”
Other revisions to the Codes will include:
- Disclosure on pre-contract deposits – to clearly define the actions required to ensure all parties involved in a pre-contract deposit arrangement have agreed to the terms and conditions attached to the payment.
- VAT on fees – to ensure all fees and charges are quoted inclusive of VAT.
- Disclosure of referencing – adding the provision that landlords receive all relevant facts, regardless of whether the tenant has met or failed to meet the referencing criteria.
Gerry Fitzjohn, chairman of the TPO board, said: “The decision was taken to carry out a full review of the Codes to reflect market developments and provide clear definitions of unfair practices.
“Our Codes already state that all advertisements must be legal, decent, honest and truthful, but now go one step further to clarify that ‘portal juggling’, in its various forms, is misleading to consumers.
“Evidence of member agents found to be carrying out such poor practice could be reported to the Disciplinary and Standard’s Committee, NTSEAT and/or local Trading Standards.”
Ombudsman Katrine Sporle will apply the new Codes when reviewing consumer complaints about events that have occurred after October 1.
TPO’s clampdown follows clarification last month from the industry regulator, the National Trading Standards Estate Agency Team, that portal juggling is fraudulent, illegal and could lead to prosecution, criminal records and/or industry bans.
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!
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I would suggest that “inflating your market share by listing properties multiple times” would also be a crime to hand that false information to investors in order to secure funding.
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Well done to PIE for consistently reporting on this topic. And well done to the PIE readers who have done such a lot of work to raise awareness of the abuses taking place. Now let’s hope the Ombudsman scheme will come down like a ton of bricks on the serial offenders.
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A ton of purple ones?
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Just heading out of the door to advise on a £900,000 property complex on The Lizard but this News makes me VERY happy.
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Excellent news, well done PIE and those who have worked to bring this to the attention of a wider audience.
I’m not sure why there is an Oct 1st ‘gate’ on this however. Wasn’t the practice already off-side…?
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‘TPO said today this misleads consumers by removing and re-listing homes on the portals, enabling agents “to hide price cuts and give the impression a property is new to the market when it is not”.’
Begs a question:
Where does TPO stand in relation to “marketing breaks” ?
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That’s right PeeBee.
If a house isn’t moving but the seller isn’t keen to drop the price, what’s wrong with taking it off for a couple of weeks to give it a breather from the market? Perfectly acceptable surely?
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it must be just when an agent removes it for a day and then re loads it at the lower price to show as a new property.
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Mr Cass
I’m going to pretend – nay, pray – that you’re being ubersarcastic with the above post.
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Hmmm… here’s the dilemma: it’s official – TPO acknowledges the validity of the word/noun/phrase #portaljuggling.
Question is – what are chuff are Rightmove and Eamonn going to say about that?
I don’t know – Head’s Gone.
I blame the wonderful news!
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who do you report this to? lots of agents leave things for sale for months/ years after they have sold in some cases but its never picked up!
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Your local Trading Standards Office. I find most of the local portal juggles when I am running comps through Rightmove (although they continue to deny the problem exists)
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I am not aware of an industry where one has to publicise price cuts. When I go to a shop or the petrol station I am not told yesterday’s prices.
Likewise, on any other advertisement medium, we do not know whether the product advertised is new to the market or not.
Regarding disclosure of referencing, the law of agency means that an agent has to disclose all information in his possession, at least if asked.
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If you take a look at any supermarket, you will see special offers and price cuts included with a disclaimer that the property has previously been advertised at such a price in another store or previously. In every shop in the land where foodstuffs are sold, you will (or should) see a ‘best before’ or ‘use by’ date and the altering or tampering of which can, rightly, bring penalties.
There are also many agents who are fraudulently using the juggling of properties to claim they are achieving better results than they in fact are or, are more successful than is the case.
It is wholly wrong that consumers and investors are deliberately deceived and that law-abiding agents are disadvantaged by such practices and of deep concern that some agents fail to see the benefit or support the application of the law.
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Let’s not reverse things. Supermarkets and others shops usually advertise price cuts because they want to, as a commercial strategy to generate sales, not because they have to.
I don’t understand what “best before” dates have to do with anything.
‘Portal juggling’ in general is only the result of portals displaying when the ad was first put up (which is NOT the same as when the property was first marketed) and a price history, and listing newest listing first.
When ads were only in newspapers or store fronts buyers had no idea about either piece of information so I can’t see how it could be a scandal that agents try to go around portal features they don’t like for the same result.
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does seem strange to me that the portals show by default newly listed first rather then propeties by price/location/age/type etc. I know you can filter but by default it newly listed.
When buying a used car via a dealer. You can select various refined searches but none will list how long it has been advertised for sale or indeed if the price has been reduced.
Why does this apply to houses? Should the default listing be by price for that location? You then wont get juggling.
As another poster has mentioned if an owner/landlord wants to put on hold the property for say a month as their plans have changed and then relist is that juggling?
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If it was simply to try and help individual people to sell their house I could live with it. But it is being perpetrated en masse by companies to misrepresent their size and success to potential clients to win business and to investors to part them from their cash. It is done on an industrial scale daily, especially at the beginning / end of a month. It is not just people having a marketing break.
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I’m sorry to rain on everyone’s parade but TPOS only takes complaints from the public. Problem with that is do the public know what portal juggling is and do they care?
I know they should but would they even notice, and if they did would they see it as making any difference to them, enough anyway to make a complaint to the Ombudsman?
We can’t whistleblow on other agents to TPOS (another discussion?) but we can to NTSEAT. Do it. It works.
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