The RICS has called on the Government to produce a new code of statutory regulation for estate agents. In a letter to Eric Forth, the Minister of Consumer Affairs, RICS president David Yorke says that the “paramount need is to impose a code on estate agents who are at present totally unregulated, as well as those who are already subject to the codes of their professional societies”.
Mr Yorke says that the RICS has identified a number of “malpractices” that have become a feature of the property market in recent times. These, he says, should be prohibited, and calls for a series of measures to enable this.
The measures are: the introduction of a mandatory code of practice to eliminate known malpractices and ensure future control; statutory backing to be given to the code and further enforced by a system of licensing or registration for “all those involved in estate agency work”; and the implementation of section 22 of the Estate Agents’ Act 1979 whereby the Secretary of State is able to lay down minimum standards of competence for those involved in estate agency.
“Competition is not stifled by demanding that estate agents show a reasonable standard of competence,” says Mr Yorke.
“Minimum standards are a cornerstone of our proposals but to be properly effective they need combining with a system of statutorily backed regulations and a code of practice.”
Among the malpractices identified by the RICS is the situation where an estate agent refuses to submit an offer from a prospective purchaser unless that purchaser either arranges an endowment-linked mortgage through the agency’s financial services arm or instructs the agent over the sale of the purchaser’s own property.
