Marketing breaks – when a property is taken off the market and then swiftly re-listed as new – will not be tolerated by the Property Ombudsman under its updated Codes, which kick in this weekend.
Meanwhile, the NAEA has utterly condemned the practice as deception which distorts the market, while Zoopla has said that any agents seen to be portal juggling will be thrown permanently off its site.
While TPO only deals with consumer complaints, it yesterday said that if it receives any complaints about portal juggling from other agents, it would pass that evidence along to the National Trading Standards Estate Agency Team and/or the Advertising Standards Authority.
TPO has confirmed that the new Code – which comes into effect this Saturday – covers marketing breaks under the phrase which defines portal juggling as manipulating and listing a property as new to the market, when it is not.
A spokesperson said: “In short, if TPO receive a complaint from a consumer about that it would be supported, as the practice is misleading given that the average buyer would expect ‘new to the market’ to mean it had not been listed before by the agent.
“If TPO receive evidence from elsewhere, for example agents or the media, they would send that evidence on to NTSEAT and/or the ASA to consider.”
Yesterday Zoopla made clear it would permanently expel any agent caught ‘juggling’.
A spokesperson said of TPO’s updated Codes: “We welcome this development.
“This is not a widespread issue and the overwhelming majority of agents do not engage in these practices.
“For those few who do, we have a number of processes and detection tools in place to prevent this.
“Where any agent deliberately attempts to circumvent these processes and manipulate their listings to mislead consumers, we have a dedicated compliance team whose job it is to identify these rogue agents and remove them permanently from our platform.
“We take this issue very seriously and Zoopla has led the way in providing accurate and transparent data to consumers to help them make smarter property decisions.”
NAEA managing director Mark Hayward said last night: “We fully support and endorse the positive and very clear changes the Property Ombudsman has announced and are working closely with both National Trading Standards and TPO to ensure these deceptive practices cease.”
Comments (30)
With regard to the NAEA’s ridiculously belated and woefully uninformed jumping-on-the-bandwagon I will say only this…
******* **** ***** ******* **** the ********!
I knew that would happen. B100dy smutfilter!
I also expressed to Ros my concern at Mr. Hayward being given any credit for assisting this campaign. Neither he nor anyone at NAEA has taken the slightest interest in a matter taken to them in September and again in October 2015.
p.s your version is a little difficult to read but I concur!
OKAY… enough’s enough, I reckon.
Come up with as many ‘reasons’ as you possibly can why the above examples prove nothing, Zoopla. That’s fine – we will all believe you.
THE CHALLENGE is to do the same with this one:
http://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/41006926#P51OGWDu3k0QuIxm.97
CLUE ONE:
“No viewings until after the 21st July…”
CLUE TWO:
Previously listed on 12 July 2016 here –
http://www.zoopla.co.uk/property-history/30-boulsworth-avenue/hull/hu6-7dz/41006926
CLUE THREE:
According to RightmovePlus, the property was de-listed as recently as SIX DAYS AGO. I’m sure that will be same as on Zoopla or one day out at most.
And then… up it pops today looking like a NEW LISTING. Innocent as can be.
Except for the smoking gun in the hand, that is.
To you…
From my understanding and experience of the budget estate agents. They are shocking with the post-sale support.
It’s quite clear that a much greater proportion of their sales are falling through post-SSTC. Many of these properties are returning to becoming available.
Will this be considered new to the market? They shouldn’t whatsoever…
THIS DOESNT GO FAR ENOUGH, IT CAN ONLY BE NEW TO THE MARKET ONCE ,WITH THE FIRST AGENT… NOT THE SECOND OR THIRD ETC
Agree with this too …….
Puzzles me a bit this. If a client has gone to market at a high price, against my advice, and after ‘testing’ for 3 months decides that they had indeed better drop £25k then I have usually duplicated the property, removed the high priced one from www and activated the significant price drop (I don’t do it for a small drop). This is especially effective where a point has now been reached, say £300,000 from £325,000
By creating a new www ID it is then drawn to the attention of a new raft of applicants registered on the portals.
At no point have I suggested that the property is new to the market, I have simply remarketed it and by-passed the daft idea on Rightmove that clients want the world to know that their home has had a price drop …. such information favours the buyer and not our clients, many buyers assuming that the client is over a barrel so will be softened up for a further price drop …. I have never seen the advantage in disadvantaging my clients in this manner.
Hardly ‘portal juggling’ yet this now seems to be considered dubious practice. Odd
Michael
By accepting to list the property at whatever price you have an obligation to honestly state when that property was originally listed.
By #relisting the property you are creating a false impression of the property’s listing history.
That, by any interpretation of the rules we as Estate Agents are required to act within, is “false or misleading to a material degree”.
Completely agree with PeeBee. The minute a property goes on at a price, and for whatever reason, the customer has a right to know.
If anything for most agents it should be viewed as a great opportunity to manage your instructions and allows them to explain to sellers the risk of the “Can I just try it at” option.
It also, as it should in my opinion, make the value high to win the instruction agents wholly more accountable for deliberately misleading their sellers.
Why would you waste your time listing a property that you know will not sell at that price? after 3 months your contract has ran out and he could go somewhere else, this is a lose-lose situation for you.
Interested in picking up instructions rather than selling houses!!! – sounds very much like an online agent to me?
I’d rather waste 1 hour in an appraisal…
by letting the property owner decide you probably did more bad than good.
there should be no ‘testing the market’ either… YOU SHOULD KNOW YOUR MARKET!
Rubbish!
I know my market but I’m not so big headed that I pretend to be omniscient so I allow vendors to test the market if they choose.
A prime example recently was a nice three bedroom semi which I was convinced was worth no more than £205k as I had comps coming out of my ears. The vendor wanted to try £230k so on it went and lo and behold within a fortnight a cash buyer from outer London who wasn’t previously registered, viewed it and offered £227k. It had me shaking my head but I wasn’t going to argue.
To be fair, PbroAgent, this one recent example you quote today should hardly have come as a surprise – as you’ve been posting about getting better-than-expected offers on properties since at least 2011…
Don’t ‘Dislike’… DEBATE.
Who knows – you might even be semi-good at it.
As far as I can recall this was my first post since about anything since 2012
‘Yesterday Zoopla made clear it would permanently expel any agent caught ‘juggling’.’
Where would they like the evidence sent?
Post it on here! then we can all see Zoopla are good to their word. It would, after all, be rude not to!
Yes – I suppose it would!
Okay… here’s a couple of “today’s” listings on Zoopla that caught my EYE – so I did a little digging – and would be interested to know what Zoopla make of them:
Firstly, this one:
http://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/40706191#uugeIFd71ETE8crz.97
which, according to RightmovePlus was previously listed for 113 days before being archived on 28 June – and can be seen here on Zoopla’s property history page:
http://www.zoopla.co.uk/property-history/72-broom-knoll/east-bergholt/colchester/co7-6xn/40706191
and
http://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/40709360#9PbHVuKIvP4iDLbz.97
which, again according to RightmovePlus, has been marketed since 15/11/15 and the Property History page on Zoopla confirms a “previous listing”:
http://www.zoopla.co.uk/property-history/4-edwards-terrace/abergarwed/neath/sa11-4dg/40709360
Of course, there could be perfectly reasonable answers for these apparent #relistings…
…I just can’t wait to hear them.
To you, Zoopla…
There might be good reason for those two duplicated listings I wonder what it is?
Why a technical glitch of course!
So a national agent (say, for instance Countrywide) gets caught out for portal juggling in one office and Zoopla will permanently expel them from their site ?
Yeah, right
That assumes they are on Zoopla! All along this has been about investigating all agency models not just people with openly cavalier attitude to ethics, honesty and decency.
The law applies equally to our friends as it does our foes! everyone who could be clocked has been clocked. TPO have given everyone a few days notice so the memo has time to go around. Gaming stops on Saturday!
Well I never thought I would say this but good for Zoopla. A tad opportunistic perhaps,but if they actually do it then I take my hat off to them.
Rightmoves answer to complaints I’ve made in the past is they have a three strike rule however;
Firstly it has to be be exactly the same offence. Ok you might say that could work, except that three strike rule actually applies to the individual property not the offence!
Secondly the length of any ban, if in fact they have ever handed one out is…. 24 hours!
In my opinion Rightmove either come out strongly now and show how they are going to deal with the practice of portal juggling or they lose whatever credibility they had left and are in fact condoning it.
If you are reading this Rightmove you need to make a statement through EYE this week, stating what you are going to be doing and I might add it needs to have teeth!
Rightmove needs to keep an eye on the Facebook case in Northern Ireland, where the judge has sent the case to trial, despite Facebook’s “we’re too big to police everything that people upload to our site” defence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABbc-O_3_Ac
All good news, I have never understood how Rightmove could allow pages and pages of the same property!
Note that Rightmove has not been mentioned or commented.
Certain agents should also remember that the offence has always been illegal under CPR; inclusion in The Ombudsman code adds a further layer of protection for consumers and law-abiding agents not a ‘cut-off date’ defence for perpetrators.
Oh, dear – clearly THE LAW doesn’t suit some people… hope hitting that ‘Dislike’ button makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
I have started the latest chapter in the glacier of good standards that is going to push through the industry. I already got a dislike for suggesting that if an agent goes along with a random number valuation off the internet or goes along with a vendor’s ridiculous asking price, the advice is probably negligent, the service worthless and in those circumstances the vendor doesn’t have to pay a fee.
That little bit of CPD refresher reading was worthwhile. It suggests quite strongly the 1 star trust pilots reviewers have case law on their side in asking for a refund. In fact if I had paid a listing fee and didn’t sell because of the advice (or non advice)given by some not really expert lister I would be seeing about getting my money back.