By Melissa York
Buyers are being misled by false information on property portals. Here’s what to look out for — and what you can do if the particulars are not particular enough.
For most people looking to buy or rent a new home, the journey starts on a property portal. Despite estate agents’ hyperbole, though, too many would-be buyers discover that vital details are often missing from the sales listing leading to frustration, wasted time and lost money.
“My partner and I found it incredibly frustrating how opaque many listings were with lots of missing or incorrect information,” says Marianna Hunt, 29, who started house-hunting last year. “Some had photos of garages and gardens but they turned out not to come with either.
“Trying to find info about EWS1 [external wall cladding] forms was like getting blood out of a stone. We saw properties with service charges listed that were completely different to what the vendor later told us. There’s no penalty for estate agents who consistently list wrong or incomplete information, so there’s no incentive for things to improve.”
Marianna Hunt was frustrated by the lack of information on property listings online.
Incomplete listings can lead inexperienced buyers to make a poor investment on what is usually the biggest purchase of their life because they don’t know what information they should be asking for. “It’s often what’s missing from the listing that’s just as important as what’s included,” Charlie Warner, a partner at the buying agency Heaton and Partners, says.
The average visitor to the property portal Zoopla spends only two minutes and 57 seconds looking at a listing and, its data shows, “only a small proportion“ (less than 10 per cent) of visitors bother to look at maps, floorplans and images before booking a viewing. Even when buyers are more discerning, they are often met with incomplete information.
In some cases, the properties listed online aren’t even for sale. In January 2021, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld a complaint about a listing on manchestersalerent.co.uk and overstreet.co.uk that advertised a “four-bedroom detached house for sale in Rackenford” described as “stunning’” with a virtual tour and a button directing buyers to book a viewing. The advertising watchdog ordered that the listing should be taken down because it understood that the property had not been on sale since 2017.
Another buyer, who wishes to remain anonymous, says he asked to view two properties he saw online listed with the estate agency Dexters only to be told they were under offer. “It is done purely to get more applicants to call them and offer other properties,” he says. Dexters declined to comment.
It has been an offence to leave out important information on property listings since 2008, but in reality there is a lack of consistency on property portals and estate agency websites on which details are included.
In 2022 National Trading Standards introduced guidance on what should be in a property listing and it gave estate agents a year to comply. The consumer watchdog mandated that all listings should include council tax band or rate; the price (“offers invited” or “price on application” are no longer allowed); reservation fees for new-builds; and tenure information (freehold or leasehold).
Paula Higgins, from the HomeOwners Alliance, a consumer rights organisation, says: “Many estate agents don’t even realise that these obligations exist. That said, anyone can rock up and be an estate agent with no qualifications or prior training.”
Camilla Dell, the founder of the London buying agency Black Brick, is “always amazed by how many properties I see advertised that don’t have basic information such as the service charge, ground rent, lease length”, all of which can have a dramatic impact on the value of a property and whether the buyer can get a mortgage for it.
Dell advises buyers to seek independent legal advice for the cost of a lease extension and never take the seller or estate agent’s word for it. She says: “We’ve seen cases where a buyer is told the extension will cost a certain amount and then finds out it’s a lot more expensive.”
In May 2021 the ASA ruled that an advertisement for shared ownership was misleading, in part because it did not include information about the “significant” cost of extending a lease, which can run into tens of thousands of pounds. The percentage of the share of the property being bought and the rent must also be displayed under new Trading Standards rules.
The National Leasehold Campaign, which campaigns to abolish leasehold, thinks a copy of the Land Registry title document should accompany online listings because it’s “the only way to ensure accurate and complete information is provided by agents”.
In November 2023 Trading Standards added to its guidance for estate agents so that the type of property (house/flat/bungalow) is included alongside building materials used, the number of rooms, parking, and information about utilities including broadband type/speed and mobile phone coverage.
This is particularly important for rural property listings. A “pet hate” for Warner is when the advertisement doesn’t make it clear that the property is a wing or part of a bigger house. “One of the other things common with selling agents that don’t regularly work with country properties is not including acreage,” he says. “They can talk about paddocks but don’t always realise how important the total size of land is to some buyers.”
Size — in square feet or metres — is often left out on listings too. This isn’t just vital for buyers wanting more house for their money. If the property doesn’t meet certain space requirements, it could be impossible to buy with a mortgage or let to private tenants. For rental properties fees applicable such as the deposit should be stated close to the asking rent.
The latest guidance also means that sales listings should declare any flood risks, restrictive covenants on the property or land, building safety such as unsafe cladding, and rights and easements such as public rights of way and shared driveways.
While most buyers would expect prices, locations and features to be accurate, the ASA expects images for new-builds, even computer-generated ones, to accurately reflect the quality of finish of the property being advertised. Images that show a higher quality finish than the buyer can expect should have a qualifying caption such as “image includes optional upgrades at additional cost”.
However, listings are improving. On the Market recently became the first big property portal to allow buyers to search for accessibility, so wheelchair users and other people with mobility needs can find homes with wide doorways, ramped access, wet rooms and other useful adaptations. It also has a “greener choice” filter that shows only properties with an EPC (energy performance certificate) rating of A or B, and eco-features such as solar panels or rainwater harvesting.
Last week Zoopla added a tenure filter to make it easier for buyers to search for freehold, leasehold or share of freehold properties. It also added a search based on the number of bathrooms. To determine whether a property is overpriced, Zoopla also has a listing history on the same page as the sales listing that displays how long the property has been on the market and any asking price reductions. Property Log, a free Google Chrome browser extension, shows price reductions on Rightmove.
Rich Hayes, the chief operating officer at Zoopla, says: “There are also plenty of other handy features Zoopla users can use to maximise their property search experience and ensure they’re served properties that are curated to their needs, be it filtering by leasehold or freehold or using ‘market stats’ on listings to get a sense of what similar properties in the area have sold for.”
