Cooling off period stretches to 14 days from Friday

This week sees the existing seven-day cooling off period in consumer legislation extended to 14 days, meaning agents must give vendors a fortnight in which they may change their mind about instructing them, without penalty.

This applies only to contracts signed outside of the main business accommodation - so not in agents' offices - but as the majority of vendors' instructions are signed in the home on sale, the importance to agents is considerable.

Although many agents traditionally want to market a property immediately upon instruction - inability to do so was one of the sticking points with the old Home Information Packs, for example - they must nonetheless give vendors written information which includes their right to cancel within the new 14 day cooling off period.

The law changes are contained in the Consumer Contract (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, which take the place of The Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulation 2000 and The Cancellation of Contracts made in a Consumer's Home or Place of Work etc Regulations 2008 - these cease to apply from this coming Friday.

In an interesting piece of legal advice obtained by the NAEA from the a local authority trading standards office, there is ambiguity over whether the cooling off period applies when a vendor has signed a contract in the home but not in the presence of an agent - and then drops the signed contract into the agent's office.

The guidance reads: When the contract is left with the consumer and the agent leaves the premises, we would consider that the contract will be an on-premises contract (thus no right to cancel) if the consumer either posted or hand delivered the contract back to the agent at a later date. However, if the consumer returned a contract to the agent immediately, following the visit by the agent to the consumer's home, then this would be considered an off-premises contract (cancellation rights would apply).