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Nigel Colebrook

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Last Saturday the Daily Telegraph published an item about “Estate agents charge buyers to take homes off the market”. This related to the latest trend of online auction houses charging a registration fee for potential buyers and is yet another example of how corporate greed has corrupted and destroyed what used to be a respected profession as a result of incompetence by the professional bodies and lack of regulation by successive governments. Having recently retired after over 55 years in the business, I have been astounded by the fact that increasingly countless businesses, institutions, corporates and individuals ignore the basic tenet of estate agency – that the person who pays – ie the house seller or landlord is the client. Any other source of income from that sale is potentially a conflict of interests. Since deregulation of the financial markets in the 1980s when banks, building societies and insurance companies decided that estate agency was a golden ticket to other markets - and failed miserably not realising that the business was about people and not targets - there has been a constant stream of money raising initiatives all of which exacerbate that conflict from selling mortgages, insurance and loans to present day trends where letting agents now put fees for handling repairs, taking up anti money laundering checks, charging for inventories and adding a premium on handling repairs etc. on top of their management charge and set up fee. This just adds to the costs of both the seller or landlord and the buyer or tenant and causes more delays This latest scam is yet another example of opportunists trying to make an extra buck out of what again produces a conflict of interest. Are they really acting in the clients’ best interest? It is high time that the Government and professional bodies licenced individuals to operate as agents and to regulate the corporates and institutional firms who compound the situation in their eternal pursuit to increase profit.

From: Nigel Colebrook 14 May 2024 09:07 AM

What would be far more beneficial would be to reintroduce some form of MIRAS............if only for first time buyers.

From: Nigel Colebrook 07 November 2023 16:02 PM

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