EXCLUSIVE: Mortgage senior says ‘it’s time to regulate estate agents’
Association of Mortgage Intermediaries chief executive Robert Sinclair says the time has come to properly regulate estate agency after latest swathe of HMRC fines.
Robert Sinclair, the chief executive of the Asssociation of Mortgage Intermediaries (AMI), says the latest batch of fines to agents from HMRC means that the time has surely come to regulate the sector.
Speaking exclusively to The Neg, Sinclair (pictured) said the time had come for estate agents, letting agents and sale agents to finally come under statutory regulation and weed out bad practice which evidently still exists.
He says: “On a day when over 50 estate agency firms were fined a huge amount of money for breaching anti-money laundering rules it would seem to me that the only effective regulator in this market appears to be HMRC.
“There should be a proper regulator of estate agent and letting agents and selling agents so that there is a proper set of rules that exists that monitors and enforces.”
CONSUMER CREDIT
Pressed on how this could be achieved Sinclair points to how consumer credit was finally regulated.
The AMI boss told The Neg: “If you go back to where we were 15 years ago, unsecured credit was looked after by the now defunct OFT. The consumer credit act was meant to be policed by local trading standards. But what happened was we changed the rules.
Unfortunately for the last 12 years we have had a government that looks after their own.”
“Unfortunately for the last 12 years we have had a government that looks after their own. The vast majority of estate agents will vote Tory.”
On the matter of cross selling and agents only putting forward buyers that have used their inhouse mortgage broker Sinclair says the practice has to stop.
KNOWLEDGE
“There is a requirement before agents put an offer forward to have some degree of knowledge that the person making the offer has a way to fulfil it. But they have no right to make sure the person making that offer uses their in-house broker.
RULES
“That conflict of interest has to be carefully managed. The problem exists because the only person qualified to assess whether the person can afford the property is the mortgage broker in that office.
“There is a simple fix – stick to the rules. And maybe the manager in that office has to do a bit more work in assessing and understanding whether the prospective buyer can afford the property rather than using the mortgage broker to do their job for them.”
If in doubt regulate everyone (which is free of course in cuckoo land). If agents only put forward offers from buyers using their own broker, I’m amazed they are still in business – well they soon won’t be when the market changes.
Robert appears to lack joined-up thinking. The money laundering fines demonstrate that regulations are working. But, if 50 drivers speed on the motorway, is it necessary to re-regulate all drivers using the same road?
Regards agents ‘doing more work’ and labelling agents as Tory voters ; Just assumption and cheap finger wagging at everyone’s favourite target.