A leading property lawyer has warned estate agents selling homes to be careful when using “marketing puffery” to promote properties in listings and promotional material.

David Smith (main image), talking during a webinar hosted by Reapit that examined the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 and what it means for agents, told attendees that some agents tread a dangerous line between creative promotional descriptions and “making statements that are plainly wrong or not true”.

Examples given of these phrases include “near to suitable transport links”, “near to good schools” or “ample on-street parking” which Smith described as “high risk statements”.

“You need to be very cautious when you are on this boundary between ‘puff’ and concrete statements which just aren’t accurate,” he said.

“If you’re going to say ‘near to good schools’ then my immediate question is – are they? What’s their Ofsted rating – and are they good schools or in fact just schools?”

Material information

Smith, who works for law firm Spector Constant & Williams, made the comments after the other webinar’s experts, Dr Neil Cobbold, Commercial Director at Reapit and Greg Tsuman, head of lettings at Martyn Gerrard, discussed the recent shock withdrawal of National Trading Standards’ (NTS) guidance on property material information, and the consequent legislation that agents must now adhere to – the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.

“NTS got into a pickle by going down a road of being quite specific about things that are to a certain extent quite nebulous,” Smith added. “It also ‘sort of’ ignored the modern world and, for example, the availability of links to online information that house hunters can use to find things out [like railway timetables] rather than trying to tell them that information.

“But I don’t think it’s a bad thing to provide useful information, but are you absolutely required to do so by the DMCC – I think that’s debatable.”

Watch the webinar in full