advertising standards authority
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Latest property news
Agent agrees to withdraw ‘knocking copy’ ad after ASA investigation
An agent in Andover, Hampshire has been investigated by the advertising watchdog the ASA for making competitor comparisons within a flyer. Bournes Town & Country, which has two branches in and around Andover, circulated a flyer featuring a picture of a house previously marketed by a competitor, Austin Hawk, that Bournes Town & Country had subsequently sold. The text on the flyer compared the listings of the two firms, one saying “3 viewings no sale time wasted” while the other “12 viewings sold STC success”. Additional text then said “originally advertised with your agent then swapped to Bournes”, suggesting the flyers were circulated to homes marketed by Austin Hawk at the time. The complainant about the flyer said there were a variety of factors which could impact on whether a house sold or not and challenged wither the comparison in the ad was misleading. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) contacted Bournes Town & Country about the complaint and it “agreed not to make competitor comparisons which included details that customers cannot independently verify in the future”, the watchdog said. It also said it had “received assurance from the advertiser they would make their future advertising compliant with the advertising rules”. The…
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Latest property news
ASA investigates agent over number of homes sold
A recent complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has highlighted the perils for agents of incorrectly using sales data taken from Rightmove’s Intel tool. The case involves an estate agent in Leicestershire who was reported to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for using a ‘misleading’ leaflet that used Rightmove data to claim that it had sold six properties in a specific postcode. Sales and letting agent CHQ Properties, which is based in the town of Shepshed just outside Loughborough and was set up two years ago, came to the attention of the Leicestershire County Council Trading Standards Services after it used a flyer distributed to homes in the LE11 central Loughborough postcode that included the claim ‘after selling six properties last week surely the best way of selling your property is with us’. Within its complaint to the ASA, CHQ Properties was challenged on whether it had really sold that number of properties in LE11 between 27 October and 2 November last year, as claimed. Trading Standards believed the flyer was misleading because it did not make clear which postcodes were included in the comparison, and that CHQ had not sold any properties in LE11 during that period. CHQ…
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Latest property news
Five property firms rapped by Advertising Standards Authority
An unprecedented five property companies including three agents and two developers had their adverts referred to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) during the run-up to the New Year. TV – Birch’s Group London-based park homes developer used photographs of an old site in a TV ad to promote a new development, which the ASA considered ‘misleading’. Birch’s Group, which has built and owns sites across the UK including in Hampshire, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Somerset, used images and footage from one of its Cambridgeshire sites to illustrate its Little London Park development in the TV ad. The company told the ASA that it ‘believed that the images and footage shown in the ad were an accurate representation of properties customers could purchase at their Little London Park site’. The ASA disagreed, saying it considered TV viewers would interpret the ad to mean that the featured properties were available to purchase at the Little London Park site and that they were ready for viewing at the advertised open weekend event promoted within the ad. The ASA also noted that one of the properties featured in the ad was ‘vastly different’ to the property available at the open weekend event. Online – Whitegates…
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Latest property news
Fees complaint to ASA highlights new ‘hybrid’ landlord
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) today published a complaint about Ace Relocations, a hybrid HMO landlord that offers professional renters in London rooms within shared properties and blocks of flats and calls itself a ‘house share company’. The complaint was about an advert that the company had place on Spareroom.com, which stated that all bills were included and a cleaner provided. The ASA considered that the advert was likely to have breached its advertising code because “it does not make it clear that the cleaner, and some other costs, are not included in the monthly rent despite the main claim made in the ad”, the ASA said. Ace Relocations agreed to amend both its current website listings and any future adverts, and the ASA file case was closed. What this highlights is the emerging world of hybrid-landlords-cum-property-managers like Ace Relocations. It offers agents and indirectly landlords the opportunity to rent properties outside the traditional tenancy model. Ace Relocations says it is ‘not an estate agent’. It rents properties directly from agents via a ‘commercial contract’ and then rents them to professional tenants. The company doesn’t describe itself as a landlord but, like one, collects the rent and holds the deposit while, like an…
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Online-only agent’s ‘fee saving’ claims rejected by ASA
Online-only agent Housesimple.com’s claims that it can save London vendors thousands of pounds in fees compared to a traditional agent, and that it sells property three times faster than the average have been rejected by the Advertising Standard Authority (ASA) after a complaint about one of its London Underground posters. The ruling by the ASA today means online-only agents, who often promote ‘fee saving’ as a key part of their proposition, must be more careful about the claims they make in advertisements and be more clear about the data they use to substantiate their claims. Within the lengthy Housesimple ruling published today the ASA questions whether the data was London specific enough to substantiate the company’s claim that “we potentially save our average London client £18,764 in fees”. Also, the ASA says that anyone reading the advertisement “would think that the online-only agent’s average client selling an averagely-priced home in London would be able to save that figure on fees in comparison to competing agents,” it says. The ASA questions several aspects of the data used by Housesimple to substantiate its claims. This includes using just one competitor’s fee structure – Foxtons’ – to represent the average fees charged to London…
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Latest property news
Agent investigated by ASA over use of Rightmove Intel data
The potential dangers of using market comparisons tool data incorrectly in local marketing campaigns were highlighted by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) today following a complaint to it about Bolton-based Harrisons Estate Agent. A competitor, Miller Metcalfe, complained to the ASA about a leaflet distributed by Harrisons that urged potential customers to “join the fastest growing estate agent in Bolton” and that it was “first out of 79 agents… our results speak for themselves”. The leaflet also included a pie chart showing Harrisons’ market share compared to other agents accompanied by text saying “sales agreed report” alongside a list of local postcodes. This will all be familiar fare to any agent who uses the Rightmove Intel tool and its Market Share Reports, which come with a strict ‘user guidelines’ manual for agents using data taken from the tool in marketing activity. This, among many points, stipulates that “report results are subject to the geographical context and property criteria which have been defined by the user, and as such this must be clearly referenced alongside any use of the data” and that data should be used in a “professional manner”. Harrisons appears to have stuck to the guidelines except in one element, it…
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