Trading standards boss says he’s powerless to stop ‘eyewatering’ referral fees

The boss of Trading Standards’ estate agency team admits he doesn’t have the staff to tackle conditional selling, the practice of excluding buyers who do not agree to use services such as conveyancing and mortgage broking provided by an agency’s own or outsourced provider.

James Munro (main picture) told the Daily Telegraph “there’s a lack of resources to go out and police this effectively”.

It would “take a lot of resources and a lot of people to go out and investigate to give a realistic market assessment”, he said.

Eye-watering

Munro, who is head of the trading standards estate and letting agency team, said there were some eye-watering referral commissions being paid to agents.

We’ve seen commissions of 50% of the price, which is just ridiculous really.”

“In some cases, the consumer’s getting no benefit from them,” he said. “The problem is that a lot of the time they’re not displayed. It’s a difficult one to enforce because you don’t know that they’re taking fees if they’re not displaying the fact that they’re taking fees.”

The Government doesn’t appear to have any plans to give more resources to deal with conditional selling.

Housing minister Rachel Maclean wrote in April, in reply to a question from Tan Dhesi MP: “We continue to work closely with the National Trading Standards Estate and Lettings Agency Team who oversee the enforcement of the Estate Agents Act 1979, including issuing of warning and prohibition orders and monitoring of agents’ disclosure of referral fees for third-party service providers.”

More on conditional selling here