Consumer body to discuss prices with estate agents

CONCERNS ABOUT the supply of misleading information about house price sales are to be raised this morning by the National Consumer Agency with the representative bodies for estate agents.

The agency’s chief executive, Ann Fitzgerald, said yesterday that estate agents who exaggerate sales prices could be guilty of an offence under the Consumer Protection Act 2007 and could be prosecuted. Ms Fitzgerald requested today’s meeting to discuss the issue with the Irish Auctioneers and Valuers Institute (IAVI) and the Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers.

After that, the agency “will engage with individual auctioneering practices”, she said. It may seek to check reported prices against agents’ own records.

This follows reports about a letter the The Irish Times has written to agents to complain about exaggerated sales prices being submitted for publication in its property supplement. Such exaggeration “is extremely serious from our perspective”, said Ms Fitzgerald. “It is the equivalent of creating a false market in the price of shares, which is illegal.”

The National Consumer Agency, established on May 1st, 2007, is a semi-State body with extensive powers under the EU’s Unfair Commercial Practices Directive.

If agents misrepresent the selling price of a property, the agency believes it would be an offence under the 2007 Consumer Protection Act.

Consumers’ Association of Ireland chief executive Dermot Jewell told RTÉ’s News at One yesterday he was not surprised to hear of The Irish Times complaint to agents.

If agents exaggerated sales prices, it skewed the market for both buyers and sellers, he said, adding the only people making any profit or gain were those skewing the figures.

Mr Jewell, chief executive of the IAVI Alan Cooke and incoming IAVI president Edward Carey have all called on the Minister for Justice to fast-track legislation empowering the Property Services Regulatory Authority.

Mr Carey said the IAVI’s code of conduct requires any information an agent provides to be fact. He added that agents who exaggerated prices were being incredibly shortsighted. “How could an agent say to a new vendor ‘your house is worth, say, €300,000’, if they had reported that a neighbour’s property made, say, €360,000 when it had not? Commercially, it’s not sensible.”

He said the IAVI had no problem talking to the National Consumer Agency, and was “delighted to put our version of events” to it.