NCA seeks undertakings from estate agents

The National Consumer Agency (NCA) has given estate agents just two days to provide it with undertakings that published price details of properties sold through private treaty or withdrawn from auction will be “absolutely accurate”.

At a meeting with the Irish Auctioneers and Valuers Institute (IAVI) and the Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers (IPAV), today the NCA relayed its "very serious concerns" in relation to the accuracy of private treaty sale prices which are published in newspapers.

It pointed out that the provision of false information was illegal under the Consumer Protection Act 2007 and reminded both the IAVI and the IPAV that it had extensive powers under the Act, which it would not hesitate to use if necessary.

The NCA sought the meeting following reports about a letter that The Irish Timeshad written to estate agents complaining about exaggerated sales prices being submitted for publication in its property supplement.

While the rules of both bodies prohibit the issuing of false information, the NCA said it was common practice for estate agents to publish approximate, rather than specific prices.

It has requested that, in future, rounding up prices or using phrases such as "in the region of" would not be used and that the price, if reported or otherwise divulged by an agent, would be the actual price paid for a property.

The NCA warned that in the absence of such an undertaking, it will use its powers under the Consumer Protection Act 2007 to investigate historic reporting practices by individual auctioneers and estate agents.

At the meeting it was agreed that both bodies would revert to the NCA by Thursday afternoon.

Speaking to The Irish Times, the NCA Chief Executive Ann Fitzgerald described the meeting a "genuinely very constructive" and expressed her optimism that the issue would be resolved before the end of the week.

"This is a serious issue on number of fronts and it needs to be resolved quickly," she said, in order to remove uncertainty from the market. "If someone is interested in buying a house on a particular street and they read in the newspapers that they trust that a similar house on the street sold for a certain amount then that's what they're going to base their calculations on. But if that price is not accurate then all their calculations could be very wide of the mark."

Similarly for sellers, she said, inflated and misleading prices created unrealistic expectations in a market which, she said everyone accepted was slowing down.

The CEO of the IAVI Alan Cooke also described the meeting as "very constructive and productive" and said he was in the process of getting approval for the new undertakings from his organisation's members.

He expressed confidence that he would be in a position to respond to the NCA ahead of the Thursday afternoon deadline.

He said he did not believe that that misleading and inaccurate prices were systemically being submitted to newspapers by his members.

He pointed out that one consequence of the new undertakings would be considerably less information on house prices entering the public domain and said it was an unfortunate reality" that many sellers would be extremely reluctant to disclose the precise amounts they sold their properties for.