The Founder and Chief Executive of the HomeOwners Alliance has told MPs it’s time to stamp out sharp practice in estate agency.
Addressing members of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee session on Improving the home buying and selling process HomeOwners Alliance boss Paula Higgins (main picture, right) highlighted the lack of certainty in the home buying process and the lack of financial penalties for both buyers and sellers.
And she also shone the spotlight on recent press reports of buyers being coerced into placing non-refundable booking fees to secure a property and the blatant practices of conditional selling – where agents force buyers to use their inhouse mortgage broker – that continue to blight the sector.
Higgins told the committee: “We know what they’re doing is illegal but there’s no enforcement. These types of sharp practice need to be stamped out.”
Higgins was speaking to the committee alongside Kate Faulkner OBE (main picture, middle), Chair of Home Buying & Selling Group and Maria Harris (main picture, left), Founder and Chair of the Open Property Data Association.
HOME BUYING
Faulkner opened the session highlighting the complexities of the home buying process telling chair Clive Betts: “Even if you’re looking at a simple purchase there could be 15 companies involved in the process.”
Harris went on to outline how fragmented the buying process can be, adding: “Nothing underpins it and it’s really difficult to get through the process from point A to point B.”
The committee went on to hear evidence from Maireed Carrol, RICS Senior Property Sepcialist at The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors; Timothy Douglas, Head of Policy and Campaigns at Proeprtymark and Beth Rudolf, Director of Delivery at The Conveyancing Association.
