The National Trading Standards – Estate and Letting Agency Team (NTSELAT), which works to protect consumers by enforcing existing legislation, is reportedly considering updating the material information rules for property listings to require that agents include data on broadband ISP and mobile coverage.
At present Estate Agents are not strictly required to include key details on broadband and mobile capability when listing new homes (houses, apartments etc.) or other buildings for sale or rent. But a few organizations, like Right Move, have optionally managed to add some very limited data on internet speeds (here) – albeit arguably not enough to be very useful.
Under the existing Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, estate and letting agents have a legal obligation not to omit Material Information from property listings. But at present this tends to only cover key details, such as fees and photos, council tax bands, floor plans and so forth.
The proposal from NTSELAT would, if approved, require property listings to also include details about both a property’s broadband and mobile capability.
James Munro, Head of the NTSELAT, said (EstateAgentToday):
“This is where we are saying we need to know things about a property that would be unconventional. Is broadband speed or mobile signal material information? I went to look at a lovely property but my wife and I couldn’t get a signal on our phones and there was none on my work phone.
That sounds idyllic but is a serious issue. We would say we cannot live there as we can’t do anything about it.”
As we understand it, such a change would be introduced into Part B of the material information requirements. Part A was only recently updated – as part of NTSELAT’s ongoing work to define what constitutes material information for property listings – and thus work has now switched to Part B.
The three stages of material information disclosure
Part A
Information that, regardless of outcome, is always considered material for all properties regardless of location. This information generally involves unavoidable costs that will be incurred by the occupant regardless of the use of the property.
Part B
Information that must be established for all properties. It applies mainly to utilities (and similar), where non-standard features would affect someone’s decision to look any further at that property.
Part C
Additional material information that may or may not need to be established, depending on whether the property is affected or impacted by the information. Applies to properties affected by the issue itself because of, for example, the location of the property.
On the surface this might seem like an entirely fair thing to do, but not all agents are happy about the idea, and it’s easy enough to understand why. Today’s market is chock full of different network operators and just trying to figure out what is actually available, with any real accuracy, to a given property can be very tricky – even for us.
Most network checkers do not cover every single operator, and they often use older data that may not reflect the situation today – a key issue given the rapid rollout of new full fiber (FTTP) networks. All of this is before we even consider the highly variable nature of mobile coverage, whether it be measured indoors or outdoors etc.
In the past, we’ve tended to see some estate agents try to get around this by displaying only the advertised rates from specific ISPs (usually just the biggest players) or using highly unreliable data from anecdotal speed testing reports, neither of which can accurately reflect the full variety of local network availability.
In other cases, the property listing might completely ignore the existence of smaller alternative networks (AltNets), even when they’re known to exist in an area. Suffice it to say, details matter, but figuring these things out for every single property listing – with any accuracy – could be quite a complex and laborious task. Hence, why there are still some detractors for what is, in principle at least, a very good idea.
Strictly speaking, NTSELAT could use the existing regulation to enforce such a change upon the industry, but that wouldn’t necessarily solve the challenges involved (as above) and could result in a backlash. Instead, the team appears to be taking a softer and more collaborative approach. “We want to secure compliance by working together,” said Munro.
At present there does not appear to be a solid plan or timeframe for this change to be introduced and no doubt, even if an agreement can be reached, there will be some devils in the detail.