Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether she plans to take steps to regulate overvaluations of properties by estate agents.

The government is committed to ensuring that consumers are protected from abuse and poor service at the hands of unscrupulous estate agents.

All estate agents are legally required to belong to one of two government-approved redress schemes; administered either by The Property Ombudsman or the Property Redress Scheme. This legislation is currently enforced by local authorities and by the National Trading Standards’ Lettings and Estate Agency Team, who have the power to issue warnings and banning orders to rogue estate and letting agents.

The previous government committed to regulate the property agent sector in 2018 and asked a working group chaired by Lord Richard Best to advise them on how best to do it.

However, they failed to respond to the recommendations set out in the working group’s 2019 Regulation of Property Agents: working group report which can be found on gov.uk here.

This government will set out our full position on regulation of estate, letting and managing agents in due course.