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January 8, 2025
When you’re house hunting you want to know up-front whether the property you’re looking at meets your needs and expectations, before you spend time and money viewing, making an offer then finding lawyers and surveyors and so on.
Realising that a lack of upfront information was a problem, in 2023 the governments’ National Trading Standards Estate Agency and Letting team (NTSEALT) issued new guidance around the “material information” estate agents need to include on property listings whether on Rightmove, Zoopla, OntheMarket or their own websites and brochures.
Despite this, here at the HomeOwners Alliance we’d had homebuyers getting in touch to say the listings had not included key information that later came to light and that they felt misled and had lost time and money as a result. So, we decided to do a spot check of properties for sale to see what was really going on.
In our report, What buyers need to know?, we reviewed 150 leasehold property listings in London and Manchester from across the 3 main portals – Rightmove, Zoopla and OntheMarket – and this is what we found.
While we were pleased to see listings routinely mention tenure – with 94% stating that a property was leasehold or freehold – and that 78% of listings included the number of years left on the lease, the details about the costs buyers would be faced with was more elusive:
These critical pieces of leasehold information which could dramatically change the costs involved in owning the property were often left blank on the property portals or house hunters were told to “ask the estate agent”.
Though we did notice a difference between the portals. Zoopla and OnTheMarket’s listings tended to be more comprehensive than Rightmove. For example, in our sample, 86% of Zoopla’s listings and 78% of OnTheMarket listings included the number of years remaining on the lease, compared with 70% on Rightmove.
Commenting on the findings, Paula Higgins CEO of HomeOwners Alliance says: We know location, price and parking are up there as the top things people look for when buying a home. But very quickly after that we want to know about any potential deal-breakers: Is it a flat with only a few years left on the lease or sky high service charges? Is there cladding which means we’ll struggle to get a mortgage and could face unfair costs? Is there a poor energy rating that means the house costs double what it should to run?
So the industry’s move to do more in providing information that could materially impact our decision to buy a home is very welcome. But a year on, the picture is still patchy and simply not good enough. Homeowners shouldn’t have to wait until they are three months down the line, have spent hundreds on legal fees and surveys, to find the ground rent is due to double, the house will cost more to heat than their current home, the broadband is poor and they can’t get a mortgage because of cladding.”
In What buyers need to know? we also compare the consumer experiences of the three portals and make a number of recommendations to encourage high levels of compliance.
We would love to hear about your experiences with estate agents? Please leave a comment below or email hello@hoa.org.uk.
March 25, 2025 
