tesco's to stop House listing

globalds

Seems Tesco's may be the first of the property listers to be pulling their sites
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/moneybox/7042240.stm

Jonbvn

Are you implying they are pulling out for ulterior motives?

What it says on their website:

Tesco has suspended the private sales section of its property website and offered a full refund to customers.

The decision came after the Office of Fair Trading told the retailer it was acting as an estate agent, so would need to abide by the relevant laws.

guppy

They also weren't really doing a lot of business compared to real estate pirates

tr3mor

And are planning to relaunch as a proper estate agent.

The "traditional" estate agents should be careful what they wish for.

PasturesNew

The part about them needing to comply with estate agent laws, now raised, might become an issue for all the other websites listing private sellers' details.

So the adverse effect of this might be the shutting down of all the "sell your own property" websites. Which would be a shame. I guess if you extended this, then newspapers would have to stop advertising private "house for sale" adverts unless they complied.

nelly_2

There rules for estate agents?


Shouldnt someone inform estate agents then?

guppy

nelly wrote: »

There rules for estate agents?


Shouldnt someone inform estate agents then?

Shouldn't laugh because there are allegedly some nice agents here, but I'm going to anyway!:rotfl:

BrixMorta

Fish 4 Homes pulled access to their database of properties & tesco's were left with very few properties to display. This coincided with them pulling the service.

courtjester

The law hasn't changed - it's still the Estate Agents Act 1979 - and the OFT have not issued any new guidance since their last rather ambiguous attempt at interpretation of the EAA in 2005 - Tesco asked the OFT for a 'view' and the OFT gave it - specific to the Tesco site. It doesn't mean that suddenly all the existing established companies have overnight become something different from the compliant services they were before. It also doesn't mean that the OFT were right to suggest (under pressure from hysterical estate agents) that the Tesco private sellers service was an 'agency'. Tesco for their own reasons have chosen not to argue the point because they've got bigger fish to fry.

Tesco have taken a commercial decision not to continue with their private sales offering - because they have decided they can make much more money offering a full agency service that estate agents can't complain about. They were an obvious target for whingeing agents, but those that spent so much time trying to keep Tesco out of their sector have really shot themselves in the foot (feet?) over this as they have simply created a much bigger monster which they can do nothing about and, frankly, it serves them right for being so narrow-minded.

Most of the leading private sales companies have already been vetted and cleared by the OFT so this 'news' on Tesco changes nothing in that respect.