Unregulated Estate Agents - Yopa in particular!

Redpath22

Yopa Estate Agents (OPTI LIST, in Chesterfield, Derbyshire) 

My daughter recently put her house on the market with Yopa Estate Agents.  (Opti List is a Yopa subsidiary in Chesterfield). 

12 hours later she cancelled the contract via email believing that she had 14 days (as in the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013).   

Unfortunately, having gone through all of the relevant clauses that may have applied in the above Regulations, Yopa have continued to insist that my daughter is liable for full fees, ie. £2K even though she didn’t use any of the services in the Contract, ie. Conveyancing and someone to show vendors around the property and had cancelled within 12 hours of making the contract. 

Apparently, estate agents don’t come under the above legislation and are unregulated!  Now, apart from allowing Yopa to take my daughter to court for their fees – we seemingly have no redress. Can anyone suggest anything we can do please??

Is anything being done to regulate Estate Agents??

moneysavinghero

Trading standards should be your first point of call.

moneysavinghero

Did she do everything by email. Or did she visit physical premises at some point? Did she request that marketing starts before 14 days?

Octothorpe

They are part of property ombusdman so complain to them.

princeofpounds

Yopa seem to be telling lies. Obviously I'm not lawyer, nor do I precisely know what Yopa's assertion specifically is, but from the way you have related it, they seem to be wrong.

https://www.rixandkay.co.uk/2017/11/08/estate-agents-beware-clients-cancel-contracts-without-paying-penny/
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1dcafbbd-1d4a-4bf1-a815-73144601785d
https://propertyindustryeye.com/new-cooling-off-period-to-be-extended-to-14-days/

Go through the complaints process and then the ombudsman: https://www.yopa.co.uk/complaints. May well be worth a report to trading standards as well.

If you can, get the agent to demand the fee in writing before complaining...

Estate agents do have regulations - quite a lot of law specifically regulates their activities. But the regulations are generally fairly light, and there is no real professional standards regulations (jobs that are actually professions involve self-regulation through the professional body, like surveyors, solicitors or architects).

eddddy

All estate agents are regulated, and they all are subject to the consumer contract regulations.  Yopa is a member of the Property Ombudsman redress scheme.

Presumably your daughter entered into the contract "at a distance" - e.g. she signed up at home online. So she has a 14 day cooling off period.



BUT... I suspect that your daughter agreed to let them start marketing immediately, instead of waiting 14 days before they start marketing.



Therefore, your daughter is liable for paying them any costs that they incurred from the time the contract started to the time it was cancelled - you say this was just 12 hours.

I don't know how Yopa work, but if, during that 12 hours, Yopa spent time writing-up property details, contacting buyers or spent money on advertising etc - your daughter would have to repay those costs to Yopa.  But Yopa would need to provide details, and it's very unlikely that they incurred £2000 of costs in 12 hours.


But if Yopa did nothing in those 12 hours, your daughter doesn't have to pay them anything.

theartfullodger

eddddy said:

All estate agents are regulated, ....

Eddy, in what way are lettings agents in England regulated, and with which regulator, please??

[Deleted User]

theartfullodger said:

eddddy said:

All estate agents are regulated, ....

Eddy, in what way are lettings agents in England regulated, and with which regulator, please??

Aren't they self regulated under the ARLA scheme? 

theartfullodger

Only if THAT office is a member of the ARLA scheme. See....

https://www.arla.co.uk/about/

My understanding is that, sadly, to be a letting agent in England requires no qualifications, not even any training, no criminal records check. They could have all directors and staff all recently released on licence from Brixton from their convictions for GBH & Fraud, yet operating from a shiny new office & online.

Bonkers! Other countries do this better. Why do we put up with this farrago ??

And what is the NRLA doing about this?? 

Or am I wrong?  £25 to an agreed housing charity if you can prove me wrong!

moneysavinghero

Deleted_User said:

theartfullodger said:

eddddy said:

All estate agents are regulated, ....

Eddy, in what way are lettings agents in England regulated, and with which regulator, please??

Aren't they self regulated under the ARLA scheme? 

ARLA and TPOS are optional, EA's don't have to sign up to either of those if they dont want to.

princeofpounds

PS I agree with eddddy that they may be due costs incurred, but they would have to demonstrate them. They wouldn't, for example, have paid for a Rightmove listing, printed flyers or whatever without doing any photos.