by SEAN POULTER, Daily Mail
Rogue estate agents are acting unlawfully and using blatant lies in their efforts to sell properties, a study finds today.Undercover investigators discovered one agent trying to get a buyer to increase their offer by falsely telling them another, higher offer had been made.
Others said they would not pass on details of a buyer's bid unless they took out a mortgage through their company's finance arm.
Both scams are illegal under the Estate Agents Act but with fewer than one in three agents signed up to the industry's voluntary code of conduct, there are few checks on such practices.
Complaints to the ombudsman rose by 16 per cent last year to 6,462 - but many see this as the tip of the iceberg.
The Consumers' Association, which carried out the probe, is now calling for an official government watchdog for the industry.
The group uncovered serious breaches of the law and widespread use of complex, misleading and potentially illegal contracts.
Ten home-owners put their properties on the market, each requesting a valuation from three agents.
Researchers then posed as buyers to see how the agents handled their inquiries and whether they acted honestly and professionally.
Many agents tried to push buyers into arranging a mortgage with a company connected with their agency.
They earn large commissions from securing such deals, but buyers rarely get the best deal this way.
Agents are also supposed to pass on all offers promptly in writing to the seller. However, only two of the six agents who received offers did so.
Others passed on the details over the phone and they often delayed or provided too little details about the interest of the buyers.
The researchers found that many of the contracts issued by estate agents to sellers were littered with unfair or misleading clauses.
These included clauses guaranteeing an agents payments of thousands of pounds even if they made no marketing effort and the property is sold by another company.
Pete Tynan of Which? magazine said: 'Estate agents don't have a glimmering reputation and nobody would be shocked to discover that some of them are pretty hapless.
"But we found something more - estate agents using contracts with unfair small print and even some who were prepared to break the law.
"The worrying thing here is that there is no systematic way to prevent the types of unfair contract and breaches of the law that we have come across.
"The Estate Agents Act obviously isn't working and most agents we looked at weren't even following the basic provisions of the law."
The Office of Fair Trading is currently investigating the industry and is due to publish the results of a yearlong inquiry in the next few weeks.
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