The company that operates the new Ombudsman Estate Agents scheme says that 11,119 residential sales offices are now registered ahead of next Wednesday's deadline. This amounts to 89% of the UK's estate agency branches.
The scheme also covers 4,561 offices dealing with residential lettings, a fast-growing sector of the UK property market as well as buying agents who find properties for a commission on clients' behalf and solicitors who operate a separate estate agency company with its own premises.
'Official estimates vary as to the number of sales offices throughout the UK, but even the highest only sets the figure at 12,500. More realistically it is 12,000, giving us coverage of 92.6 per cent,' said Bill McClintock, chairman of the company that runs the scheme.
'However, the public should be aware that there are still residential sales estate agents who have yet to meet the requirements of the Consumers, Estate Agents, and Redress Act that all such businesses in the UK must belong to an approved redress scheme by October 1,' he added.
'Dealing with these agents, who will be showing a clear contempt for this important law should they fail to register, means they would have no recourse to an independent adjudication on their complaint if it is not dealt with satisfactorily by the agent involved.'
The service provided by the ombudsman is free to consumers and redress protects both buyers and sellers who have a dispute with an estate agent that cannot be resolved directly with that agent. To belong to a scheme, agents have to have their own robust system in place but it may not always work. It's then that an Ombudsman scheme comes into play.
'My message to consumers is that they should not settle for second best – or a scheme that does not have the wealth of experience that the OEA can call upon.
It is Northern Ireland and Scotland where agents are not registering. 'There may be as many as 650 estate agency branches in Ulster but only 108 are currently registered with the OEA although we have started to receive a trickle of enquiries,' said McClintock.
'Agents ignore this new law at their peril. Not registering for redress could bring a £1,000 fixed penalty fine from Trading Standards officers who could then go on to report the agent to the Office of Fair Trading, which has the power to warn them about their conduct or even to ban them from practising as an estate agent,' he warned.