Estate Agents ombudsmen

2.Main Content

Estate Agents ombudsmen

This page contains information about the two ombudsmen for complaints about estate agents and surveyors.

What they do
Advantages and disadvantages
Which complaints are eligible and which are not?
Cost
Timescale
Procedure
Outcomes

What they do
From 1st October 2008 all estate agents are required to be members of an approved redress scheme. The Office of Fair Trading has approved two schemes:

The Ombudsman for Estate Agents (OEA)
The Surveyors Ombudsman Service

Links to their websites can be found at the bottom of this page.

This information applies in England and Wales.
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Advantages

they are free
they are private and confidential
they are independent of the companies they investigate
there is no need to attend a hearing
the decision is binding on the company but not on the consumer

Disadvantages

your complaint might not be investigated
you may not get the outcome you want
financial awards are usually quite low

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Which complaints are eligible and which are not?
Until now, membership of the Ombudsman for Estate Agents was voluntary, and only about two thirds of Estate Agents were members. However, the Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Act was passed in 2007, and requires all estate agents to be members of an approved redress scheme from October 1st 2008.

Two schemes have been approved by the Office of Fair Trading, and all estate agents should be members of one scheme or the other. Check which scheme your agent belongs to before you complain. The Ombudsman for Estate Agents also deals with complaints about some letting agents, and the Surveyors Ombudsman Service deals with complaints about surveyors who are members of RICS (the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors).

To complain to either of these schemes you must first have made a complaint to the estate agent directly. If after 8 or 12 weeks you have either received a final letter which you are not happy with, or you have not received a response, you can take your complaint to one of the ombudsman schemes. You must be a consumer who is trying to sell or to buy a house in the UK.

Complaints are likely to be about:

a breach of the estate agent’s legal obligations to you
unfair treatment
avoidable delays
a failure to follow proper procedures
rudeness or discourtesy
not explaining matters
poor service or incompetence

You must have suffered some kind of financial loss, or stress and inconvenience.

Both ombudsmen schemes can make awards of up to £25,000, though in the past, most awards made by the Ombudsman for Estate Agents have been for less than £500.

Neither ombudsman can take on your complaint if the estate agent is not a member of the scheme, or if the complaint is about something that happened before the agent became a member. You also can’t take your complaint to either ombudsman if you have already made an application to court or to another body such as the Financial Ombudsman Service. You must make your complaint to the agent within 12 months of the problem, and you must take your complaint to the ombudsman within 6 months of getting a final offer from the agent.
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Cost
Both schemes are free to consumers.

You shouldn’t need a solicitor or legal adviser to represent you – both ombudsmen have caseworkers who will ask you for any further information they need, and who will investigate the problem thoroughly. You may find it helpful to get some legal advice before making a complaint, to help you decide whether to use one of these schemes or to go to court. If you do this, you can’t claim your legal costs back, even if you ‘win’.
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Timescale
Disputes are likely to be resolved within three months.
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Procedure
When your complaint to the estate agent gets stuck – either because they haven’t responded within 8-12 weeks, or because you are not happy with their response – you can complain to one of the ombudsman schemes. You can contact either scheme by telephone, email or letter, and you can talk to a caseworker about whether they can accept your complaint.

The next stage for both schemes is to see whether an agreement can be reached at an early stage as a result of the caseworker talking to both the consumer and the estate agent. If you are not happy with an offer to settle made at this stage, you can ask for a formal review.

You will need to send copies of all the relevant letters and documents to the ombudsman – don’t send the originals, as they won’t be able to return them to you. The ombudsman will then put your complaint to the agent, and ask them to respond. The ombudsman will then make a decision based on what seems to be fair in all the circumstances.
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Outcomes
The Surveyors Ombudsman Service is a new scheme, but the Ombudsman for Estate Agents has been in operation for ten years. Examples of outcomes here are taken from the past three years (2005-08) of the Ombudsman for Estate Agents. During that period 1,700 cases were reviewed by the ombudsman, and around two thirds of these were resolved in favour of the person complaining.

Financial compensation will be made if you have:

actual, proven financial loss as a direct result of actions or inactions by the agent
and/or undue and avoidable stress and inconvenience – over and above what is a stressful and inconvenient process at the best of times

Although both ombudsman schemes can award up to £25,000 in compensation, over the last three years the Ombudsman for Estate Agents has only made six awards over £3,000, and the vast majority were between £100 and £500.

You may also get an outcome which is not just about financial compensation – you may get an apology, or the ombudsman may criticise the agent for poor practice.

Once you have a decision from the ombudsman, you need to decide whether to accept it. If you accept it as a full and final settlement of your complaint, the agent is committed to complying with the ombudsman’s decision as a condition of membership. You will get whatever the ombudsman has awarded, but you can’t go to court afterwards.

If you don’t accept the ombudsman’s decision, you can either ask the ombudsman to review the case if you have some new evidence, or you can take your complaint to court.
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September 2008