An accurate advert can still mislead

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Why everything goes out before the offer

Since April 2025 the rules on unfair commercial practices have sat in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, replacing the consumer protection regulations that governed the field before. The principle that matters most to property is not new but it is now unmistakable: a commercial practice can be unfair by omission as much as by misstatement. A listing in which every word is true can still be unlawful if it leaves out something the average consumer needed in order to make an informed decision. In a sector that has historically treated disclosure as something to be managed during conveyancing, that is a meaningful shift.

In practice the information splits into two kinds. There are the facts that apply to every property and should simply always be there: the price, the tenure and, for a leasehold, the lease length, service charge and ground rent, the council tax band, the physical attributes. Then there are the ones that do not affect every property but decide the question whenever they are present. Flood risk and flooding history. Restrictive covenants and easements. Rights of way across the land. Mining or subsidence history. Non-standard construction that a lender will decline. Accessibility. Known structural defects. Those are precisely the facts that are most tempting to leave until a buyer is committed, and precisely the ones that have to be out in front. Where something has not been established, saying so is the honest answer, because a silence where an awkward fact would sit reads as a reassurance to anybody looking.

The other half of being straight in this trade is about price, and it applies when buying directly from an owner. A company buying for its own account pays below open market value. There is no way around that and no point pretending otherwise: what the seller receives for the difference is speed and certainty, not a service. Said plainly, it is a legitimate trade that suits a collapsed chain or a deadline and suits almost nobody with time to spare. Dressed up as a valuation, it is something else entirely. So the figure comes with its reasoning, a buyer's view is never presented as an independent valuation, and every seller is told to get their own valuation and their own solicitor before accepting anything. No upfront fees, no deadline attached to an offer, and no late reduction unless a material fact has genuinely changed, with the reason in writing.