Material Information Update

What Are the New Guidelines?

Part A of the Trading Standards guidelines states that you need to include information about all “unavoidable costs” on your listings to help home movers make an informed decision about a property by understanding its true cost.

Part A focuses on the need to provide information in three areas:

Tenure

• Freehold, leasehold or commonhold
• For leasehold properties: information on the ground rent, service charges and length of lease

Council Tax

• Bands to be included for England, Wales and Scotland (rates for Northern Ireland)

Price

• Lettings properties to include the monthly rent and deposit payable
• Property to include the property price
• Shared ownership properties to include details of the % share being sold and the rental cost for the remaining share

How To Include Material Information

The fields already exist to allow you to display the price and tenure of a property.

The remaining information required by the guidelines should be added in the Property Description field so that it displays on your listings.

This information will only be required on listings added on or after 1st July. You won’t need to update properties added before that date.

We will shortly be updating the software to include new fields to help you include the new information.