Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 123A: 123A: Before Clause 52, insert the following new Clause— (1) Section 1 of the Estate Agents Act 1979 (c. 38) (estate agency work) is amended as follows. (2) In subsection (1) after ““land”” insert ““or who wishes to let, rent or manage residential property””. (3) In subsection (1)(a), after ““such an interest”” insert ““or manage, rent or, as the case may be, let such a residential interest””. (4) In subsection (1)(b), after ““of that interest”” insert ““or the management, letting or, as the case may be, renting of that residential interest””. The noble Earl said: The proposals for estate agencies are to be brought in by amending the Estate Agents Act 1979, but that Act came into force in a very different climate from the one today. The Act related entirely to the buying and selling of properties. Since then a huge new market, the lettings market, has developed. The Act fails to legislate on the residential letting market and that of residential property management. The National Association of Estate Agents, the UK’s leading professional body for estate agency personnel, receives approximately 13,000 queries a year, of which a good majority are to do with residential lettings rather than sales. The vast majority of the complaints made to the association are about lettings. The residential lettings market sees a much higher turnover than residential sales so there is more opportunity for things to go wrong. The Bill ignores this end of the market, which is perhaps in just as great need of regulation as estate agents. My amendment aims to change the definition of an estate agent in the Estate Agents Act to include the residential lettings and management markets. I know the Minister will say that things have improved and that we are to have tenancy deposit schemes, but we need to look a little deeper than that. The lettings market has become very big business. I believe that something like £130 billion has been involved in the market since 2000, but less than 40 per cent of letting agents belong to any professional body. So, again, the poor consumer has no standards to go by and can have no possible confidence in a letting agent because they have no idea whether the person has qualifications or belongs to an organisation. Again, to pre-empt what the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, will say, the RICS, the National Association of Estate Agents and the Association of Residential Letting Agents all want the amendment and support me on it. It is not a closed-shop argument; it is to try to get a basis into the market that provides increased consumer confidence. I beg to move.