The Relationship between Mortgage brokers and Estate Agents have will come under scrutiny next month as part of an Office of Fair trading (OFT) market study into home buying and selling.

Links between agents and surveyors, solicitors and other professional advisers will come within the scope of the study. It also plans to consider competition on price and quality between service providers, principally estate agents; the prospects for entry by new business models, including internet based business models whether the existing regulatory framework provides the right balance between protecting consumers who are buying or selling a home and ensuring that the market remains open to competition and innovation.

Heather Clayton, senior direct of infastructure at the OFT says: “With the economic downturn, we need to ensure that consumers receive that consumers receive a good service when buying or selling a home, from a market that is competitve, innovative and well functioning.”

Councillors at Harrow council are so fed up with estate agents ‘fly boarding’ houses that they aren’t selling in order to increase brand recognition that they are preparing to hand out ‘retail asbos’ to unlawful agents. Under the Responsible Retailer Act, introduced last year to crack down on shops with block the pavements with goods or rubbish, the council will begin doling out the fines and will destroy the boards at properties that are not for sale or let. In one case agents actually attached three for sale boards to a street light!