New information must be included on all property listings

Published: 17/03/2022 By Elliott Rowland - COO

Legislation changes are afoot, but they needn't be a headache. Find out about the latest rules, what they mean for your business, and what Webdadi is doing to help you.

In a bid to make online property marketing more transparent for applicants, Trading Standards and the UK government have jointly announced compulsory new data which must appear on all property listings.

The changes represent the first phase of a three stage project by the National Trading Standards Estate and Lettings Agency Team in partnership with industry leaders and major portals. Part A of the three-phase project includes information that is considered material to all properties. This information generally involves unavoidable costs that will be incurred by the occupier regardless of the use of the property.

A further two phases are being developed, which will incorporate further material information such as restrictive covenants, flood risk and other specific factors that may impact certain properties.

So what do you need to do now and how will these changes effect your business? Our FAQs below should help you understand what’s happening.

What data must be included in Phase 1?

• A property’s council tax band or rate (for both sales and lettings)
• The property price (for sales)
• Tenure information (for sales)

Where will this data need to be displayed?

• On your website
• On the property portals

When will this data have to be included on property listings?

By the end of May 2022

What will happen if I don’t display this data?

National Trading Standards want the material information to be mandatory on property listings once all three phases of the project are complete. However, we are only on stage 1 at the moment.

This means that although the information won’t be mandatory yet, any information left empty by an agent will be flagged on the property portal listing so consumers can see what information is missing. This will then link to advice on why that information is important and how they can obtain it.

So in effect, if the information is left blank it won’t immediately have any direct consequences for your business. However, bear in mind that if you leave this information blank, it might put certain applicants off from viewing the properties and have a negative impact on your listings as this information becomes more common place.
 
Eventually, you won’t be able to advertise a property on the portal without the relevant information, but this isn’t currently the case. You will be able to advertise properties even if the information is missing.

What do I need to do?

If you use a Webdadi website

Nothing. We’re already adapting our website platform to incorporate the latest fields.

If you use Webdadi’s VIA CRM Edition

Again, nothing. We’re adding the relevant fields to the software and liaising with the property portals to ensure this data is exported to them

If you use a Webdadi website & a third-party CRM such as Vebra, Reapit or Jupix etc.

Firstly, you’ll need to check with your CRM provider what their plans are to add the relevant fields into your software and when the changes will take effect in their software.

Secondly, we’ll be liaising the relevant CRM providers to check what their plans in regards to the import of property data that we receive from them for your website. However, please note that we are dependent on your provider to publish their changes and carry out the relevant work before we display the information on your website; we can only display what is made available to us so we are dependent on your third party.

Currently the price field is already being imported and displaying on your website. It is the tenure and council tax band information that we’ll be liaising with the CRM providers to gain access to.

In the interim, our advise would be to add the council tax band and tenure information to the long description of the property to ensure it displays on your website. This will ensure your displaying the relevant information online well ahead of the deadline and regardless of any technical changes in your software.

If you want to view the specific information published by Trading Standard, please click this link