
Most compliance attention goes on what a listing leaves out. In practice, a large share of complaints against agents come from what the listing *says* — a specific claim that turned out not to be supportable.

None of the phrases below is banned. Most are perfectly lawful. The question each one raises is the same: if a buyer, a tenant or an enforcement officer asked you to evidence this, could you?

## The one that is simply unlawful

**"No DSS", "working professionals only", "no benefits".** Blanket exclusions based on benefit status were held to be unlawful indirect discrimination on grounds of sex and disability in County Court rulings in 2020. Both major portals prohibit them. Restrictions framed around children, age, marital status or nationality engage the Equality Act 2010 in the same way.

This is not a substantiation question. There is no file note that makes it acceptable. Assess applicants on affordability and referencing, and record the criteria you actually applied.

## The ones that need evidence on file

**"Chain free" / "no onward chain".** A specific factual claim buyers rely on when structuring their own move. Sellers change plans. Confirm it in writing, date the confirmation, and re-check before each portal refresh.

**"Within catchment for..."** Catchment areas are set annually by the admissions authority. They are not a fixed attribute of an address, and buyers have brought claims after purchasing on this basis. Name the school, give the distance, and say that admission is set annually and is not guaranteed by location.

**"Potential to extend, STPP" / "development potential".** Readers infer that permission is likely. Where the property is listed, in a conservation area, or under an Article 4 direction, that inference is actively false. State the actual planning position, and name any designation that would constrain an application.

**"Approximately 1,200 sq ft".** Overstated floor areas are a recurring source of claims, and gross internal versus gross external materially changes the number. State the basis and keep the measurer's record.

**"8% gross yield" / "guaranteed rent".** Projections must be evidenced and fairly presented, with assumptions and void allowance shown. Drop "guaranteed" unless a contractual guarantee actually exists.

## The ones that substitute for a disclosure

**"Low service charge" / "nominal ground rent".** This is the one to watch, because it looks like disclosure and functions as concealment. Where the figure is known and disclosable, replacing it with a reassuring adjective is a misleading omission — and the adjective is doing work the number would not do.

**"In need of modernisation."** Fine for dated decor. Not fine as cover for damp, structural movement, or work done without building regulations sign-off. Those need disclosing on their own terms.

## The ones that are mostly just weak

**"Deceptively spacious."** Long discouraged in agency practice guidance, for the obvious reason: it invites the reader to distrust their own reading of the particulars. Give the floor area instead.

**"Must be seen to be appreciated." "Early viewing essential."** Low legal risk. But both are a signal that the description is not doing its job — if the property has to be seen to be appreciated, the particulars have failed. Replace with the specific thing you want noticed.

**"Won't last long." "Last remaining unit."** False scarcity is a named unfair commercial practice. Only state it when it is true on the day, and refresh it as stock moves.

## A working test

Before publishing, go through the listing and mark every sentence that asserts a fact rather than describing what is visible in the photographs. For each one, ask what is on file that supports it.

Most listings have between three and eight such sentences. Most agents can evidence about half.


Chain free, catchment, planning potential, no DSS. Each is fine when your file supports it — and each is a claim someone can test.

The listing phrases most likely to attract a complaint


The Parts A/B/C structure has outlived the guidance that created it. Portals still validate against it, and it remains the clearest published account of what a buyer or tenant needs to know. Here is the whole thing, with the reason each item exists.

## Part A — the commercial basics

Required on every listing. Portals block on these.

- **Price or rent.** Including the basis, if the sale is by auction or informal tender.
- **Tenure.** Freehold, leasehold, commonhold or share of freehold.
- **Council tax band.** Rateable value in Northern Ireland.

And where the tenure is leasehold or share of freehold:

- **Lease length remaining.** Below roughly 80 years, marriage value makes extension sharply more expensive, and many lenders decline.
- **Service charge.** The current annual figure and how it is reviewed.
- **Ground rent.** The figure and any escalation clause. Doubling clauses have made properties unsellable and drew direct CMA enforcement against developers.

A recurring failure here is substituting an adjective for a number. "Low service charge" is not a disclosure. If you know the figure, and it is disclosable, give it.

## Part B — physical and service characteristics

Expected on every listing. Portals increasingly hard-gate these, and they are where most otherwise-competent listings fail.

- **Property type.** Detached, semi-detached, terraced, flat, maisonette, bungalow.
- **Construction materials.** Walls and roof. Non-standard construction restricts the lender pool, which is precisely why silence about it is read as concealment.
- **Number and type of rooms.** Bedrooms, bathrooms, receptions, and floor area with the measurement basis.
- **Heating.** System and fuel. Off-grid oil, LPG and electric storage carry very different running costs from mains gas.
- **Electricity, water and drainage.** Mains or private, stated separately. Septic tanks and treatment plants carry General Binding Rules duties that transfer to the buyer.
- **Broadband.** Connection type and highest predicted speed.
- **Mobile signal.** Indoor and outdoor coverage.
- **Parking.** Allocated, garage, driveway, on-street, or permit — with the cost if there is one.

Also required, though it sits outside the Parts structure on its own statutory footing:

- **EPC rating.** A valid certificate must exist before marketing begins and the rating must appear in the advertisement.

In our own sampling, construction, drainage detail, broadband and mobile coverage are the four fields missing from the overwhelming majority of live listings. They are also four of the easiest to fill in once.

## Part C — only if the property is affected

These do not need a line on every listing. They need a line whenever the answer is yes — and they need checking either way, because "we did not know" is a weak position when the information was available.

- **Flood risk and flooding history.** The single most consequential undisclosed defect in residential conveyancing.
- **Building safety.** For flats: height, cladding, EWS1 status, remediation programme and any contribution liability.
- **Restrictions.** Listed status, conservation area, Article 4 directions, tree preservation orders, restrictive covenants.
- **Rights and easements.** Public rights of way, shared or unadopted access, private road maintenance, wayleaves.
- **Planning and building regulations.** Consents for past works, sign-off certificates, and known nearby development.
- **Mining and ground stability.** Coalfield, brine, subsidence, heave, underpinning.
- **Accessibility.** Step-free access, level thresholds, wet rooms, lifts.
- **Japanese knotweed.** On the property or within seven metres of it.

## The part that is easy to miss

Parts A, B and C are about what is *absent*. The DMCC's misleading actions provision is about what is *present* — the chain-free claim, the catchment promise, the development potential, the floor area.

A listing can satisfy every field above and still be misleading, because it asserts something the file does not support. Both halves matter, and only one of them is something a portal upload gate can see.


Every field the portals gate on and the conditional items that only bite when the property is affected — with what each one is actually for.

Parts A, B and C: the disclosure checklist in full


Two things happened in spring 2025, a month apart, and the combination has left a lot of agents working from a rulebook that no longer exists. They are frequently reported as a single event, which is worth untangling.

The current status of every source mentioned here, with links to the primary material, is on the [regulatory position](/regulatory-position) page.

## The law underneath changed first

For commercial practices from **6 April 2025**, Part 4, Chapter 1 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 replaced the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 as the source of the duty.

## Then the guidance went away

The following month — in **May 2025** — the National Trading Standards Estate and Letting Agency Team withdrew its material information guidance, the documents that defined Parts A, B and C and told agents what belonged in each. It went quietly, and without a sector-specific replacement.

If you have a compliance checklist in a drawer that cites NTSELAT, it is citing a document that is no longer maintained.

The important change is not the wording of the prohibition. Misleading actions and misleading omissions were already unlawful under the 2008 Regulations. The change is **who enforces it and how**.

Previously, enforcement meant Trading Standards building a case and taking it to court. Now the Competition and Markets Authority can determine that a business has breached consumer law, and impose a penalty, through its own administrative process. Penalties can reach the higher of £300,000 or 10% of worldwide turnover.

The practical distance between "technically non-compliant" and "actually facing a fine" got a great deal shorter.

## What did not change

Three things are worth being clear about, because the withdrawal of the guidance has been over-read in places.

**The portals still enforce Parts A and B.** Rightmove and Zoopla built their upload validation around that structure and have not dismantled it. A listing missing council tax band or tenure still gets rejected or suppressed, regardless of what Trading Standards has withdrawn.

**The underlying duty is unchanged and arguably broader.** The DMCC's misleading omission test asks what the average consumer needs in order to take an informed transactional decision. That test does not depend on a checklist existing. If anything, losing the checklist removes the argument that following it was sufficient.

**Parts A, B and C remain the best available evidence of what consumers need.** They were written after consultation with the sector and with consumer groups. An agent who discloses everything in Parts A, B and C is in a considerably better position than one who does not, even though the document itself has been withdrawn.

## Where that leaves you

The honest summary is that agents now carry more exposure and less instruction than before. The duty is enforced more directly, and the safe-harbour checklist has gone.

Government has since consulted on replacement guidance and committed to publishing non-statutory material information guidance, alongside a Code of Practice for property agents. Neither had been published as at 14 August 2026, so the gap is still open — but it is a gap with a stated end, not a permanent state of affairs. We track the status of both on the [regulatory position](/regulatory-position) page.

The reasonable response is not to disclose less. It is to keep disclosing to the Parts A/B/C standard, and — this is the part most agents have not adjusted to — **keep a record of what you checked and when**.

Under an administrative enforcement regime, the question after a complaint is not only what your listing said. It is what steps you took. That record is much easier to create at the point of publication than to reconstruct a year later.


The DMCC Act took over in April, the material information guidance was withdrawn in May. Here is what that means in practice, and what it does not.

Guides