What actually changed for property listings in 2025

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 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If you have a compliance checklist in a drawer that cites NTSELAT, it is citing a document that is no longer maintained.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listing missing council tax band or tenure still gets rejected or suppressed, regardless of what Trading Standards has withdrawn.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 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.