Property sales and misleading information: Be aware, be very aware | Alex Johnson | Independent Property Blogs

Property sales and misleading information: Be aware, be very aware | Alex Johnson | Independent Property Blogs

When something goes wrong in buying or selling property it can be extremely costly, writes Paul Greatholder, partner in the contentious property department of Russell-Cooke LLP.
People expect to get what they have paid for, but sometimes it is not obvious exactly what that is until it is too late. The law is changing on what a buyer is entitled to know, and what a seller (or its agents) are obliged to tell them.

In 1991 the Conservative Government introduced the Property Misdescriptions Act. This made it a criminal offence for an estate agent to misdescribe a property it was marketing. There was a perception that at the time (around the end of the 1980s property boom) that estate agents were not simply being creative in their descriptions of properties, but were at best exaggerating, and at worst being positively misleading, about things such as the proximity of local services, room sizes and views.