From today, new listings that don’t display a price cannot be uploaded to Rightmove.
Rightmove made the announcement to comply with National Trading Standards Estate and Letting Agency Team (NTSELAT) material information rules.
The portal giant introduced new data fields for tenure and council tax for new listings, while fields such as “price on application” and “offers invited” have been removed. Rival portals Zoopla and OnTheMarket have taken similar steps.
However, agents can still use terms such as “offers in excess of”.
Speaking at the Propertymark national conference, David Cox, legal director of Rightmove clarified that none of Rightmove’s listings are technically compliant now, because CRMs as yet have failed to provide required data to automatically enter into the fields.
Cox said agents can enter relevant details into the property description field, but that a lack of cooperation from data companies means not all the requisite information is present, therefore posing a compliance risk.
He said:
“More than 700 data feed providers haven’t even made contact with us. We have been collecting information but only 5% of data feed providers that represent 1.7% of agents can actually feed anything into those fields.
“[As a result,] not a single listing will be compliant.”
Cox urged agents to ask their CRM provider about providing the required data.
James Munro, head of the NTSELAT, said penalties will not be issued against non-compliant listings so portals have time to collaborate with the new rules.