Record year of complaints to the Property Ombudsman
The Property Ombudsman, Christopher Hamer and his team, have had a busy year.
During 2010, the Ombudsman investigated a total of 1,330 grievances. Of these, 672 complaints were related to lettings issues, 646 were related to property sales, and the others were about leasehold management or Home Information Packs (which were abolished in May 2010).
According to the
Property Ombudsman, this is the highest number of complaints since the Property Ombudsman scheme was launched twenty years ago, and 28% higher than in 2008; the last peak year for complaints.
The total number of enquiries received in 2010 was 13,599 but only 1,330 were investigated. Of those scrutinized, 997 complainants were successful in their cases, whilst 221 were not.
Apparently, the most grievances against sales agents were centred around poor communication, and perhaps not surprisingly, the majority of complaints came from property vendors (377 as opposed to 167 from buyers).
To put these complaints into perspective, in 2010 there will have been around 1.7 million buyers and sellers! Not such a bad result, then.