Concern over quick sale estate agents
Money Box
BBC
4.2 • 825 Ratings
🗓️ 25 January 2020
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Home owners are at risk of losing large amounts of money when selling their properties by using so called quick sale estate agents. That’s a warning from Trading Standards. It’s told Money Box it’s seen dozens of examples of people losing tens of thousands of pounds from the market value of their homes when agents exploit people who are desperate to sell quickly.
In the first half of last year private parking firms requested 4.32m driver details from the DVLA so they could issue fines to motorists. This number of demands is 25% up on 2018 which was itself a fifth higher than 2017. We get many emails to moneybox@bbc.co.uk from listeners asking what they should do when they think they have been sent a demand which they believe is unfair. We speak to parking expert John Wilkie to find out.
A Money Box investigation has found that councils around the country are charging students Council Tax over the summer holidays when they should be exempt. Last week we heard from a student at Durham University who'd been sent a bill for hundreds of pounds. After the programme we were contacted by students from Oxford, Norwich, Salford, and Chester who had a similar story. Student bodies are now calling on the government to address the issue with local authorities to ensure that students aren’t forced to pay Council Tax.
Presenter: Paul Lewis Reporter: Dan Whitworth Researcher: Darin Graham Producer: Dan Whitworth/Alex Lewis Editor: Emma Rippon
Transcript
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| 0:34.1 | life, check out BBC Sounds. Hello, Coming up, we find more local authorities demanding |
| 0:40.1 | council tax from students who are exempt. And what should you do if you get a penalty demand |
| 0:45.3 | in a private car park? But first, tens of thousands of homeowners are at risk of losing |
| 0:50.7 | large amounts of money by selling their properties using so-called quick-sale estate agents. Trading standards has told Moneybox that it's seen many examples of people |
| 1:00.1 | losing 20 or 30,000 or 30,000 pounds from the market value of their homes when these agents |
| 1:05.1 | exploit people who are desperate to sell quickly. Dan Witt was here with the story. |
| 1:09.9 | Paul, you might have seen the type of adverts |
| 1:11.7 | some of these companies use. We'll sell your house in seven days. We'll sell it in 14 days. |
| 1:16.9 | We'll get 100% of the market value of your home. It's that kind of thing. Now, the adverts make the most |
| 1:22.3 | of social media, so Facebook and Instagram, but they also appear in national newspapers too. |
| 1:27.7 | For a lot of people, it's a good service that works well. |
| 1:31.0 | But national trading standards is worried. |
| 1:33.1 | Some of these quick-sale estate agents could be exploiting people who are desperate to sell. |
| 1:38.5 | Alison Farrar is one of its senior investigators. |
| 1:41.5 | Local trading standards have a few of these companies on their radar at the |
| 1:45.2 | moment. And we at national trading standards are keeping a watching brief over all of these, |
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