If you are selling a property via an estate agent, your listing will need to contain Material Information. These are basic facts about the property that helps potential buyers make an informed decision regarding whether to make an enquiry or book a viewing. Material Information can also be a huge red flag clearly visible to buyers. Read on to find out why.
To date, Material Information has been a National Trading Standards Estate & Letting Agency (NTSELA) initiative, divided into three parts:
Part A: includes a property’s council tax band or rate, the price at which the home is available for sale, tenure information and unavoidable costs, such as service charges, ground rents and estate rent charges.
Part B: includes the physical characteristics of the property, the number and types of rooms, parking arrangements and utilities, spanning gas, electricity, water, sewerage, oil heating, broadband and mobile signal/coverage.
Part C: includes building safety, such as unsafe cladding, asbestos, risk of collapse, any restrictions, rights and easements, flood and coastal erosion risk, planning permission for the property itself and its immediate locality, accessibility/adaptations and details of coalfield or mining areas.
The introduction of the full suite of Material Information in 2023 worried many sellers as it required them to explicitly reveal if they had a problem property by detailing their home’s faults at the very start of the marketing process. Naturally, enquiries and offer values suffered as a result, frequently making it impossible to sell house fast.
Failure to supply Material Information has proved just as detrimental. New research from Moverly found 1 in 5 sellers could be unwittingly delaying their own sale due to non-disclosure.
When questioned, 23% of sellers were either unsure, have provided none of it, or have only provided some of Part A Material Information. This figure was 20% in relation to Part B and 37% for Part C. It is no accident that sellers were most unsure about sharing Part C details as this information is most likely to delay a sale or scupper interest.
Worryingly, when asked if their estate agent had provided advice on Material Information, 37% hadn’t received guidance. The matter of Material Information has got progressively worse since April 2025, when the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) took over the responsibility for Material Information compliance from NTSELA.
Additionally, the CMA’s new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCC) replaced and superseded the initial legislation on which the NTSELA guidance was based upon. At the time of writing, no property-specific Material Information guidance had been issued and matters were just as unclear for agents as they were sellers.
In fact, a Material Information survey conducted in June by industry software supplier, Reapit, found 61% of estate agents had heard of the DMCC Act but didn’t have a firm grasp of the details, while 11% weren’t aware of the Act at all.
There is a way of achieving a quick property sale without disclosing Material Information. Selling directly to a professional property buyer bypasses the need to use an estate agent and conform with the DMCC Act.
When you sell to Open Property Group, there is no need for a property listing and you don’t need to worry about what problems your property may have. You can get an instant cash offer for house whether it has subsidence, sits in a flood zone, has Japanese knotweed or is in a poor state of repair.
We are the best company to sell house for cash – you can talk to a real human, visit us in person and sell to us knowing Open Property Group is an established, accredited company, belonging to The Property Ombudsman and The National Association of Property Buyers.
Contact us now to sidestep Material Information and achieve a quick house sale
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