The online property market is experiencing rapid growth. While around 5pc of homes are sold online, this is forecast to rise to 50pc by 2020. Earlier this year, the ASA upheld a complaint against the Neil-Woodford-backed upstart Purplebricks for an advert that exaggerated how much customers could save using the service compared with a high-street agent. In the past 18 months, it has banned six of Purplebricks’s adverts. Last month, the company was investigated by BBC programme Watchdog over similar claims, and it apologised after it was found to have repeated claims in promotional emails that the advertising watchdog had ruled as misleading. A ruling against a rival, HouseSimple, also found that its claim that ­selling a house would cost “just £495” was misleading because if homebuyers used their own conveyancers or ­mortgage brokers they must pay an ­extra fee.
More complaints about misleading ads lodged against UK estate agents have been upheld this year than in all of the first nine months of 2017 . The Advertising Standards Authority supported 13 complaints in nine last year , compared with nine last year . The increase comes amid a surge in the growth of online property agents: Purplebricks had six of its ads banned in this year for exaggerating how much customers would save by using its service, and rival The Advertising Standards Authority was found also to have misled homebuyers over its charges.