It is a legal requirement that a property is accurately described and includes all material information in the listing. Below is some of the assured advice we have had from Trading Standards.
Electrical Substation
The close proximity of a property to an electrical substation is likely to impact a consumer’s transactional decision, so yes this information should be provided in the property description or be evident in a photograph in the listing.
EPC
The Energy Performance of Buildings (England and Wales) Regulations 2012 stipulates that the asset rating of the building expressed in the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) must be stated in the sale or rental advertisement.
In order that a consumer may understand the EPC rating, however, sufficient information must be available in order that a consumer may make an informed decision, in accordance with the protections afforded by the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.
Council Tax
Agents need to state whether council tax is included, excluded or the property is exempt from council tax. This will appear at the top of property listing under key features/letting details:
Some feeds don't have the field for whether council tax is included/excluded (they will usually have the option to say 'true' or 'false' in this field if they do). If they don't have this field or the information isn't sent through to us, it will say 'Ask agent'. Manual Loaders won't have the ability to add all of these fields at the moment, as they're not yet built into Rightmove Plus. An example of this would be Council Tax. They can put any relevant information in the description to supplement the 'Ask Agent' message.
This information is separate to the council tax band, which is a separate field and appears near the bottom of the property listing:
Sold STC/Under Offer
Estate agents do have to mark property listings on Rightmove as ‘Sold Subject to Contract’, ‘SSTC’or ‘under offer’ once the vendor has accepted an offer.
It is a legal requirement that the status of a property is accurately described and updated in a timely manner, as this is material information for prospective purchasers.
It is the responsibility of the estate agent to ensure that this information is clear, unambiguous, and remains up to date, while any advertising is still live on Rightmove.
Where Rightmove becomes aware of a listing SSTC/ under offer/ let agreed but not marked as such, they will take action to accurately change this and impose sanctions on their customer (estate agent).
Examples of what may not need to be included
As it stands, there is no requirement for pollution information to be included on all property listings.
The matter is currently under consideration nationally and may become a requirement in the future. Although it is not mandatory for this data to be included on all listings, there may be instances where air pollution information could be considered material information, particularly in an area with known high levels evidenced by published information and this would have to be considered on a case by case basis.