Material Information for Estate Agents: The Complete Guide
What is material information for estate agents?
What is material information and why does it matter right now?
Material information is property detail that a consumer needs to make an informed decision. In plain English: if a buyer would change their mind — or not bother viewing at all — had they known something about a property, that something is probably material information.
The legal foundation sits in the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPRs). The CPRs prohibit traders — including estate agents — from omitting or hiding information that a typical consumer would need to make an informed decision. Material information is not a new concept. Estate agents have been subject to these obligations for years.
What has changed is the enforcement landscape.
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2025 (DMCC Act) came into force on 6 April 2025. It significantly upgraded the powers available to enforcement bodies, creating direct routes to criminal liability for individuals — not just corporate fines — and handing the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) expanded enforcement tools.
Then, on 9 May 2025, the National Trading Standards Estate and Letting Agent Team (NTSELAT) withdrew its practical guidance on material information for estate agents. The guidance — which had translated the legal obligations into actionable checklists covering Parts A, B, and C — was the industry’s primary reference document. Its withdrawal created a compliance guidance vacuum that estate agents are still navigating.
This means agents are now operating under strengthened enforcement powers with less practical guidance than before. That is the reality of the current landscape, and it is why this guide exists.
What the law requires: the legal framework
Material information obligations flow from two main sources:
The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPRs)
The CPRs were the foundational legislation. They prohibited:
- Misleading actions — giving false information, or presenting true information in a way that deceives
- Misleading omissions — leaving out information that a typical consumer needs to make an informed decision
For estate agents, this means that omitting a material fact from a listing — even unintentionally — can be a breach. The CPRs had always applied to estate agents. Enforcement under the CPRs historically sat primarily with Trading Standards Officers (TSOs).
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2025 (DMCC Act)
The DMCC Act, which came into force on 6 April 2025, did not create a separate definition of material information but significantly changed how consumer protection law is enforced superseding the CPRs. Key changes include:
- CMA as primary enforcement body: The CMA gained direct civil enforcement powers to pursue consumer protection breaches — including material information failures — without needing to go through the courts first in every case.
- Direct financial penalties: The CMA can impose significant financial penalties directly on businesses.
- Criminal liability for individuals: Under the DMCC Act, company directors and senior managers can face personal criminal liability for facilitating or consenting to consumer protection breaches within their organisations.
- Enhanced investigative powers: The CMA has stronger powers to compel information and enter premises.
Parts A, B and C: what material information covers
Before the NTS guidance was withdrawn, NTSELAT had organised material information into three parts. This framework remains the most practical way to understand what agents need to collect, even though the guidance document itself has been withdrawn.
Summary table
| Part | Scope | Required for | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Essential property information | All properties | Price, address, number and type of rooms, council tax band, property type (house, flat, etc.) |
| B | Physical features and services | All properties | Utilities (electricity, gas, water, drainage), parking arrangements, building materials, accessibility features |
| C | Property-specific information | Depends on the property | Restrictions: covenants, easements, building safety issues etc. |
Important note on the Parts A/B/C framework: Parts A and B were already expected to be collected and disclosed as part of CPR compliance before the DMCC came into force. Part C contains more complex, property-specific details that require more work to gather.
For a detailed breakdown of every item within each Part, see: Material information Parts A, B and C explained
What changed in April 2025 — and May 2025
It is worth separating the two significant events clearly:
April 6, 2025 — DMCC Act comes into force
The DMCC Act came into force. This strengthened enforcement of existing consumer protection obligations. Material information requirements did not become new law on this date — they already existed under the CPRs — but the consequences of non-compliance became significantly more serious. The CMA gained direct enforcement powers. Criminal liability for directors moved from theoretical to real.
May 9, 2025 — NTS guidance withdrawn
NTSELAT withdrew its material information guidance for estate agents. This was the practical document that translated the legal framework into specific checklists — the “what you actually need to ask sellers” reference that most estate agents and compliance tools had been built around.
The withdrawal means there is currently no single authoritative guidance document that estate agents can point to as their compliance reference. Agents are operating against the underlying legal obligation — the CPRs and DMCC — without the safety net of a detailed checklist endorsed by the regulator.
What this means practically:
- The legal obligations have not gone away
- The standard of what counts as adequate disclosure has not lowered
- Agents relying on old guidance documents alone may be working from withdrawn, potentially outdated material
- Professional bodies such as Propertymark have issued their own member guidance — check for the latest version
Who enforces material information obligations?
This is an area of genuine complexity — and it matters because it affects the level of risk.
The CMA is the primary enforcement body for consumer protection obligations under the DMCC Act. Following the Act coming into force, the CMA has direct powers to investigate, impose financial penalties, and pursue criminal cases against individuals. CMA enforcement applies at a national level and tends to focus on systemic failures or high-profile cases.
Trading Standards Officers (TSOs), operating through local authorities and coordinated by the NTSELAT, retain enforcement powers. TSO enforcement is typically more local in scope and may involve warnings, formal notices, and ultimately prosecution. The withdrawal of the NTS guidance does not remove TSO powers — it removes the guidance that TSOs themselves had been following.
The two enforcement bodies can act in parallel. A serious breach involving multiple listings and systemic failure to collect Part B information could attract both local TSO action and CMA interest.
The consequences of getting it wrong
For the business
- Formal enforcement notices requiring corrective action
- Financial penalties — under the DMCC, the CMA can impose fines
- Adverse publicity from public enforcement decisions (CMA publishes enforcement actions)
- Reputational damage with sellers, buyers, and portal partners
For individual directors
This is the element most agents are not yet taking seriously. Under the DMCC Act, individuals — directors, senior managers, and others involved in the management of the business — can face personal criminal liability for consumer protection breaches.
This is a material shift from a pre-DMCC world where the enforcement risk sat primarily at the corporate level. If your agency systematically fails to collect and disclose material information, the personal risk to you as a director is now real.
For listings
Portals, including Rightmove and Zoopla, have adopted policies aligned with NTS material information requirements. Properties without adequate material information may be removed from portals. As enforcement matures, portal compliance requirements may tighten further.
How to collect material information practically
Given the guidance vacuum, here is the practical approach agents should take now:
1. Start at instruction Material information collection should happen at the point of instruction — not as an afterthought and certainly not after a listing goes live. Build it into your seller onboarding process from day one.
2. Use the Parts A, B, C framework as your baseline Even though the NTS guidance has been withdrawn, the Parts A/B/C structure remains the most practical framework available. Collect everything in Parts A and B for every property. For Part C, work through the property-specific requirements relevant to the property type.
3. Get it from the seller in writing Don’t rely on verbal confirmation. Collect material information through a structured process — a form, a digital questionnaire, or a platform that creates an audit trail. If you are ever investigated, you need to demonstrate that you collected the information and that the seller confirmed it.
4. Don’t list until you have it This is the hard part. The temptation to list quickly and fill in the gaps later is understandable — but it is exactly the behaviour the enforcement regime is designed to prevent. A property listed without Parts A and B information is a compliance risk from the moment it appears on a portal.
5. Pass it to the conveyancer Material information collected at listing is also valuable for the conveyancing process. The Law Society’s Protocol Forms — particularly the TA6 (Property Information Form) TA7 (Leasehold Information Form) and TA10 (Fittings and Contents) — cover significant overlapping territory. If your material information process feeds directly into these forms, you reduce duplication and speed up the transaction.
6. Keep the audit trail Document what you collected, when, and from whom. If a piece of information turns out to be wrong or was unavailable at listing, having a clear record of what you asked and what the seller told you is your evidence of due diligence.
Material information: frequently asked questions
Material information for estate agents is any property detail that a typical buyer would consider significant when deciding whether to view, make an offer, or proceed with a purchase. Estate agents are legally required to collect and disclose this information before marketing a property, under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 and the DMCC Act 2025.
Parts A, B and C were the framework used in the National Trading Standards guidance (since withdrawn) to categorise material information by type. Part A covers essential details required for every property — price, address, property type, council tax band. Part B covers physical and service information — utilities, parking, building materials. Part C covers property-specific information relevant to the specific property being sold for example restrictions and covenants.
The DMCC Act, which came into force on 6 April 2025, did not change the definition of material information or introduce new categories of required disclosure. It changed the enforcement regime — giving the CMA direct powers to penalise non-compliance and creating personal criminal liability for directors. The underlying obligation to disclose material information was already in place under the CPRs.
No. The withdrawal of the NTS guidance on 9 May 2025 removed the practical reference document, not the legal obligation. Estate agents are still required to collect and disclose material information under the CPRs and DMCC. Operating without adequate material information disclosure remains a legal breach. Check Propertymark and other professional bodies for current member guidance.
Both the CMA and Trading Standards Officers (TSOs) have enforcement powers. The CMA operates at a national level under the DMCC Act and can impose financial penalties and pursue criminal cases against individuals. TSOs operate locally under the CPRs. Both bodies can act — in some cases in parallel.
Under the DMCC Act, directors and senior managers can face personal criminal liability for consumer protection breaches.
How Kotini helps estate agents with material information
Collecting material information is now a non-negotiable part of bringing a property to market. The challenge is doing it consistently, completely, and in a way that creates an audit trail — without slowing down your listing process.
Kotini collects material information as part of seller onboarding. When you instruct a new seller through Kotini, material information collection is built into the onboarding flow. Sellers complete a structured digital questionnaire; agents get a complete record of what was collected and when. No chasing. No gaps in the file.
Kotini translates material information into Law Society Protocol forms. The information your seller provides is automatically formatted into the forms conveyancers need — including the TA6 Property Information Form and TA10 Fittings and Contents Form. That means the data you collect at instruction does double duty: it satisfies your material information obligations and gives the conveyancer a head start.
Kotini is the highest-rated onboarding platform for estate agents — 5 stars on both Google and Kerfuffle, with more reviews than any named competitor. Used by hundreds of UK estate agencies.
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