Professional Rights and Obligations in Real estate Essay

Professional Rights and Obligations in Real estate - Essay Example UK government control over property valuers is very limited and through the Estate Agents Act 1979 and through the Property Misdescriptions Act 1991, there is some control over the brokerage process. The 1991 Act was intended to thwart property development companies and estate agents from making deceptive statements about property. In actual parlance, both the above-mentioned Acts neither control the property valuation nor offers strong control over the process. (Sayce et al 2006:32). For doing the estate agency business in England and Wales, there is necessity to obtain any licence. However, a bankrupt cannot be a estate agent or if the Office of the Fair Trading declare that an individual is debarred from acting as an estate agent, if they had received many complaints about any individual about the style in which he might have carried out his business in the past.(Carter2008:262). The judge in Antonelli v Secretary of State for Trade and Industry,1997 employed his diplomacy regardi ng the elucidation of the word† violence† in the background of the Estate Agent’s Act 1979. ... However, in appeal by the defendant to the Court of Appeals, the defendant argued that on having some doubts about the residential nature of the house, he enquired with the vendor who confirmed that he had obtained a residential permission for that house. The Court of Appeals held that the real estate agent chiefly focused on skill and his own experience in determining and the Court of Appeal found that it was wholly proper. Estate agents are under obligation not to make any false statement in their dealings. In McMeekin v Long1 , it was held that an estate agent should disclose the details of any dispute existing with an antagonistic neighbour and concealment of such information would result in false statement. An estate is under obligation not to involve in any misleading statement. In Atlantic Estates Plc v Ezekiel2, where a property auction details included a photo of exhibiting people leaving or entering a premise as a bar whereas in reality, the tenant’s licence was exha usted and the said property was no longer was used to run the cocktail or wine bar. In Gordon v Selico Co Ltd3, it was held that the action of a builder to cover up the signs of upcoming of dry rot just before advertising the property in the market was held to be false and misleading statement. Liabilities The main objective of the Property Misdescriptions Act 1991 was to establish a new kind of strict liability criminal offence emanating from statements made about property. Section 1(1) of the above Act states: â€Å"Where a deceptive or phony statement about a prescribed matter is made in the course of an estate agency business, the individual who made such statement shall be liable to be punished as an offence under this