Copy article

Conditional selling - recent examples

ended 03. October 2025

Keen to know if any brokers have had any recent examples of conditional selling, e.g. what you did about it, whether it cost you a client and any other information about the outcome. With many of you saying buyers are MIA at the moment and transaction levels stifled, potentially due to the Budget, is the practice becoming even sharper? It's a follow-up to this article in FT Adviser about conditional selling victim, Clive Betts, MP for Sheffield South East, who has agreed to present written questions to parliament about conditional selling on behalf of FT Adviser. Any conditional selling intel or insights, send them over. Also, have any of you contacted your MPs about it? If so, what was the response?

 

 

3 responses from the Newspage community

Copy all

Copy

Editor
Ross Lacey
Director & Independent Financial Adviser at Fairview Financial Management
We're still hearing of some agents making claims that their in-house brokers can access "exclusive deals" and do lots of things that an independent broker can't do. This is anecdotal and what buyers are telling us, but when you hear it enough times there must be something there. The same can be said for pressure from agents to use their "linked solicitor".

We tend to be working with clients before they even get to the point of speaking with an agent so by then, it doesn't dissuade the client from carrying on with us. We also give our clients a heads up on what they might expect to hear, the hard-sell etc.
Copy

Marie Johnstone
Managing Director at Wilson Property Group
As a luxury property agency based in Edinburgh, we all too often encounter the practice of conditional selling. While this issue is well-documented south of the border, in Scotland it unfortunately takes an even more concerning form. We regularly see clients wishing to submit an offer on a home, only to find that their solicitors are required to make that submission contingent upon the client also using the agency’s in-house legal, mortgage, and estate agency services.
This raises a serious question: why is such a clear conflict of interest permitted? No purchaser should be compelled to accept such conditions. When only one organisation controls every aspect of the transaction, with no external oversight, it is difficult to argue that the client’s best interests are being safeguarded. Accountability becomes virtually non-existent.
Regulation of the industry is essential, but regulation must go further than oversight alone. Clear guidelines must be established to ensure that the interes
Copy

Scott Taylor-Barr
Principal Adviser at Barnsdale Financial Management
Conditional selling has no place in a client-first business and earlier this year our network, The Openwork Partnership, launched a new training package called "taking positive steps to end conditional selling" across the whole Partnership. This is a bold step for one of the UK's largest advice networks and proves their commitment to putting consumers front and centre of the service proposition. The package includes a new training module via the in-house Business School for advisers, an update to the T&C Supervisors requirements at annual firm reviews, enhanced guidance and training for those firms operating as part of a group that includes an estate agency, as well as network wide positive messaging to combat conditional selling and increase clarity and support for both advisers and their clients. It's great when the network your business is a part of takes these issues seriously and doesn't try to brush them under the carpet as I know many feel others have done.