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What do the government's reforms mean for conditional selling?

Journalist: Tom Dunstan, FTAdviser

ended 06. October 2025

The Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government announced proposals for the “biggest shakeup to the homebuying system in the country's history”.

The new reforms include requiring sellers and estate agencies to provide buyers with vital information about a property upfront, including the condition of the home, leasehold costs, and chains of people waiting to move.

How will this affect conditional selling? Would this make the practice less likely or more difficult to occur? Will this be a positive for brokers or should there be more spesific proposals regulating estate agencies?

7 responses from the Newspage community

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Adam Stiles
Managing Director at Helix Financial Partners
More accountability will reduce shady practices including conditional selling. This is a positive for the broker but more importantly the consumer who will be allowed to choose where they get their advice from rather than it being forced upon them.
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Ranald Mitchell
Director at bad credit mortgage specialists Charwin Mortgages
Greater upfront information will help make the homebuying process clearer, but it won’t stop conditional selling on its own. That issue is driven by sales tactics, not a lack of property data. Unless the reforms include explicit rules and penalties for agents who pressure buyers to use in-house brokers or solicitors, the practice will continue. Real transparency means tackling behaviour, not just improving paperwork. The proposals are a positive start, but they’ll need firm regulation to truly protect consumers and create a fair market.
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Stephen Perkins
Managing Director at Yellow Brick Mortgages
Conditional selling will continue based on what has been said so far. Introducing a new Code of Practice will not remove the problem, as it was already against the current code of practice. Without regulation or enforcement there will still be no consequences for those that flout these rules.
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Ben Perks
Managing Director at Orchard Financial Advisers
This shake up will definitely discourage bad practises. With more accountability placed upon estate agents the unscrupulous companies will be feeling very sour this morning. It creates a level playing field for all and good customer service and transparency is paramount in this new era for the property market.
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Omer Mehmet
Managing Director at Trinity Finance
These reforms could make conditional selling harder to hide, which is a good thing. For too long, some estate agents have used a lack of transparency to push buyers toward in-house mortgage services — sometimes at the expense of impartial advice. Requiring upfront property information should make the process clearer, but unless there’s firm regulation around agent conduct, conditional selling won’t disappear completely. Buyers deserve a level playing field where the best advice wins, not whoever controls the keys.
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Patricia McGirr
Founder at Repossession Rescue Network
At last, a housing reform that hits where it hurts: information control. Conditional selling feeds on confusion and pressure, not transparency. When buyers get the facts upfront, it cuts off the oxygen that keeps these practices alive. Estate agents who rely on in-house deals will find it harder to strong arm clients into using preferred brokers. But clarity without accountability is just window dressing. Unless penalties have teeth and oversight is real, bad behaviour will simply evolve. For brokers, this levels the playing field. For consumers, it is a long overdue step toward a property market built on trust, not tactics.
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Scott Taylor-Barr
Principal Adviser at Barnsdale Financial Management
Haven't we been here before? These reforms sound very much like a reheating of the Home Information Packs from 2010, which after a lot of costs incurred by the industry were then repealed in 2012. However, that is not to say it's a bad idea, having more information upfront makes a lot of sense, and saves people the heartache, frustration and wasted cost of finding out something critical to them much further down the line. Will it end conditional selling though? My first thought is ‘no’ as these businesses are too used to it and their model starts to look very shaky if it ends overnight. An argument could be made that it may be used by some to do more conditional selling; by using the now quicker process as the reason why buyers "really need to use our adviser, to hit the sellers timeline" - sadly I feel those that bend the rules now, will continue to bend any new rules too, without more proactive and tougher enforcement.