A homeowner thinking of selling asks a simple question: which estate agent near me should sell my home, what will they charge, what does that include and who will handle the sale? An answer engine, or a careful reader, needs the agency’s pages to state the fee and what it covers, the terms of the agreement, who does the work and which redress scheme a seller can turn to. We reviewed the pages of eight Leeds and Manchester estate agencies that appeared in search results for estate agents in each city.
Reviews and accreditation logos were common. The fee, the terms and the redress scheme in plain words were not. Seven of the eight showed reviews, a rating or a link to a review platform. One stated a selling fee, one said whether a seller is tied in for a minimum term, and none named its redress scheme in words a reader sees on the page.
What we found on these eight agencies’ pages
Four said when the fee is payable, each on the basis that no fee is due unless the home sells. One listed what a named selling package includes, without saying whether the package is part of the fee. Five named a person with a job title; in one of these, the only roles named were in lettings. Three described who handles the sale once an offer is accepted, and one named the person. Five named a redress scheme, six named client money protection, none mentioned material information and none carried a visible date. Information not found on the pages we reviewed may appear elsewhere on the agency’s website or be given at a valuation.
Download the eight-agency observation sheet (CSV) · See the eight-agency table
What a seller must be told, and where the pages stop
Before a seller signs, the Estate Agents Act 1979 requires the agent to give particulars of when the seller becomes liable to pay and of the amount, or how it will be calculated. The Estate Agents (Provision of Information) Regulations 1991 require that information in writing, and require terms such as ‘sole agency’, ‘sole selling rights’ and ‘ready, willing and able purchaser’, where used, to be explained in a prescribed written form. These are duties about what a seller is told in writing before signing, not rules about what a website must show. The Property Ombudsman’s code of practice for residential estate agents, which binds its members only, likewise asks for a member’s terms of business to state the minimum duration of an instruction and how it can be ended. Again, that is about the written terms, not the website.
A seller comparing agents online starts from what the pages say. On the pages we reviewed, one agency gave a figure for its selling fee. Another agency’s fees page explained that a seller can choose a percentage or a fixed fee, discussed at the valuation, and that the fee changes if more than one agent is instructed; that tells the reader how the fee works, but not what it is. One agency said whether a seller is tied in: it has no minimum term and no cancellation fee.
Redress: in the logo, not in the words
Anyone who does estate agency work on residential property, other than as an employee, must be a member of an approved redress scheme, under which an independent ombudsman investigates and decides complaints against members. A seller can check a business is registered with The Property Ombudsman, search the Property Redress Scheme’s members, or use National Trading Standards’ Property Agent Checker, which searches estate and letting agents for registration with an approved redress scheme. The Property Ombudsman’s code asks its members to include its name and website address on their website and to display its logo there; we did not check which scheme any agency belongs to.
Five of the eight named The Property Ombudsman; none named the Property Redress Scheme. In all five, the name appeared only in the description of a logo image, not in words a reader sees on the page; our browser check found the scheme named in visible text on none of the eight. Two more carried the ombudsman’s logo in the page code with a description that did not name it. Five linked to the scheme’s website, every one to its home page, where a reader can search for a business; none linked to the agency’s own entry or to the scheme’s register page. One of those links sits on a logo whose description does not name the scheme, so only the link address says which scheme it is. A person sees the logo. Software that reads a page’s words gets the scheme’s name only from an image description, a link address or a file name, if at all.
Client money and material information
Property agents in England who hold client money for letting or property management work must belong to a client money protection scheme and publish a copy of their membership certificate on their website. The requirement comes from lettings work, not from selling homes. Six of the eight named client money protection; we recorded its presence, not whether any agency was required to show it.
Under section 227 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, in force since 6 April 2025, a commercial practice that omits material information, the information the average consumer needs to take an informed transactional decision, can be a misleading omission; the same idea applied under the earlier consumer protection regulations. Under those earlier regulations, National Trading Standards published guidance on material information in property listings in three parts: Part A in July 2022, covering price, council tax band and tenure, and Parts B and C in November 2023. The guidance documents now lead to its material information page, which notes the government’s June 2026 announcement that it intends to introduce homebuying sales packs. The guidance was written for property listings; none of the eight selling pages mentioned material information or told sellers what they would be asked to provide for a listing. One described preparing a property’s key legal documents and information before a buyer is found.
Three useful patterns to take from the review
1. Say whether the seller is tied in, and when the fee is due
One agency’s selling page answers the terms question plainly: it says there is no minimum term or cancellation fee, and no fee until the sale completes. It did not give the fee itself; adding a figure or range would answer the question a seller usually asks first.
Where a fee is given, one description on every page helps. The agency that stated a fee gave it as a percentage on its fees page, while its home page refers to fixed fees. The same wording on each page saves a reader from reconciling the two.
Observed page wording, not an endorsement of any agency or a check of its terms.
2. Name the redress scheme in words and link to the check
On these pages the scheme was named only in logo descriptions, and two ombudsman logos were described as ‘Logo’ or with a placeholder. A line of text naming the scheme, linked to its register or to the National Trading Standards checker, lets a reader confirm membership and gives software the same fact in words.
We did not search the registers or check any agency’s membership; we recorded what the pages contain.
3. Say who handles the sale after the offer
Three agencies described what happens after an offer is accepted, such as negotiating, liaising with solicitors or tracking the sale online. One named the person: its branch page names the branch director, who says they look after each customer from beginning to end, and its selling page says the agent handles the negotiations and a solicitor partner progresses the sale.
Five agencies named a person with a job title, but in one the named roles were in lettings only, and none of the pages carried a date. A named sales contact, with the date the page was last checked, tells a seller who to speak to and how current the page is.
A practical review of your own selling page
Open your selling page and your fees page and work through these questions. Use the worksheet to record the evidence, the person responsible and the next change. The tick boxes below are a temporary reading aid; they do not create a score or save your work.
- Give the fee or a range, as a percentage or a fixed amount, including VAT.
- List what is in the fee and name anything charged separately.
- State the type of agreement, any minimum term, the notice period and any fee for ending it.
- Name the sales contact and say who progresses the sale after an offer is accepted.
- Name the scheme in text and link to its register or the National Trading Standards checker.
- Show a review date and the name of the person who approved the facts.
Download the 10-question worksheet (CSV)
A content-review aid, not a regulatory checklist or legal advice. Check the Estate Agents Act 1979, your redress scheme’s code and your own obligations, and have a responsible person approve the facts before publication.
How this relates to AI visibility
An AI assistant answering “which estate agent should sell my house” can only repeat what it can find and connect. A stated fee, the agreement terms, a named sales contact and a scheme named in words with a link to its register give it specific facts it can check against other sources; a logo and a review score give it less. These checks identify information a reader can verify; they do not show whether a page is cited in AI answers. Our page on AI visibility for estate agents explains how we test the answers, and our measurement guide explains how to keep that evidence separate from a page review.
The agencies we reviewed
We do not name the agencies. Several observations concern information that is absent from the pages we reviewed, and a page review is not a fair basis for public judgements about individual businesses. Agencies are labelled A to D (Leeds) and E to H (Manchester); letters were assigned at random within each city and do not follow search order. The page addresses, capture times and SHA-256 hashes are held on file. An agency in the sample can ask us for its own coding. The letters are labels, not a guarantee of anonymity: someone who repeats our searches could match some letters to agencies from the details above, for example the one agency that published a fee.
“Not found in reviewed pages” means we did not find that information in the page code returned for the two pages reviewed for that agency; it may appear elsewhere on its website, appear once scripts run in a browser, or be provided at a valuation. A recorded feature does not establish accuracy or completeness.
| Agency | Selling fee | Says whether there is a minimum term | Redress scheme named | Named person with a role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agent A Leeds | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages | Found | Found |
| Agent B Leeds | Not found in reviewed pages | Found | Found | Found |
| Agent C Leeds | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages | Found | Not found in reviewed pages |
| Agent D Leeds | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages | Found | Found |
| Agent E Manchester | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages |
| Agent F Manchester | Found | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages |
| Agent G Manchester | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages | Found | Found |
| Agent H Manchester | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages | Found |
Download all twelve recorded features for each agency (CSV)
Method, boundaries and corrections
On 27 September 2026 we wrote down a selection rule, then ran one web search per city, “estate agents Leeds” and “estate agents Manchester”, with the web search tool of the AI assistant used for this research, not directly on a named search engine. In result order, we took the first four distinct estate agencies in each city that sell homes and have an office there, excluding property portals, agent directories, comparison and review sites, business listings and social profiles, public-sector pages, articles not published by an agency, national pages that did not name a branch in the city, and results outside the UK, and counting each brand once. The query did not mention fees, so that it would not favour pages that publish them. The search tool returned a portal directory, two United States directories and an encyclopaedia article; these were excluded. One Manchester result was a branch of a brand already selected in Leeds and was skipped. Both searches returned four eligible agencies, so our written fallback was not needed. Correction: our rule said an agency must have an office in the city, but in practice we took agencies whose page named a branch, office or team for the city and did not check addresses; three of the eight show no street address in the city on the pages we reviewed.
One Leeds agency’s page returned no readable text without scripts on two attempts and was passed over for the next eligible result. The sample is purposive, not random, and search order favours agencies that are already easy to find. Several of the eight are branches or franchises of national networks, and some pages share national templates.
For each agency we reviewed the page the search returned and the selling or fees page linked from it, preferring a page about selling fees, then the main selling page. Two of the eight linked a fees page; the other six linked a selling page. While coding, we found that one agency’s branch page linked a branch fees page that our first reading of its links had missed; we captured and coded that page, as the rule requires, before any count was made. We captured the returned HTML with UTC timestamps and SHA-256 hashes and extracted the text and link list. We did not run JavaScript for the coding, so content that loads only in the browser, and anything shown only inside images, was not coded; image descriptions (alt text) and fallback content for browsers without scripts were read. We coded visible text, links and image descriptions, not structured data, image file names or dates held only in page code. As a separate check on the same day, we opened every reviewed page in a browser, let its scripts run and recorded links to the redress schemes and text naming a scheme, client money protection or a fee; it found the same scheme links and no scheme named in visible text. We did not contact agencies, request valuations, search the redress registers or visit other pages.
Each agency was coded on twelve features using a written codebook. A fee counts where a figure, percentage or range is given for selling a home; a free valuation, ‘competitive fees’ or ‘no sale, no fee’ alone does not, and nor does a statement that sellers pay no agency fee when selling by auction, which three agencies made. A list of services counts as saying what the fee includes only where the page ties it to the fee or a named package. A logo counts as naming a scheme only where its description names it. A general award or five-star claim without reviews, a stated rating, a count or a platform link does not count as reviews. Research and coding were assisted by AI; each code was read in context against the captured page. An independent review re-read the captures and re-fetched the pages and sources; it led us to recode one borderline ‘who handles the sale’ finding, reword the redress findings and correct the selection description above. Presence of a feature does not establish its accuracy or completeness.
The regulatory statements above are taken from the linked legislation, The Property Ombudsman, Property Redress Scheme and National Trading Standards pages as read on 27 September 2026. This narrow page review does not determine whether any agency meets the Estate Agents Act 1979, a redress scheme’s code or any other legal requirement.
Send specific corrections, with the page address and passage, to hello@answari.co.uk. Later corrections will be dated here.