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Anyone who is dissatisfied with a home sale can turn to the IMF. Its mission is to verify that brokers follow the laws and regulations that exist.
In the last three years, the number of notifications has averaged 560 per year, but this year the authority had already received almost 1,000 notifications in October.
A problem for the industry
The most common reason for reporting is the so-called hedge price, that is, the broker must have priced too low for the house to attract more people to bid and thereby increase the price.
– It is obvious that many consumers have questions, and perhaps they are even dissatisfied with the real estate service because of this, and it is a problem that the industry must take seriously, says Joakim Lusensky, head of analysis at Mäklarsamfundet.
At the same time, he believes that a very small proportion of all consumers choose to report.
– This is a couple per thousand of all housing transactions that result in a notification in terms of price of coverage. From that perspective, it’s a pretty small problem, says Joakim Lusensky.
Illegal with price caps
A broker using misleading price information violates both the broker’s practice and the Marketing Law. At the same time, it is difficult to establish that the broker has deliberately priced too low, and therefore it is unusual for a report to result in a penalty for the broker.
But sometimes a warning is issued, and in a unique case this summer, the Real Estate Inspection decided for the first time to revoke the identification of a broker who had consistently used hedge prices.
It’s difficult to establish why reports have risen so much this year, says Gunilla Paulsson, the IMF’s chief of authority, but aside from the fact that more people may have become aware that reporting is possible, she believes coronavirus is part of the explanation. .
– Something has happened now during the pandemic. We think there is some connection to the fact that prices were thought to go down, but they have actually risen quite a bit. And brokers may not have been really involved in this then and priced too low, says Gunilla Paulsson.
