Recommendation 4

HM Government · verbatim extract Not Addressed

Government response We agree that providing essential information upfront during the home buying and selling process is important in supporting potential buyers. Under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 property listings must not omit information that the average consumer needs to make an informed transactional decision. Further to this, on 6 October 2025, we announced the biggest shake-up to home buying in this country’s history , which aims to cut transaction times and halve fall-through rates to support a faster, fairer housing market. We consulted on the information estate agents need to include in property listings under the current legal framework (material information), and specifically, sought views on whether coastal erosion should be considered material information. We have proposed that government should publish guidance on this issue to support the transition to a more consumer-focussed system by ensuring buyers get the necessary information they need at the outset of a transaction. We also consulted on a package of future proposals, including requiring sellers to provide upfront information to buyers and mandating the provision of critical information in property listings. As part of this, we specifically sought views on requiring standard search data (including environmental search data such as information on coastal erosion) to be made available at the point of listing. We will publish a roadmap setting out further details of our reforms later in 2026 once we have fully considered the responses received to these consultations. In January 2025, to provide the best available evidence to support individuals make informed decisions on property purchase, the EA published the new NCERM. This publicly available mapping provides the most up to date national picture of coastal erosion risk for England and includes 10 years more evidence on coastal processes since the original map was published.