CMA seeks views on proposals to improve the residential property management services market
The CMA has today issued an update on its market study into the provision of residential property management services in England and Wales.
The study, which was launched in March 2014 by the Competition and Market Authority’s (CMA’s) predecessor the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), is looking at whether the market is working well for leaseholders and whether there is effective competition in the sector.
The CMA has identified a number of causes for concern about how the market works. Some leaseholders appear to suffer from a lack of control over aspects of property management, and may experience excessive or unnecessary charging for services arranged by property managers, poor service quality, insufficient transparency, poor communication and ineffective redress.
At the same time, other leaseholders are satisfied with their property management services and the CMA has found evidence to suggest that the existing checks and balances in the market can work well.
In light of this, the CMA has set out some views on possible remedial action to improve the performance of the market and secure better outcomes for leaseholders, on which it is seeking views.
Rachel Merelie, Senior Director of Delivery, said:
Whilst the market works well for some leaseholders, our emerging findings suggest that improvements may be needed in a number of areas. Given the broad range of issues we are considering, we have decided to seek views at this stage on a range of possible remedies to the problems we have identified. This will help us to develop recommendations that are both effective and proportionate.
All comments should be sent by 19 September 2014 to:
Residential Property Management Services Study
Competition and Markets Authority
Victoria House
37 Southampton Row
London, WC1B 4AD
propertymanagers.study@cma.gsi.gov.uk
The CMA will publish its full report by the end of 2014.
Notes for editors
- For further information on this market study and to view the update paper, please visit the project webpage.
- Market studies are carried out using powers under section 5 of the Enterprise Act 2002 (EA02) which allows the CMA to obtain information and conduct research. They allow a market-wide consideration of both competition and consumer issues. Market studies take an overview of regulatory and other economic drivers in the market and consumer and business behaviour. Possible outcomes of market studies include: enforcement action, a more in-depth market investigation by a panel of independent members, recommendations for changes in laws and regulations, recommendations to regulators, self-regulatory bodies and others to consider changes to their rules, recommendations for campaigns to promote consumer education and awareness, or a clean bill of health.
- The CMA is the UK’s primary competition and consumer authority. It is an independent non-ministerial government department with responsibility for carrying out investigations into mergers, markets and the regulated industries and enforcing competition and consumer law. From 1 April 2014 it took over the functions of the Competition Commission and the competition functions (and certain consumer functions) of the OFT. For more information on the CMA, see its homepage, or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook.
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