Suing a Letting Agent for Misrepresentation
You can take legal action or sue a letting agent for misrepresentation if they, for example, advertised a flat to be in a significantly better condition than it actually is.
Your Legal Rights and Options
- Misleading Descriptions: Under consumer protection laws, giving false or misleading information that prompts you to sign a tenancy agreement constitutes a misleading commercial practice.
- Potential Remedies: Depending on how severe the discrepancies are, civil law remedies can include claiming damages for financial loss, negotiating a rent reduction, or “unwinding” the contract entirely.
- The Landlord Connection: Legally, letting agents act on behalf of the landlord. In many dispute scenarios, you can hold the agency liable as if they were the landlord, but the property owner may also need to be involved.
Steps to Take Before Suing
Gather Evidence: Take clear, dated photos and videos of the poor conditions. Save the original online advertisement, brochures, and all written correspondence or emails.
Contractual and Common Law Liability
A landlord’s letting agent is personally liable to a tenant for misrepresentation if the agent makes a false statement of fact that induces the tenant to sign the tenancy agreement, or if the agent breaches statutory consumer protection laws by giving misleading information or withholding critical defects.
- Statement of Fact Opinion: Liability arises when the agent asserts a false fact (e.g., claiming “the roof was completely replaced last month” when it wasn’t) rather than a vague sales puff or opinion.
- Inducement: The tenant must prove they relied on the agent’s false statement when deciding to rent the flat.
- Agency Authority: While the landlord remains ultimately responsible for the contract under the law of agency, an agent can face direct accountability or professional regulatory penalties if they acted fraudulently or negligently outside standard professional bounds.
Statutory Liability (Consumer Protection)
- Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008: Letting agents are independently bound by these regulations to treat prospective tenants fairly.
- Ombudsman and Property Redress: If an agent provides misleading descriptions regarding property condition, repairs, or safety compliance, tenants have a direct route to complain to the agency’s mandatory redress
- Scheme: (such as The Property Ombudsman or Property Redress Scheme) for compensation, without needing to take full court action.
- Due Diligence Defence: An agent can avoid liability only if they can prove they exercised all reasonable due diligence and reasonably relied on incorrect information supplied directly by the landlord.
Unfair trading practices
The requirement not to use unfair trading practices applies to all landlords (and their agents), including government departments and local authorities (‘traders’) acting in the course of a business with tenants (‘consumers’).
Trading practices that are deemed unfair are prohibited under consumer protection law.
The prohibited practices are:
- giving misleading information (a misleading action)
- withholding necessary information (a misleading omission)
- using coercion, harassment or undue influence (aggressive practice)
- failing to follow accepted trading practice (lack of professional diligence)
For a practice to be unfair it must cause the average consumer to take a different course of action to the one they would have taken in the absence of that practice.
Civil remedies for contracts starting from 1 October 2014
For contracts entered into on or after 1 October 2014 only, a tenant has the right to a civil law remedy where a misleading action or aggressive practice is a significant part of the reason why a tenant signed up to an agreement.
Where someone has entered into a contract as a result of a misleading action (but not a misleading omission) or aggressive practice, redress under civil law may be obtained through the right to:
- unwind the contract
- a discount
- damages
These rights only apply where the prohibited practice caused the tenant to enter into a tenancy in the first place, and as such it is not available where the tenant is a victim of, or threatened with retaliatory eviction. The legislation uses the collective term ‘civil redress’ for this type of remedy.
Time limits
Each remedy is subject to time limits, outside of which it may not be possible to claim the remedy.
Private sector assured and assured short-hold tenants
The right to civil redress is open only to assured or assured short-hold tenants in the private sector. It is not available to tenants of social landlords, or to other types of tenant in the private sector.
The law on misrepresentation is complicated, and we recommend getting advice as soon as you are aware of a problem.
