Estate agents who deal with lettings are being advised by the Ombudsman for Estate Agents (OEA), Christopher Hamer, to pay particular attention to their dealings with clients.

With uncertainty in the residential sales sector, there is an increasing emphasis on renting property in the private sector as a housing solution for many people as they wait to see what happens with mortgage availability and property values.

But in his first quarterly report for 2008, Hamer revealed an 86% rise in cases investigated that concerned complaints involving residential lettings compared with the last quarter of 2007.

It showed that new cases involving lettings rose from 37 in the last quarter of 2007 to 69 in the period from 1 st January to 31 st March 2008. Of the 19 cases involving lettings closed in the first quarter of 2008, 13 were resolved in favour of the complainant. The disputes considered in relation to lettings arose from agents mainly failing to provide clear communication to either landlord or tenant about the transaction and issues to do with rent collection or repayment of deposits.

“Some of this growth can probably be attributed to the OEA only recently becoming involved with the lettings sector in a big way so people are becoming more aware of my scheme as a means of redress when they have a complaint”, he said.

Where residential sales are concerned, the number of new cases remained around the same level at 220 for the quarter until 31 st March 2008. The overall number of enquiries received by the OEA rose by 9% to 2,983 between 1 st January and 31 st March. But of the 1,655 enquires that came within the Ombudsman’s terms of reference, 448 concerned lettings, a rise of 39.6%, while 1,140 were about sales, a rise of 1.6%.