Estate agent apology after claiming rival was going bust

A high street estate agent has apologised after sending a letter to a homeowner wrongly claiming his online agency was going under.

Dan Hodgett, 39, put his house up for sale in Nottingham with Purplebricks.

Two weeks later, he got a letter from Haart's city centre branch offering their services as his agent's future was "uncertain due to a lack of funds".

Haart said it had "apologised unreservedly to Purplebricks" and reviewed internal procedures.

Mr Hodgett, who put his house in the Forest Fields area of the city up for sale in November, said he was left confused by the letter and now wants to make sure no other homeowners get this kind of correspondence.

He said: "It just seems a bit underhand and dishonest. It was a quite serious thing to say.

"It isn't right - they shouldn't be sending out letters like this."

He said it was initially a worry, but he soon worked out there was no truth in the letter.

His two-bedroom terraced house was now under offer.

A spokeswoman for Haart said a small number of letters were sent out by "an over-enthusiastic member of staff who had not received head office approval".

"Unfortunately, he mistakenly claimed that Purplebricks were having financial issues when it was, in fact, a different online agency that was experiencing problems and which has subsequently gone into administration," she said.

"After this emerged, we apologised unreservedly to Purplebricks who accepted our apology, plus we wrote and apologised to the recipients of the original letters."

Purplebricks was approached for a response but did not want to comment.

Interim results for May to October 2018 on the London Stock Exchange show the firm's UK revenue increased by 39% to £48.3m.

Online estate agent Emoov went into administration last month.

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