Short answer
Material information is the information a buyer or tenant needs to make an informed decision about a property. The detailed Part A, B and C guidance from National Trading Standards was withdrawn when the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 replaced the older consumer protection regulations in April 2025. The duty did not disappear: under the new Act, leaving out material information is prohibited where it is likely to change the average consumer's decision, and agents must judge what that consumer needs. Listing pages should therefore keep clear, consistent fields for the key facts.
Material information has been through several changes in a short time. Guidance arrived in parts from 2022, portals added fields to their listing tools, and then in 2025 the guidance was withdrawn as the law beneath it changed. This guide sets out what happened, what still applies and what it means for the listing pages on your own website. It is not legal advice.
What "material information" means
In consumer law, material information is the information an average consumer needs to make an informed decision about a purchase. For property that might be the price, the running costs, legal factors such as tenure, and physical facts that would change someone's view of a home. The principle is old. What changed in the 2020s was the effort to spell out, for the property sector, which facts count.
The Part A, B and C guidance
In July 2022 National Trading Standards, through its Estate and Letting Agency Team, published guidance on what it called Part A material information: the facts considered material for every property. It was developed with the major portals, Rightmove, Zoopla, OnTheMarket and PropertyPal.[1] Part A covered:
- the price, or the rent for lettings;
- the council tax band, or rates information in Northern Ireland;
- the tenure, for sales.
The same announcement described two further parts then in development. Part B was information that must be established for all properties, such as utilities, where non-standard features would affect someone's decision. Part C was additional information that may or may not need to be established, depending on whether a property is affected.[1] Portals added data fields to their listing tools, and a listing with an empty field flagged the missing information to buyers.[1]
What changed in 2025
The Part A, B and C guidance was built on the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008. On 6 April 2025, the consumer protection provisions in Part 4, Chapter 1 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 came into force and repealed those regulations. Propertymark reported in May 2025 that the National Trading Standards guidance had been withdrawn as a result.[2]
The withdrawal did not remove the underlying duty. The CMA's guidance on the Act describes a misleading omission as leaving out or hiding material information, or giving it in an unclear or untimely way, where that is likely to cause the average consumer to take a transactional decision they would not otherwise have taken.[3] For someone looking at property, deciding to book a viewing or make an offer can be that kind of decision.
Propertymark's summary for agents is firmer in tone. It reads the Act as treating the omission of material information as automatically unfair, and stresses that the burden is on agents to assess what the average consumer needs to know.[2] The CMA's wording, with its test of the likely effect on the consumer's decision, is the better guide to the law itself. Propertymark's practical conclusion, that agents should include the key facts rather than leave them out, holds either way.
The Competition and Markets Authority's guidance on the Act adds that when a business makes an invitation to purchase, it must give the material information clearly and in a timely way, including the total price with any mandatory fees, taxes and charges.[3] Enforcement also changed: the CMA can now impose fines directly, up to 10% of global turnover.[4]
What is coming next
In its home buying and selling reform roadmap, published on 19 June 2026, the government said it will publish non-statutory guidance to improve the quality of information in property listings, alongside a non-statutory code of practice setting minimum standards for property agents.[5] Longer term, it plans legislation to require sales packs, including searches and a property condition report, to be prepared before listing, when parliamentary time allows.[5]
Until the new guidance arrives, the Part A, B and C structure can still serve as a practical checklist, because it reflects what buyers ask. It works best when it is treated as a starting point, not as a definition of the legal duty.
What this means for your listing pages
Your website is one of the places where your listings are advertised, so the same thinking applies there as on the portals. In practical terms:
| Do | Avoid |
|---|---|
| Give price, council tax band and tenure their own labelled fields, in the same place on every listing. | Hiding key facts inside a long description where buyers have to hunt for them. |
| Show the energy rating, which has its own advertising rule.[6] | Linking to an EPC document without showing the rating itself. |
| Provide space for property-specific facts, such as lease length, service charge, restrictive covenants, flood history or non-standard construction, when they apply. | A rigid template with no room for facts that matter on particular properties. |
| Make empty fields visible to your team before a listing goes live. | Templates that quietly hide a field when it is blank, so nobody notices it is missing. |
| Keep the website, portal listings and brochure in step from one data source. | Editing the website listing separately so facts drift apart. |
The fields we recommend
For a typical residential sales listing, we build these fields into the template. Your CRM may hold them under slightly different names; the feed maps them across.
- Always shown: price and qualifier, council tax band, tenure, energy rating, property type, bedrooms and bathrooms, status.
- Leasehold: remaining lease length, ground rent, service charge and any review terms.
- When relevant: construction type if non-standard, utilities if not mains, parking, broadband and mobile coverage notes, rights and easements, flood history, building safety issues, restrictions and covenants, planning permissions or proposals nearby.
- Lettings: stated rent, deposit, available date, furnishing, minimum term where permitted, and a link to the fee page.
These lists are a practical design aid, built from the structure of the withdrawn guidance and the questions buyers commonly raise. They are not a legal checklist. What is material for a given property is a judgement for the agent, and if you are unsure, your professional body or adviser is the right place to ask.
Getting the facts from your team
A template can only display what someone has entered. In practice, missing material information often starts at the instruction stage, when the facts that matter for a particular property are not gathered. Building the collection into your process helps the website as much as anything the designer does. A short instruction checklist that mirrors the listing fields, filled in at the valuation or when instructions are taken, means the information exists before the listing is drafted. Where a fact is still being confirmed, such as a lease length awaiting the seller's documents, the listing can say so plainly rather than leave it out, and your team can update it when the answer arrives.
A note on portals
Portal listings come from your CRM and are governed by each portal's own rules and fields. Your website often shows the same data in a different template. If a fact appears on the portal but not on your own site, that gap is worth closing, because a buyer comparing the two may reasonably wonder why.
Is the Part A, B and C guidance still in force?
No. It was withdrawn after the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 replaced the regulations it relied on. The duty not to omit material information continues under the new Act.
Do lettings listings need material information too?
Yes. The 2022 Part A guidance applied to lettings as well, with rent in place of price, and the new Act applies to rental adverts as it does to sales. Lettings listings in England must also state the proposed rent under the Renters' Rights Act.
Will the new government guidance be legally binding?
The June 2026 roadmap describes it as non-statutory guidance. The legal duty itself comes from the 2024 Act.
Sources
Checked on 29 October 2026. Each entry says what kind of source it is.
- National Trading Standards publishes guidance on Part A material information for property listings (12 July 2022), National Trading Standards (regulator or enforcement guidance)
- Material Information guidance withdrawn as the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act takes over (9 May 2025), Propertymark (secondary source)
- Unfair commercial practices (CMA207), Competition and Markets Authority (regulator or enforcement guidance)
- The DMCC Act: Consumer elements come into force from 6 April 2025 (13 March 2025), CMS Law-Now (secondary source)
- Home buying and selling reform roadmap (19 June 2026), Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (government publication)
- A guide to energy performance certificates for the marketing, sale and let of dwellings (updated 11 December 2017), GOV.UK (government publication)