What an Estate Agent Website Needs: A 2026 Checklist for UK Agencies

This checklist is written for agency owners and managers who want to know whether their website is doing its job, without wading through legislation. Each item says what to look for and why it matters. Where a legal rule sits behind an item, the source is linked so you can read it yourself. None of this is legal advice, and if a point affects how your agency operates, check it with your own adviser or your professional body.

1. Listing pages that carry the key facts

Your listings are the reason most people visit. Each property page should show, in a consistent place:

• the price or rent, with any qualifier such as "offers over";
• the council tax band;
• the tenure, for sales;
• the energy performance rating;
• a clear status if the property is under offer, sold subject to contract or let agreed.

The first three are the facts National Trading Standards named as material for all property listings when it published its Part A guidance in July 2022, developed with Rightmove, Zoopla, OnTheMarket and PropertyPal.^[1] That guidance was withdrawn when the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 took effect.^[2] Under the Act, as the Competition and Markets Authority's guidance explains, leaving out or hiding material information is a prohibited misleading omission when it is likely to cause the average consumer to take a decision they would not otherwise take.^[3] Propertymark's practical reading for agents is that the burden now sits with them to judge what the average buyer needs.^[2] The energy rating has its own rule: property adverts in commercial media, which includes the internet, must show the energy performance indicator from the EPC.^[4]

Quick test: open five listings at random. Can you find all five facts on each without scrolling through the description?

2. A fee page and scheme statements, if you let property

Letting agents and property managers in England must publish a list of their fees on their website, with enough detail for landlords and tenants to understand them, stating whether each fee is per tenant or per property and including tax. Alongside the fee list they must publish a statement naming the redress scheme and, where required, the client money protection scheme they belong to. Agents advertising on portals or social media must publish the information there or link to it.^[5] A copy of the client money protection certificate must also be published on the agent's website.^[6]

Quick test: from a rental listing, how many taps does it take to reach your fee list? One is good. If the answer is "it is in a PDF somewhere", it is worth fixing.

3. Redress scheme membership, for sales too

Anyone doing residential estate agency work in the UK must belong to an approved redress scheme. Business Companion names the two approved schemes as The Property Ombudsman and Property Redress.^[7] Naming your scheme on the website, usually in the footer and on your complaints page, tells clients where to go if a complaint cannot be resolved with you.

4. Honest reviews with a published policy

Since 6 April 2025 the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act has listed fake reviews among the banned practices. The Competition and Markets Authority's guidance describes the banned conduct as including submitting or commissioning fake reviews, publishing reviews in a misleading way, and failing to take reasonable steps to prevent and remove fake or misleading reviews.^[3] The CMA can now fine businesses up to 10% of global turnover for consumer law breaches.^[8]

For a website that means showing reviews as they were written, not cherry-picking only five-star ones in a way that misleads, never writing or buying reviews, and publishing a short policy explaining how you collect and moderate them. Our guide on fake reviews and drip pricing goes into this in detail.

5. Prices that include mandatory charges

Drip pricing, meaning a headline price followed by mandatory charges added later, is prohibited under the same Act as a misleading omission, because an invitation to purchase must state the total price including mandatory charges.^[3] For agencies this is most relevant to lettings, where a rent or a service price should not grow extra compulsory charges as the visitor reads on, and to any fixed-fee sales packages you advertise. If a charge is unavoidable, it belongs in the price people see first.

6. Rental adverts that follow the Renters' Rights Act

From 1 May 2026, rental bidding and rent in advance beyond one month are banned in England, and discriminating against renters with children or on benefits is unlawful, including by withholding information about a property.^[9] Rental adverts must state the proposed rent.^[10] Check that rental listings show a single stated rent and that templates and copy contain nothing like "no DSS" or "no children". The Renters' Rights Act guide lists the website changes.

7. Short forms with plain privacy wording

Valuation and viewing forms should ask only for what you need at that stage. Under the UK GDPR, people must be told how their data will be used at the time it is collected, in clear and plain language.^[11] A one-line note beside the submit button, linked to a privacy notice that reflects what your office actually does, covers this. Marketing sign-ups should always be a separate, optional choice.

8. Branch pages that are genuinely different

Each office should have its own page with its own address, hours, team, areas covered and listings, plus something specific about that branch. Pages that repeat the same text with a different postcode give visitors little reason to trust them. Google's guidelines ask for a business name used consistently in the real world and an accurate address,^[12] so as good practice the details on each branch page should match that branch's Business Profile.

9. Area guides with real substance

Area guides can be some of the most useful pages on an agency site, but only if each one says something true and specific about the place. Google's spam policies describe doorway pages, including multiple pages aimed at different cities or regions that funnel visitors to the same place, as a form of spam.^[13] A few strong guides beat dozens of interchangeable ones.

10. Speed on a phone

Plenty of people browse property on a phone, often on a patchy connection. Google's Core Web Vitals give clear targets: the main content should appear within 2.5 seconds, a tap should get a response within 200 milliseconds, and the layout should stay put while it loads, with a layout shift score of 0.1 or less, measured across three quarters of visits.^[14] Property photography is often the heaviest part of a page, and correctly sized, modern image formats fix most of it.

11. Accessibility

WCAG 2.2 at level AA is the accepted standard to aim for.^[15] Gaps worth checking for on an agency site include low-contrast text on photos, galleries that cannot be used with a keyboard, filter buttons too small to tap and form fields without proper labels. Fixing these helps everyone, not only disabled visitors.

12. Keep an eye on what is coming

The government's home buying and selling roadmap, published in June 2026, says it will publish non-statutory guidance on the quality of information in property listings and a non-statutory code of practice setting minimum standards for property agents, and will consult on mandatory qualifications for estate and letting agents.^[16] A website built with clear, structured listing fields will be much easier to adapt when those arrive.

A one-page version