March 10.

With respect to Beverley Brown (March 10) my letter of February 22 did

not suggest that house sellers should avoid estate agents but that it

would not be in the long-term interests of the public for conveyancing

to be controlled by estate agents, who have no appropriate

qualification, training, or insurance.

However, a seller should know their interest may, however innocently,

be prejudiced by their estate agent's in-house loan broker acting for

the purchaser in arranging the loan. Why? Because there is inevitably a

conflict of interest and one may lose out. A solicitor selling a house

is prohibited from acting directly or indirectly on behalf of the

purchaser.

The seller should also be made aware of the extent to which the estate

agent may overcharge them for advertising. I am looking forward to

lunching with Beverley Brown's managing director next week, at his

invitation, when I will discuss Slater Hogg & Howison's advertising

costs compared to The Herald's own direct rate.

Why should Beverley Brown think that selling houses is anathema to

solicitors? They have happily sold properties for centuries and happily

continue to do so.

It is a demonstrable nonsense to say that Edinburgh sellers have not

made any choice to use the ESPC system -- 80% of Edinburgh sales and 85%

of Aberdeen sales are dealt with by solicitors.

Estate agents first appeared on the Scottish scene in Glasgow in the

late 1960s. They gained a hold simply as solicitors' own practice rules

prohibited advertising and self-promotion and actually prevented

solicitors from competing in any effective way.

By the time estate agents spread to Edinburgh and Aberdeen solicitors

there had already established their property centres. The rules were

only finally removed in the early 1980s, by which time the estate agents

had secured a grip on the Glasgow market.

The Glasgow Solicitors Property Centre will shortly offer Glaswegians

the same benefits of lower marketing fees and advertising costs as are

available to those in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, and other

areas where solicitors are aggressively and successfully providing the

best service for sellers.

For instance, the GSPC booking fee of #135 will include advertising in

the weekly property list (distributed free) and by computer link through

100-plus solicitors' firms until the property is sold.

The recent flurry of articles, correspondence, and circulars from

estate agents and Glasgow Seal appears to me to be signs of growing

panic that their business will be bled away.

An estate agent once said to me that his was a business trying to

become a profession and that solicitors were a profession trying to

become a business.

For our part, solicitors have the professional training, ethics, and

practice rules which make a professional but we now also have the scent

of blood.

Alasdair C. Sampson,

17 Strathmore House,

East Kilbride.