Sir – I refer to Janey Messina’s wonderfully facetious piece (Quad Talk, August 7).
As the West Country Regional Executive of the National Association of Estate Agents spending the weekend at our holiday home in Lechlade — a luxurious caravan by the Thames worth all of £10,000 — pen had to be put to paper.
It sounds as though Janey had a really terrible time with her estate agent (or was it a letting agent?). Estate agents and letting agents are not the same thing. Each are bound by different legislation and different codes of conduct.
Having surfed the net and discovered that letting and estate agents don’t have to be qualified, one might have expected a researcher at the best university in the world to have decided to use one of those that were!
A click of the mouse would have told Janey that most good letting agents belong to the Association of Residential Letting agents (ARLA) and she would have discovered that the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) regulates most professional estate agents (who sell houses, not let them).
Both these bodies require their members to follow a strict code of conduct and be qualified by examination as well as experience. Never mind, better luck next time, Janey!
Richard Copus, Holne, Dartmoor, Devon
PS: My car’s a Rover 75!
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