Home owners association Vereniging Eigen Huis is re-opening its hotline to report unfair practices involving estate agents, five years after an earlier campaign.

The decision follows a spate of complaints to consumer organisations and television programmes about unfair bidding for property and accusations that some estate agents are colluding to boost bids.

At the moment estate agents and sellers know who has bid what for a property and can steer the process accordingly – and tell new potential buyers that they need to overbid. VEH is campaigning to end this and backs the establishment of a uniform system to cover the bidding process, which would involve secret bids.

At the beginning of March last year, the estate agents’ association NVM, which claims to represent 70% of active realtors, withdrew from talks about a new system after most of its members rejected the plan.

Since then, the situation has reached a stalemate.

Wrong information

Television show Radar reported on Monday that one in five members of its viewing panel who had bought a home in the past five years said they had been given wrong information about the bids that had already been made.

One in three said they felt that the selling estate agent had influenced prices by exaggerating the interest in a property or making up information about bids that had already been made.

“I was told that if I offered a certain amount and made a condition-free bid then I would be in with a chance,” one respondent said. “I talked to the seller later and found that the house was sold for under that amount.”

Some 44% of people who bought a house in the past five years thought the estate agents involved had been fair and transparent, with just 38% saying the process had been clear and honest.

Lana Goudsmit-Gerssen from the NVM told Radar that much had been done to improve the buying process but that her organisation would not sign the new covenant, despite agreeing with 95% of the proposals.

“We think it is important that the seller has control over the sales process,” she said.