Buying or selling a home is one of the biggest financial decisions most of us will ever make.

Along the way, we expect to deal with people who know what they are doing. Solicitors and conveyancers are regulated. Surveyors usually have professional qualifications. Mortgage advisers operate within a regulated environment.
Yet when it comes to estate agents, things are rather different.

At present, you do not need a mandatory professional qualification simply to work as an estate agent in England.

That could be about to change.

As part of the Government's Home Buying and Selling Reform Roadmap, there are plans to raise professional standards across the property industry. A new Code of Practice for property agents is expected, followed by consultation during 2027 and 2028 on whether qualifications should become mandatory for estate and letting agents.

There certainly appears to be support for change.

In the Government's consultation, 86% of respondents agreed that intervention was needed to improve standards and trust in property agents. Perhaps even more significantly, 80% supported further consultation on mandatory qualifications.

On the face of it, requiring qualifications sounds perfectly reasonable.

An estate agent can be responsible for valuing someone's home, marketing it, negotiating offers and helping to keep a transaction together. Increasingly, they may also be expected to understand and communicate far more information about the property before it even reaches the market.

If we are asking agents to take on greater responsibility, shouldn't we also expect them to demonstrate that they have the knowledge to do it?

Yet there is another side to this.

Some of the best estate agents have spent decades working in their local communities. They know the streets, the housing stock and sometimes the history of individual properties. They understand their buyers and sellers and have built their reputation through years of experience.

Does passing an examination suddenly make somebody better at that job?

Equally, would we really want an experienced agent who has successfully worked in the profession for 30 years to be told they are no longer qualified to do something they have spent their working life doing?

The Government appears to recognise this problem, with possible "grandfathering" arrangements for experienced agents forming part of the discussion.

Perhaps, then, this shouldn't become a battle between qualifications and experience.

There could be room for both.

A qualification can provide a minimum standard of knowledge. Experience teaches things that cannot always be learnt from a textbook. Local knowledge, judgement, communication and understanding people remain enormously important in estate agency.

And with the homebuying process itself changing, this debate becomes even more relevant.

Government proposals envisage considerably more information being available before a property is marketed. Searches, property condition information and other important details could move much closer to the beginning of the transaction.

That means estate agents could find themselves at the centre of a much more information-rich process.

If that happens, what should they reasonably be expected to understand? Where does the estate agent's responsibility end and the conveyancer's begin? And if incorrect information is given to a buyer, who ultimately carries responsibility?

This Thursday on Property Quorum, Gareth Wax, Silas J. Lees, Zahrah Aullybocus and myself, Hamish McLay, will be discussing whether mandatory qualifications really would improve estate agency standards.

We'll also be asking whether experience should carry equal weight, whether existing agents should be given recognition for the knowledge they have built over many years, and whether greater responsibility inevitably has to come with greater professional accountability.

Perhaps the real question isn't whether we want qualified estate agents.

It is what we actually mean by qualified.

Is it the certificate on the wall?

Or is it the knowledge, experience and judgement of the person sitting across the table?

Join us live on Thursday at 10am for Property Quorum and tell us what you think.

Watch live or catch up afterwards:
https://www.youtube.com/@SpillingTheProper-Tea