Update 2 on estate agencies' misleading practices

This is an update on Will civil claim bankrupt Foxtons, Countrywide and LSL? published on 29th October 2013.

• No company or regulator has challenged any detail of the article. 
• None of the companies has disclosed to the market the risks explained in the article. 
• The Property Ombudsman, whose board is dominated by estate agents, has ignored requests for comment on the article, and has not corrected the errors in his codes of practice. 
• Blackrock, which has built up a 12% stake in Foxtons since September, reported the purchase of 2.5m shares on 12th November but, within 24 hours, reported the sale of 1.3m. 
• Apollo announced on 12th November, as soon as its lockup period expired, the placing of all of its remaining 10% holding in Countrywide. 
• Countrywide’s chairman resigned on 7th November for “personal reasons” after less than a year in the role, but he does not seem to have resigned from his board positions with other organisations.
• Anthony Snarey, a non-executive director of M Winkworth, sold 90% of his 7% holding on 7th November.
• The ASA has let pass its 1st November deadline for compliance with its March adjudication requiring lettings agents to advertise tenants' fees alongside rent without taking any obvious action against the many lettings agents who contemptuously remain non-compliant in varying degrees. Countrywide's websites do not seem to disclose tenants' fees at all.
• The ASA's announcement did not mention the long-standing legal requirement to quote consumer prices inclusive of VAT but, since publication of the article, a large number of estate agents’ websites have, for the first time, begun to quote their fees to tenants inclusive of VAT. However Foxtons’s website has not done so, and Countrywide's websites do not disclose tenants' fees at all.
• The UK Listing Authority, part of the Financial Conduct Authority, has informed me that it regards the disclosures in the prospectuses of Foxtons and Countrywide summarised as, "(The company is) subject to laws and regulations with which (it) may be found to be non-compliant", as sufficient disclosure that the companies' operating margins rely substantially on illegal misleading practices and have done so for many years. The UKLA also ignored the absence of any such disclosure at all in LSL's annual report.