The Office of Fair Trading has criticised the work of estate agents, but solicitors have failed to break into property selling, reports Neil Rose

Lawyers are used to seeing themselves near the bottom of polls of occupations that the public hold in esteem.

However, there is usually some comfort to be had in finding other groups below them, such as politicians and journalists.

And then there are always estate agents, who will have found what little remains of their reputation battered yet further last week by an Office of Fair Trading (OFT) report into their work.

But to judge by the reaction to the report, OFT officials may find themselves bumping near the bottom of such a list in the future.

While criticising much about the estate agency market in England and Wales, the OFT stopped short of calling for a licensing scheme for operators, despite the demands of the National Association of Estate Agents, which wants to set up a scheme of self-regulation.

Many other commentators joined in the attack on the OFT for not going far enough.

Denis Cameron, chairman of the Law Society's land law and conveyancing committee, says it is 'quite remarkable', especially in the light of the Clementi review of legal services, that the OFT shied away from the compulsory self-regulation of estate agents.

It is a source of some irritation to the legal profession that of all the people involved in the home-buying process, the least qualified and least regulated group is also the best remunerated.

One comment made in a consumer survey undertaken alongside the report will ring true with many: 'We paid the estate agents two or three times more than the solicitors and once they had sold the property, they were not interested.'

The report found that moving in 2003 from a 150,000 property to one worth 200,000 incurred costs of 6,379.

Of these, the estate agents received the most (2,013), followed by the Treasury (2,000 in stamp duty), and then the buying solicitors (637) and the selling solicitors (553).

For all the work they do, the solicitors earned little more than the removal men (456).

Despite the obvious financial incentive for solicitors - especially if they can throw financial services advice into the mix - and the added protection the public enjoys by using them rather than an unregulated estate agent, the solicitor property-selling bandwagon has never really hit the road in England and Wales.

In the course of its research, the OFT visited Scotland and the highly successful solicitor property centres in both Edinburgh and Glasgow.

And while the Edinburgh centre (ESPC) - which has around 90% of the market in the city - has spawned the Solicitors Property Shop (SPS) south of Hadrian's Wall, with 59 law firm members concentrated mainly in the north-east, the OFT report notes in passing that solicitor property sellers 'are not...

generally found within England and Wales'.

The profession historically was heavily involved in property selling, but this fell away with the growth of specialist estate agencies.

But the end of the conveyancing monopoly in 1983 sparked renewed interest, with 1,300 firms joining the National Association of Solicitors Property Centres.

However, the handful of centres that actually opened were mostly blown away by the recession of the early 1990s.

It was only when estate agencies started to link with large law firms to offer conveyancing that interest was reignited.

But once again, initial enthusiasm has not been seen through.

ESPC originally had grand plans for a big national network, while, as reported this week, the original centre in Wrexham has just closed after 19 years.

Paul Andrews, senior partner of one of its three member firms, Thomas Andrews & Partners, says part of the problem for property-selling solicitors is that the profession is regarded as a 'necessary evil' by home buyers.

'People don't trust estate agents, but they have a shop front,' he adds, backing calls for their regulation.

'The most successful estate agents are the ones that market themselves well, rather than the properties.'

Mr Andrews insists that 'it can be done', but says an indefinable mix of factors go into making property selling a success, such as location of the showroom, its manager and the willingness of the member law firms to commit to the venture.

For Mr Cameron, the set-up costs are the real stumbling block.

'You don't make any money for two years,' he says, adding that co-operative ventures are the only feasible approach.

The problem then is keeping everyone on side, he adds.

Another issue is the different mindset.

'You have to be a salesman, and solicitors are not very good at that,' Mr Cameron says.

But ESPC still bangs the drum.

Chief executive Ron Smith says the OFT's call for tighter consumer protection sits well with the solicitor property-selling concept.

'We plan to promote more clearly the added protection which is available to clients of SPS solicitors,' he says.

A common fear among conveyancers considering property selling is losing referrals from local estate agents.

Those who have taken the plunge often say this does not happen, or that on closer inspection such referrals were neither plentiful nor lucrative.

The OFT report put referrals into perspective.

It found that advice on which solicitors to use came bottom of a list of ten services buyers expected from their estate agents, and second bottom of the list of services agents actually provided.

Overall, a quarter of buyers expected such advice, and almost the same number received it.

And now that estate agents can start demanding referral fees, such margin as solicitors may have made from their work could be wiped out.

Michael Garson, the Law Society Council member for residential conveyancing and managing director of a solicitor-owned estate agency, predicts that the introduction of home information packs in 2007 will provide an opportunity for solicitor property sellers.

'It's brilliant because you can do it all [the pack and the sale] in-house,' he says.

The packs could also help solicitors enter the field.

If sellers go to solicitors earlier than now to put the pack together, the solicitor could persuade them to use their estate agency services too.

Where solicitors did feature prominently in the OFT report was in buyers' views of delays in the house-buying process, with the seller's solicitor and the buyer's own solicitor identified as the two main causes.

Through the push towards electronic conveyancing, the profession is doing its best to overcome this.

But there is no sign as yet that similar enthusiasm will be applied to property selling.