Property Listing Pages: Photos Floorplans, Material Information

For years an estate agency website could get away with a gallery, a headline price and three paragraphs of enthusiasm. That is no longer a safe model. The law on misleading omissions asks whether the listing left out information a buyer needs to make an informed decision, and trading standards officers have published a defined list of what that information is. A property page that hides the tenure, the Council Tax band or the service charge in a PDF behind a button is, at best, a weak page and, at worst, an enforcement risk.

This guide is for independent agents and small groups in England and Wales who control their own website, or who brief a developer to build one. It covers the fields that belong on every listing, how to order them, how to present photographs and floorplans honestly, how to show the energy certificate and Council Tax band, and what the government's 2026 reform roadmap signals for the next few years. If you need a build partner, our web design and web application development teams work with listing feeds and custom property templates.

The legal test now sits in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. Under section 227, a commercial practice involves a misleading omission if it omits material information, and "material information" means information that the average consumer needs to take an informed transactional decision. The section adds that omitting information includes providing it in a way that is unclear or untimely, or in such a way that the consumer is unlikely to see it. The commencement note on the same page records that section 227 came into force on 6 April 2025.

A companion provision matters just as much for photographs and copy. Section 226 says a practice is a misleading action if it provides false or misleading information, and that information can be misleading even when it is true if it is presented in a misleading way. An overall presentation may deceive even if each statement in it is accurate.

The test is general, so National Trading Standards (through its Estate and Letting Agency Team) turned it into a three-part framework for property listings:

• Part A is information that is always material for every property, generally involving unavoidable costs for the occupier.
• Part B is information that must be established for every property. Its examples include the type of property, the building materials, the number of rooms, utilities and parking.
• Part C is information that only needs to be established where the property is affected, such as flood risk or restrictive covenants.

The structure comes from two National Trading Standards documents: the Part A summary (updated July 2022) and the announcement of Parts B and C on 30 November 2023. That announcement also confirms that agents may use free text to input information while waiting for dedicated portal categories, and that any information can be material if it affects a consumer's transactional decision, so the lists are a floor, not a ceiling.

One practical note: when we checked in October 2026, the original guidance PDFs for Parts B and C no longer loaded at their old addresses, and the National Trading Standards material information page now points to the government's reform roadmap instead. The detailed field-by-field Part B and C lists are therefore best taken from your property portal's current data specification and your redress scheme, rather than from a cached copy.

Part A is the simplest to build because the fields are fixed and the answers are known on the day of instruction. The National Trading Standards summary sets out three groups.

The same document says that from the end of May 2022 this information was to be required as standard on all property listings, that portals flag an empty field on the listing with a link to consumer advice, and that National Trading Standards wants all material information to be mandatory before a listing goes live once all three phases are complete.

Build the page so these items sit in the first screen on mobile, next to the price, not under "Further details". A buyer who sees a leasehold flat with a 78-year lease needs that before deciding to book a viewing. For a template, treat the Part A fields as required inputs in your CMS or feed: if a negotiator cannot publish without completing them, the empty-field problem disappears at source.

Part B is information that should be covered for every property, according to the 30 November 2023 announcement: the type of property, the building materials, the number of rooms, and information about utilities and parking. Part C is information that only needs to be established if the property is affected, with flood risk and restrictive covenants given as examples. The announcement also tells buyers and renters to expect new data fields on portals, with any left empty flagged and linked to an explanation.

For the website, that suggests a two-layer data model:

1. Core fields, always present: property type, construction, number and type of rooms, heating, water and electricity supply, sewerage, broadband, parking. Use short, fixed choices where possible, so a buyer can compare listings.
2. Conditional fields, shown when true: flood risk, restrictive covenants, rights and easements, listed status or conservation area, building safety matters, and anything else that applies to this address.
3. A free-text "known to the seller" box, reviewed by a manager, for the unusual item that has no field.

The 2026 government consultation on listings shows why the conditional layer is hard. Respondents singled out rights and easements (cited by 19 per cent of all responses) and building safety defects (17 per cent) as the categories hardest to show clearly to consumers, according to the government's reform roadmap. Where the information needs a professional to interpret, say so on the page, state what you know and what you have asked the seller's conveyancer to confirm, and avoid giving a reassuring interpretation you are not qualified to give.

The legal point about timing is in section 227 itself: information given in a way that is untimely or that the consumer is unlikely to see counts as omitted. Order therefore matters. This sequence works for most sales pages:

1. Headline: address area, property type, bedrooms, price as a number.
2. Key facts strip: tenure, Council Tax band, EPC rating, and for leasehold the lease length, ground rent and service charge.
3. Photo gallery with the floorplan as one of the first tabs, not the last.
4. Description written to match the facts above, not to soften them.
5. Utilities and construction block (Part B fields).
6. Risks and restrictions block (Part C fields that apply, each with a one-line plain-English explanation).
7. Documents: EPC, floorplan PDF, any survey or searches the seller has already commissioned.
8. Viewing, offers and contact, including the name of the branch and the redress scheme you belong to.

Repeat the key facts in the page's structured summary so they appear in search snippets and in any printed brochure. If your content team writes "chain-free" or "no onward chain", check that it is consistent with what the vendor has told you, because chain status is also one of the items the government expects in a future sales pack.

Photographs are covered by the same rules: section 226 reaches true information presented in a misleading way and an overall presentation likely to deceive. In practice that means a gallery should help a buyer judge the property as it is.

• Show what is being sold. If the garden is shared, communal or not included, say so in the caption of the garden photo. If a view belongs to a neighbouring development, do not caption it as "views over the park".
• Keep room photographs in a logical order, matching the floorplan sequence, and include the less flattering rooms. A gallery of eight living-room angles and no bathroom invites questions.
• Do not hide features that affect value. Photograph the loft hatch, the boiler and the road outside if they are relevant to the buyer's decision.
• Label edited images. Virtual staging, sky replacement or furniture removal should carry a visible note.
• Add accessible alt text, such as "Kitchen with fitted units, view towards garden door", so the gallery works for screen-reader users and describes the photo accurately.

The floorplan deserves equal prominence. The government's list of anticipated sales-pack items in the roadmap includes a floor plan, alongside tenure, Council Tax band, EPC rating, property type, chain status and accessibility information. Even before any legal requirement, a floorplan with approximate dimensions and a north point is among the cheapest ways to reduce viewings that go nowhere. State that measurements are approximate and give the date or source of the survey.

The energy certificate is not decoration. On GOV.UK's page for Energy Performance Certificates, the rule is that you must order an EPC for potential buyers and tenants before you market the property. A certificate gives a rating from A (best) to G (worst) and is valid for 10 years, and the seller, landlord or letting agent must show it to a buyer or renter. The same page lists the exemptions, such as temporary buildings used for less than two years and stand-alone buildings under 50 square metres.

For the listing, that means:

• show the EPC rating in the key facts strip, with a link to the full certificate;
• check that the certificate is in date and belongs to this address, using the find an energy certificate service referred to on the same page;
• do not publish an "EPC pending" placeholder as a permanent state, because the order should happen before marketing starts.

Council Tax is simpler: GOV.UK's Council Tax band lookup lets you find the band for a home in England or Wales by address or postcode, and points Scottish properties to the Scottish Assessors. Record the band from the official list, not from a neighbour's listing. If the vendor believes the band is wrong, the same service handles challenges, but a challenge is not a reason to leave the field blank. Publish the band currently on the list and, if relevant, add a note that the seller is aware of a challenge.

Most agencies receive listings from a CRM and push them to the website and the portals. The compliance weakness is usually in the middle: fields that exist in the CRM never reach the page, or arrive as one long description string. Review the data path with your developer.

Required-field logic

Block publication until the Part A fields are complete, and until Part B fields are complete or explicitly marked "to be confirmed with an owner and a date". Do this in the CRM if you can, so the website and portal feeds receive the same data.

One source of truth

The website, the portal listing and the printed brochure should read from the same record. If a negotiator edits a service charge on the portal but not in the CRM, you will publish two different figures.

Page performance and accessibility

Listing pages are image-heavy. Serve responsive images, set explicit width and height to avoid layout shift, and keep the key facts as real text, not as part of an image. Test the page on a mid-range phone, because that is where most first views happen. If the template needs rework, our responsive web design and website accessibility teams can help.

Version history

Keep an audit trail of what a listing said on a given date, including price reductions and changes to tenure information. If a buyer or trading standards later asks what was disclosed, a time-stamped record is the best protection.

The government's home buying and selling reform roadmap, last updated on 19 June 2026, sets the direction. Its timeline for "now (in 2026)" includes publishing non-statutory guidance to improve the quality of information in property listings and identifying sales-pack information that can be provided voluntarily, upfront. Further out, "when parliamentary time allows", it intends legislation to require sales packs, including searches and a property condition report, to be prepared before a property is listed.

The anticipated contents in the roadmap's Annex B include tenure type, Council Tax band, EPC rating, property type, title information, seller ID verification, leasehold and freehold estate terms, building safety information, standard search results, a property questionnaire, a condition assessment, accessibility information, chain status and a floor plan. Details are described as subject to change before any legislation.

For your website, the lesson is architectural rather than legal: design the listing page as a container for documents and structured facts, not as a free-text brochure. A template that can attach a searches pack, a condition report and a floorplan next year will cost less than a rebuild. Until the government publishes its listings guidance, keep following the Part A, B and C framework, and revisit this page when it does.

Take ten live listings, five sales and five lettings if you do both, and score each against this checklist.

• Price shown as a figure, not "POA" or "offers over" without a number.
• Tenure shown; for leasehold: lease length, ground rent and review period, service charge.
• Council Tax band (or property rates in Northern Ireland) shown.
• EPC rating shown and the certificate linked.
• Property type, construction, rooms, heating, water, electricity, sewerage, broadband and parking shown.
• Any flood risk, covenants, easements, listed status or building safety matter disclosed where it applies.
• Floorplan present, labelled and approximate.
• Photographs in sensible order with honest captions; edited images labelled.
• No empty fields on the portal version of the same listing.
• A named person responsible for correcting stale data.

Record the failures by field and by negotiator. If most gaps are leasehold figures, fix the instruction form. If most are photographs, fix the photographer's brief. Ask us for a scoped review via the quote form, or compare options on the pricing page, where simple websites start from EUR 300 excl. VAT.

• National Trading Standards - Material information, Part A (July 2022)
• National Trading Standards - Full material information guidance published (30 November 2023)
• GOV.UK - Home buying and selling reform roadmap
• Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, section 227 (misleading omissions)
• Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, section 226 (misleading actions)
• GOV.UK - Energy Performance Certificates (selling a home)
• GOV.UK - Check your Council Tax band