Prospect Estate Agency

Prospect Estate Agency is one of the Berkshire firms in the CMA's estate-agent cartel. Its work is ordinary high-street agency. It values a house, lists it, conducts viewings, and charges the seller a commission if the sale completes. That commission is the price of the service.

The CMA found the local agents coordinated those commissions instead of each quoting a fee of its own. Prospect is one of the named firms, with Michael Hardy, Richard Worth, and Romans. Small agencies sometimes tell themselves the law is for national chains. The decision applies the same rule to a county market: rivals do not agree a fee floor.

Library status is fined. This profile assigns Prospect no individual penalty and does not say whether Prospect or anyone else confessed. A seller who instructed Prospect during the cartel period was quoted inside an arrangement the CMA later condemned.

The relevant price is the commission percentage on a Berkshire sale instruction.

Prospect's co-respondents in this story are the other local agents the CMA named, not a national portal or a lender.

Fee coordination is the whole infringement. There is no merger and no platform rule in this file.

Sellers are the customers. They pay the commission out of the sale proceeds, often without a line-by-line sense of what other agents would have charged.

Buyers of the houses are not the ones paying the agency fee, so the overcharge sits with the household that is moving.