Somerset Estate Agents

Somerset Estate Agents is a firm in the Burnham-on-Sea estate-agency cartel, not a label for every agent in the county of Somerset. Burnham-on-Sea is a small English coastal town. The list of high-street agents is short. A seller's choice is those offices, and the fee is a percentage of the house price.

The CMA found the local agents agreed a minimum commission of 1.5 percent. That is a price floor: nobody in the arrangement was to quote less, so the seller could not bargain the group down by playing one against another. The decision and the fines came in 2017. The fines totaled about £370,000. One firm received immunity. This profile leaves that firm unnamed.

Library status is fined. West Coast Property is another firm in the same town cartel. The customer is the homeowner who listed a house while the 1.5 percent floor was in place.

The 1.5 percent figure is the minimum commission the agents agreed for residential sales.

Burnham-on-Sea is the local market. A short list of agents makes a fee floor effective.

About £370,000 is the total. The immunity recipient stays unnamed.

A seller in a small town cannot import a quote from a city agency that does not cover the street. The local floor is the market.

On a modest house, 1.5 percent is a concrete sum, and the harm is any lower percentage the agents agreed not to offer.