Who regulates the postal districts and ensures that developers / estate agents don't mislead the public ?

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MrEarl

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Hi,

Who regulates the property developers, estate agents etc. to ensure they don't mislead the public when selling properties, or offering properties for rent ?

I've seen numerous examples of properties advertised with claims that they are in one postal district, when they are actually in a different area.
 
Ballymun has disappeared off the earth since they took down Glasnevin Heights a few years ago.
 
No idea if anyone regulates it. I think the challenge is around the difference between postal districts, administrative boundaries and of course parish boundaries & barony's which are still listed on some/all of the property folio numbers.

Add vanity addresses into the mix, and it gets very interesting indeed. I remember a previous company I worked with had a major issue around using Geo Directory addresses as a number of customers refused to 'accept' their GeoDirectory address, as they did not live in certain suburbs of Dublin. It was one of the biggest source of formal complaints from retail stores & customers.

Just in case anyone is interested, the map details of the routing prefix for eircodes is available here (for any wannabe nerds among you)

Eircode Routing Prefix Map
 
I used to work in Dublin in a large public service facility. There was one guy (wannabee social climber) who owned and sold a house in one long road which straddled two postal districts. He moved to another identical house on the same road merely because it was in a more favourable Dublin Postal Number.
 
vandriver said:
D6w goes up to the M50 from Harold's Cross and includes a lot of the estates to the left of Greenhills Rd.
Click to expand...

The D12 D6W border follows the Poddle for the most part with a few small deviations here and there. All the residential estates to the east of the Greenhills Rd are in D12. The closest D6W addresses are @1.5km away.
 
MrEarl said:
Who regulates the property developers, estate agents etc. to ensure they don't mislead the public when selling properties, or offering properties for rent ?
Click to expand...

False or misleading advertising would fall under the remit of the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI).
 
what do you deem the final authority on what area an address is?

i ask because my own house in a new small infill estate was the subject of some 'debate'! Its between two dublin suburbs, much of a muchness in any event but the one it was marketed as in was slightly more desirable.

we are in the parish for the more desirable address (the boundary runs along the road we are on and we fall on the 'right' side of it), we vote in that area, our eircode and an post website gives that suburb, but most of the locals and indeed the local postman considers it the other suburb.
 
Are we talking about postal codes or suburb \ district name?
Postal code I would have thought is exactly defined by An Post and if they say it's D4 it is D4.

District \ area names are vaguer and in some cases not very well established where X ends and Y begins.
An Post says some streets are in area X but as noted above, the Parish for the area or the school says otherwise for its catchment area.
 
This thread is mainly focused on postal codes, and as Odessey06 says above, An Post are the authorised party for the definition of postal addresses in Ireland, they publish the GeoDirectory. That data feeds into the Eircode system.

Geographic addresses are a more complex matter with no single authoritative source or body. Many larger developments will find themselves covering two townlands, how does the developer decide which to use? Area around the primary exit or the one that'll convince some people to pay more? Parish or townland borders weren't always the best defined, Townlands.ie is building a repository of maps based on OpenStreetMap data with contributors mapping known baronies, civil parishes, townlands, etc.
 
Unlike many European countries, there is no canonical register of geographic addresses in Ireland.

An Post don't really care about this, they just want to deliver your post quickly. Hence in the past they encouraged used of 'postal towns' and now of course eircodes.

Eircodes are unambiguous. If the eircode starts D12, but they're advertising the property as Dublin 6, well then it is false advertising.
 
I always thought your “proper address” was your voting address, as given to you by the government. and your postal address was something to do with postal routes so could change by an post whenever they felt like. Eircodes are great, they just say the house is here.
 
Leo said:
False or misleading advertising would fall under the remit of the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI).
Click to expand...

Thanks Leo.

Have you (or has anyone else here) ever submitted a complaint to the ASAI ?

- just wondering if they are actually worthwhile complaining to, or another BAI type set up, who just "play the game".


Blackrock1 said:
what do you deem the final authority on what area an address is?
....
Click to expand...

Well,

Lets try this one, as an example:

Newly built houses on the Howth Road, Killester (Dublin 5), advertised by a certain estate agent, as as being located in Clontarf (Dublin 3).

The houses can be seen (under construction at the time the image was taken) on the following link to street view, on Google Maps. To the right of the houses, are the Killester shops, to the left of the houses, a nice little sign placed by the Dublin City Council, that says .... wait for it ... "Killester Village".

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.371...4!1sJioC5QBQ8TJn0qFnedUyjA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

For me, that's about as final as anyone could possible ask for ... and blatant misleading advertising by the estate agent in question.

Just in case anyone is wondering, I have no conflict of interest here. The estate agent in question is "local", the principals at the estate agency have worked in the area selling houses for over a decade, if not two decades, and this wouldn't be the first time that they'd "made a mistake", in their (and their client's) favour.
 
MrEarl said:
Lets try this one, as an example:

Newly built houses on the Howth Road, Killester (Dublin 5), advertised by a certain estate agent, as as being located in Clontarf (Dublin 3).
Click to expand...
Probably a bad example. The Eircode is D3.
Geo directory is Howth Road, Dublin 3

Dublin 3 seems to extend quite a bit along the Howth Road!
 
RedOnion said:
Probably a bad example. The Eircode is D3.
Geo directory is Howth Road, Dublin 3

Dublin 3 seems to extend quite a bit along the Howth Road!
Click to expand...

exactly so where there is any ambiguity the developer and estate agent will err on the the most advantageous side for themselves.
 
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