The Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that a controversial advert for online estate agent HouseSimple’s is acceptable, with no further action required.

The online estate agent stated on its website that users could, “sell your home for free”, which was challenged as being misleading.

HouseSimple Ltd responded that it marketed every property for free for an initial six-month period.

The company added that its landing page included a facility where users could enter their postcode, which would then present a pop-up box that stated, “our free estate agency service is coming soon”, and that in its FAQs it confirmed which areas were served.

The ASA says that it considered consumers would interpret HouseSimple’s claim to mean that they would not be charged for using its service to sell their property.

However, the ASA concluded that consumers were likely to understand that they would not be able to sell their house for free in areas where the advertiser’s service was not provided at all, and therefore determined that the advert was not misleading.