Does any state organisation regulate Myhome.ie, Daft.ie and the other property sites?

I'm missing the big deal here. No matter what the dimensions are, a house/apartment can feel small.

No matter what a website says, I'm going to want to see it in person. I don't need a regulator to help.

They are our main trading partners.

I looked into this in relation to flooring materials some time ago and I could not find any legal requirement to use square meters as the primary measurement for area. That does not mean it doesn’t exist but I couldn’t find it. (There are corresponding requirements in relation to weight and volume.)

Using the Islamic calendar perhaps? Shouldn't be an issue. It's easy to convert.

Aside from whether or not these property websites are or should be regulated, it always intrigued me how their regular property analysis reports are taken seriously. As private companies, with two obvious goals, sell or let property, how is it their reports can be looked at objectively. Always struck me as odd, a bit like taking RTE viewership figures seriously. IMO Of course.

They don't sell or let property. They host advertisements.

And that gives them unique insights into the markets they support.

Correct re actually selling properties but they facilitate the sale of same and therefore have vested interested and less than objective reports often gleefully referred to by various media outlets. Fair enough if these reports were for internal research etc but when Media and indeed government sources refer to them as almost Gospel, that's were my concerns would lie.

A bit like a Brand financing a report or study on how wonderful their products are.

I don't think it's really comparable to a brand reporting on it's own products. More so if a brand reported on the state of the industry they operated in.

But I do get the spirit of your point. It's definitely not in those websites interested to piss off their customers, estate agents in this case.

I wouldn't hold your breath on enforcing the metric system. Our own government is still fond of putting their square feet in it

I think most reasonable people take everything an estate agent says with a pinch of salt. It's not for daft to regulate estate agents. Nore should daft be regulated in that manner.

If you want to get a second opinion on a property size, without leaving the couch, there is always the BER summary that can be accessed online. Of course it might not be there but that perhaps tells it's own story.

If a business wants to organise itself on the Islamic calendar, I have no issues with it

Yeah I'd agree that it's not up to the websites to police this.

But more generally I think regulations could he put in place to make advertising second hand property more transparent.

Estate agents really do thrive on providing the absolute bare minimum level of information to buyers, many of whom, let's face it, have no idea what they're doing in buying their first property.

Given the huge sums of money involved I think there's an argument for the state to step in and regulate the whole process more, saying buyer beware is just the usual business of the state lazily trusting "the market" to do its job for it.