Compliance
Built around the DMCCA 2024
and the New Homes Quality Code V2.
New-home sales carry real legal requirements around what a buyer must be told, and when. BuildSales.Homes is structured around those requirements from the data model up — this page sets out what the law and the Code require, and how the platform supports meeting them.
What the law requires
Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024
In force since 6 April 2025, the DMCCA 2024 treats a plot or house-type page that shows a price as an "invitation to purchase" (s.230). Leaving required material information out of that listing — tenure, total price basis, known charges, and more — is a criminal offence under s.237(6), and the CMA can fine a business directly, without going to court.
New Homes Quality Code, Version 2 (March 2026)
The Code is binding on registered developers. Section 1.2 sets out the minimum information for describing a new home: size on a stated measurement basis (RICS GIA), tenure including lease length, specification (including what is excluded), indicative energy rating, price, warranty, service charges, and expected council tax band, among others. Part 2 sets out what a Reservation Agreement must contain, including the 14-day cooling-off period.
What this means in practice
Neither the Act nor the Code make a piece of software "compliant" by itself — they set out what a developer must tell a buyer, and when. BuildSales.Homes is built so that information has somewhere to live and can’t quietly go missing, rather than leaving it to a spreadsheet column that may or may not get filled in.
How BuildSales.Homes supports it
Material information
Tenure (freehold, leasehold or commonhold, plus lease term), ground rent and its review basis, service and estate charges, council tax band and status, price basis, floor area on a stated basis (GIA, RICS default), specification inclusions and exclusions, warranty provider, and incentives with their conditions and expiry all have dedicated, typed fields in the platform — not a single free-text box a developer can leave blank.
The hard gate
A development cannot be set live, and a Customer Plot Portal cannot be created for a buyer, while required material information is incomplete. A per-development compliance checklist shows exactly what is missing, so the gap is visible before it becomes a live listing.
Accommodation Schedule
A versioned XLSX Accommodation Schedule template carries every field needed to set a site up correctly (imports accept XLSX or CSV). Bulk import runs a validation-first dry run — row-level errors are surfaced before anything is written to a live development.
Dual EPC handling
A design-stage predicted energy rating is shown with an explicit "Predicted energy rating (design stage)" label. Once the on-construction EPC is lodged, it — together with its register reference number — automatically supersedes the predicted rating on every live surface a buyer or sales team sees.
Price transparency
Every plot price change is recorded automatically, building a dated, auditable history rather than a number that can be silently edited.
Reservation snapshot
The figures a buyer reserved on — price, specification, and the other material information shown at the time — are frozen onto their Customer Plot Portal record at the point of reservation. That freeze is enforced at the database level, not just in the interface.
Privacy and consent
The public site, demo and buyer portals run a consent-gated analytics setup with equal-prominence accept/reject controls and nothing pre-ticked, a plain-language privacy policy, and clearly labelled demonstration content. See the Privacy Policy for the full detail.
Scope, honestly stated
BuildSales.Homes is a software platform, not a law firm. Developers remain responsible for their own compliance with the DMCCA 2024, the New Homes Quality Code, and any other law that applies to their sales process. What we have built is structural — the fields, the checklist and the publish gate exist so the information a developer needs to give a buyer is there to give, not a badge that claims compliance on their behalf.
Got a compliance question about your development?
Tell us about your scheme and we will walk through exactly how the material-information fields, the publish gate and the Accommodation Schedule apply to it.
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