Last month, conveyancing platform Movera logged a completion time of three days in an auction transaction. CEO Nick Hale explains how the conveyancing platform, along with ONP Solicitors, achieved the record time.
It takes an average 123 days for a property transaction to complete in the UK once an offer has been accepted – that’s an increase of 64% since 2007. Approximately one in three property transactions are also thought to fail, costing buyers millions of pounds per year.
These are the stats highlighted in the government’s Home buying and selling reform consultation, which seeks to deliver “a faster, more reliable home buying and selling system” to aid the housing market as well as the wider economy. This reform should be driven by “informed customers, innovative technology and high-standard professional services”, it suggests.
And this is correct; but there’s no reason why we should be waiting for the outcome of a government consultation. I believe we each have a part to play in improving home-moving across the UK, and at Movera, we recognise that there is plenty we can all be doing now to influence and improve average transaction times. Why wait until regulations are implemented? The faster a transaction progresses, the happier your client will be. Plus, increased efficiency means more capacity to take on further work and increase turnover.
Record speed
At Movera, innovation is part of our DNA, and recently our efforts have come to fruition with a three day transaction from receipt of draft contract to completion – a company record for one of our conveyancing firms, ONP Solicitors.
It was a cash purchase sold by Modern Method of Auction, so it wasn’t necessarily a complicated case. But it demonstrated the capabilities of cross-industry collaboration, with the implementation of a new working partnership with iamsold and Connells Group and provides strong evidence for what a commitment to shared responsibility can achieve.
Our previous fastest completion stood at 11 days. Reaching three days confirms the team is not only performing at pace but systematically driving completion times down.
Collaboration
It all began 18 months ago when I met with Julian Lavender, corporate accounts director of iamsold, and Jean Coughlan, home conveyancing director at Connells Group, to talk about how we could change our processes and improve the transactions worked on by all three companies. Having met many times before, we knew we collectively shared a belief that to speed up transactions we would need to work together as a collective and not only look out for our own piece of the transaction puzzle.
We started by examining with complete honesty what was working for our conveyancers and other key stakeholders, and what wasn’t. This included mapping out buyer and vendor journeys and scrutinizing the touch points – looking at who has what, when.
It took time and it wasn’t easy, but together we defined a series of processes that we could each put in place, including custom-built workflows, all designed to improve transaction processes, birthing the iamsold, Connells and Movera conveyancing team.
Communication
During this process it became apparent that a massive pain point for all parties was lack of communication, specifically between the conveyancers on each side of the transaction.
After much discussion, the solution we came up with was the creation of a dedicated team within each firm that would work together exclusively on shared cases, utilising digital tools and improved communication techniques. We then paired one conveyancer from each team so they would always work together on either side of a shared transaction – true cross-company collaboration. This gave our conveyancers at ONP a reason (as well as far greater opportunity) to build a relationship with their conveyancing counterparts at Medway Law (part of iamsold) and vice versa.
The creation of these teams was a massive turning point. By working together to problem solve and find solutions quickly and efficiently, the two conveyancing teams has delivered a marked – and immediate – improvement in transaction times across the board. Currently our average transaction time is 44 days, far ahead of our 56-day SLA.
Culture
But that’s not all; implementing these teams has also generated noticeable improvements in employee wellbeing and job satisfaction. For both ONP and iamsold, the teams have proven to be incredibly popular, with many employees eager to join the partnership and work collaboratively in this way. As such, we’re now looking at how we can expand this model to the wider business.
External feedback has also been fantastic, with the cross-company collaboration achieving a CSAT of 88% and Net Promoter Score of +84.
There’s not going to be a one size fits all solution to fixing the property transaction process – the partnership we have developed with Connells Group and iamsold is not easily scalable in its current form. But what this collaboration does demonstrate is that we do have it within our power to make a difference. Put the right, innovative people in the room, and the conversation shifts from ‘one day the industry will change’ to ‘today is day one of how we change it’.
Transaction times are within our control, and we can make the home moving process better for our clients today.
About the author
Nick Hale has been group CEO at Movera since April 2022. He was previously European MD and ExCo member at Enjoy Technology, a Palo Alto based retail technology start-up, and led the creation of the Ventures division at BT Group. Nick has successfully led transformative and sustainable, profitable growth in multiple sectors. He has also held senior roles within KPMG and Accenture.
