Now that the dust is beginning to settle on the recent government claim that home buying and selling is to become quicker and cheaper and will provide more power to leaseholders, I thought I would put my head above the parapet.
The press release says: One of the key reasons the buying and selling process can be long and frustrating is a lack of digitalisation.
It is a reason certainly, but my opinion and it would appear the opinion of many others is that it is not necessarily a key reason. However, other reasons that many do agree upon are manyfold of course, but my view is that the sheer number of additional tasks that a 21st century conveyancer (as opposed to a 20th century conveyancer) has to carry out is definitely a key reason. Their workload has become almost unsustainable. A few examples of those additional tasks are, AML, source of funds, climate issues, complicated SDLT requirements, and the Building Safety Act 2022. Add to that ever-growing list a shortage of experienced conveyancers and a dearth of new young conveyancers entering the profession and some of the current problems will continue to escalate over the coming years.
Some of the other key reasons are that management companies can, and often do, slow things to a grinding halt; there are chronic delays with certain local authorities; there are Estate Service Charge issues; Help to Buy delays; new build and developer problems; lenders not adopting a uniform approach and, dare I say it, the thorny question of referral fees. Whether you agree with referral fees or not, estate agents should not be recommending firms to their buyers and sellers to instruct that they would not themselves instruct. Let’s point the finger inwards also and be honest that some of the bigger firms and some antiquated high street firms do not help matters with their procedures.
Housing and Planning Minister Matthew Pennycook thinks that the Government will be streamlining the cumbersome home buying process so that it is fit for the twenty-first century. He needs to think again, streaming the home buying process is probably a thousand-mile journey and these latest “major new plans” welcome as they may or may not be, probably only represent a few small steps.
If the Housing and Planning Minister really wants to crack this nut, he should spend some time in a room listening to a broad church of currently active and forward-thinking conveyancers, estate agents, and lenders, etc.
4 responses
I have moved from a company which prides itself on how innovative its tech is and digitised everything to a smaller local firm which still uses paper files and in the smaller firm the length of time it takes me to get a file to completion is almost halved in a lot of cases.
Despite the reliance on tech the big firm constantly micromanaged everything meaning so much time was wasted in filling out trackers or reports or reporting to managers about what we had done that day or were going to do. Case load was also massively over what would be considered reasonable meaning there was no time to be proactive as you were constantly fighting fires on every front. In my current smaller, very paper heavy, firm I am allowed to just get on with my job. No tracking spreadsheets or constant check ins with management. I am trusted to do my job and have the time to actually progress my files.
All this to say that digital innovation is great but it can’t make up for firms who don’t trust their staff to do their job and/or drown them in files to the point where they haven’t got time to think.
So, your point regarding the use of tech is irrelevant. The transactions are taking twice as long as your new firm, due to Micro management & Caseload, plus it sounds like your old firm uses it’s tech really badly.
Rob’s article is saying that digital innovation is not a silver bullet, but used correctly digitisation and good tech can make a difference but is not the major issue.
So I am not sure your comment makes any sense.
apologies – it was written pre coffee and you’re quite right I didn’t actually make the point I intended! I was attempting to agree with the article in that throwing tech at the problem isn’t the magic bullet many decision makers seem to feel it is and without addressing other causes for delays, including the points mentioned and also the business practices of a lot of the larger conveyancing firms, then the tech can only do so much. There are many reasons why transactions take so long and unfortunately there isn’t a simple solution which addresses them all. I have worked in a few firms during my career and have anecdotally found that the firms who pride themselves most on their tech are often using it to cover up other shortfalls in their working practices.
I’m in agreement that there are many ways tech can help us in conveyancing and would love to be able to take advantage of more of it!
Sadly, the powers at be, Regulators, Government, Conveyancing Association, Law Society (and others such as DPMSG, HBSG etc) throw their names at these press releases and responses, without every addressing the majority of the real issues and concerns of the front line conveyancers, which have been listed many times so I won’t repeat.
The majority of conveyancers and tech providers actually agree on the use of tech, and it’s place in the process, but a minority throw blame at the legal/prop tech providers.
If our regulators and others addressed the problems, then the process would improve for all, technology used or not.