BASPI excitement felt in the property sector

On 15^th March, the Home Buying and Selling Group published its Buying and Selling Property Information (BASPI) dataset, which is designed to be the ‘one source of truth’ when it comes to upfront information about  a property.

Following the announcement of BASPI, Kate Faulkner, Chair of the Home Buying and Selling Group, said:

“This is a major step forward in trying to make life better for those moving home. Far too often sales fall through after an offer is accepted, due to a lack of information provided to the buyer and part of the reason for moving home taking 20 weeks is that we don’t collate enough information upfront. The BASPI together with the Pledge recommending sellers to instruct legal companies on day one of marketing, can go a long way to improving the home moving process for consumers and also for the daily lives of those in the industry.”

I asked industry leaders for their initial thought.

Tim Main, Director and Founder of Property Information Products, commented:

“I think the Home Buying and Selling Group have done a fantastic job of paving the way for the property market to adopt collecting datasets as opposed to seeing the information purely on paper forms. The fact that the Law Society has launched a similar initiative with the same emphasis on data demonstrates that this is certainly the way forward, and provides the initial stepping stones to making the home buying and selling process more efficient. There are also some nice ties with the property log books, which provides additional data for home buyers and sellers.”

Phil Melia, Founder and CEO of BreezeMove, said:

“I think this dataset will be a great idea. It enables us to speed up the process, as estate agents will be able to get a lot of the upfront information from the sellers when they place their property on the market. This data can then be passed seamlessly to the conveyancers who can use it to populate the necessary forms, reducing some of the pressures they would have collecting this data.”

“Another benefit of BASPI would provide a better customer journey, as sometimes they can feel like they’re left out of the loop, whilst the conveyancing and moving process works behind the scenes. Combining BASPI and the introduction of electronic ID verification can help the efficiency of the process and prevent buyers feeling like they’re continually providing the same information.”

Eoghan Johnston, Chief Finance Officer at iamproperty, added:

“Here at iamproperty, we are looking forward to implementing BASPI as part of our new movebutler product, designed to speed up and improve the home moving experience for all parties. We are confident that BASPI will help to improve the customer journey and make the process more efficient.  By providing more information upfront, and buyers and sellers sharing their knowledge on the property, we can reduce transaction times materially and will be set up to iron out many enquiries in the early stages of the process, which may have previously caused delays later.

“I think there will be some obstacles on the road, as people may be reticent to the change initially, but if we can break down the barriers and show the benefits of change, then we can demonstrate the advantages of us all working together to help buyers and sellers get a better moving experience.”

Following the announcement of BASPI, The Law Society announced their pilot of a TA6 Part 1 form which provides upfront information at a much earlier stage of the process.

The adoption of these new ways of collecting data are in their early stages, however, it’s good to see that steps are being made to help improve the efficiency of the housing transaction pipeline, which has the potential to reduce the amount of administration during the process. If these schemes become embedded into the property transaction pipeline, it can help to alleviate the pressure conveyancers feel as most of the data they need will have already been collected and confirmed. This would help to combat some of the early enquiries and help to streamline the process.