Tim Jordan is head of conveyancing at north west law firm SAS Daniels LLP. Here, he discusses ways to speed up the conveyancing process and whether, ultimately, it’s time conveyancers increased their costs to reflect their value.
During the pandemic, the media was awash with property boom stories and figures showing house prices rising at record levels. This surge in demand, coupled with changes to ways of working for everyone involved in the property chain, unsurprisingly pushed average completion times up. In the summer of 2021, Land Registry data revealed that the average property was taking 274 days to sell from the point of being listed on portals to being marked as completed.
Post-Covid and despite a cost of living crisis, certainly in the north west where my firm primarily operates, property transactions remain high and though many of us have now adapted to new working patterns, conveyancing times can still take far longer than the 8-to-12-week average in “normal” times. This is primarily due to increased regulation and searches involving a number of players. These delays in transactions have led to mortgage offers expiring, meaning new mortgages having to be selected and applied for by unhappy buyers at a time when rates are rising.
How can we speed up the process?
When buying and selling a property, the process invariably means involving lots of different parties, from surveyors and lenders, to removal companies and local authorities. A streamlined process relies on all parties being joined up and working to agreed timelines. In most cases, the main reason for delays is the chain of the transaction – if one part of the chain breaks, the whole thing does, and you can only ever go as fast as the slowest link.
When conveyancers were asked what would speed up the post offer process by The Conveyancing Association’s annual lender survey, almost half (48%) thought better communication via lender portals would help.
Although communication improvements have been made in recent years with automated systems and the introduction of portals, there is room for improvement and a need for more transparency between all parties. There is presently very little trust between the various stakeholders, and this can have a detrimental impact on chain speeds. There are moves in the industry to address this, such as the Digital Conveyancing Summit happening in September which aims to bring the industry together to discuss opportunities and challenges.
The Conveyancing Association is shortly to introduce a code for Digital Conveyancing and Marketing and it will be interesting to see if this brings about changes in the industry.
Is it time to abolish chains?
One radical solution would be abolishing chains of transactions altogether. Doing this would require the adoption of a similar system to that operating in Scotland whereby binding contracts are entered into at a much earlier stage and parties are therefore generally committed to a moving date at that point. Without such binding contracts, there is less incentive to remain committed and fixed on an agreed date and more likelihood of the date being moved multiple times.
Of course, the flipside to this would be that people could be forced into temporary short-term accommodation, possibly taking out expensive rental agreements if they are unable to tie in their purchase and to coincide with their sale. Perhaps this could be a reasonable price to pay if it meant quicker transactions and more committed buyers and sellers. This extreme solution would, of course, require a change in the law which would undoubtedly be met with some reluctance.
Conveyancers must know their value
Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, the quality (and therefore the speed) of conveyancing would improve if remuneration was better. Conveyancers need to have the courage to charge a higher fee for a job well done which would mean having to take on less volume to make the transaction and the department profitable. Each case handler would therefore be able to devote more time and expertise to each case. Because average fees per case are generally so low, many firms put their conveyancers under pressure to hit targets and take on more cases than they can handle.
Fees in England and Wales are amongst the lowest in the developed world for conveyancing and unfortunately, that is often reflected in the quality of the service delivered. If a speedier (and better) process is being demanded by buyers and sellers, then the bottom line is that they must be prepared to pay for it.
