It is somewhat surprising when we hear on the news that it was exactly two years ago when England and Wales went into the first lockdown. It feels as if it were only yesterday but life before was very different.
Who would have thought that two years later, we would be writing about a continuing house boom. In fact, who would have thought that the market would have reacted in the way it did, and we know that this is in part to the Government stimulus with the SDLT holiday and people looking to change lifestyles with a hybrid approach to working – part from home, part from the office.
What the last two years have shown to us in the conveyancing world is that there is a push for more digitisation but that even with this push, the time it takes to move house is still lengthy. I agree that there should be more up front information and support the initiatives regarding this, but it is important to remember that some people don’t actually want to move quickly. And we all know that a chain can only move as fast as the last link in it and/or the slowest link. People move house for all manner of reasons and let’s be honest, there are those who do not actually want to move, such as one person in a divorcing couple who has to move following a Court Order. And some people just want to move at their own pace, perhaps an elderly couple downsizing, moving from a house with many memories of a lifetime spent in a house, bringing up children and watching those children leave home, leaving a house empty of noise and people but full of items and emotional attachments.
Digitisation is vital for an industry which has creaked under the volume of transactions over the last two years. But is also important to remember that the conveyancer is the person who has to pull all of the strands together and read and understand more and more information which can take longer and longer with the volume of information that is required. Think about a Leasehold information pack, and if you are as old and withered as me, think about what it used to be like with leasehold properties – send the notice to the freeholder with a cheque for £1.05 (being a guinea in old money). No Certificates of Compliance were needed, no Deeds of Covenant were required , just a notice at the end of the transaction. Now think about all of the information contained in a Leasehold Information Pack and what we have to explain to the client. Getting the Leasehold Information Pack and then reading and reporting on it is a time exercise that we never had before……
Every house is different; every house mover is unique – let’s not forget this as we move forward with the digitisation of conveyancing. The personal touch is still important.