In Propertymark’s latest report, ‘A Dickensian legal process’ the industry body explores the reasons why the time taken to exchange contracts on a property is taking an increasingly longer time.
Themembership organisation’s Housing Insight Report shows that in March 2016, 78 per cent of transactions progressed from offer acceptance to exchange of contracts within 12 weeks, whereas in March 2024, the figure was just 29 per cent, representing a significant deterioration.
Timothy Douglas, Head of Policy and Campaigns at Propertymark comments:
“It is not new news that the amount of time taken to complete a purchase on a home is becoming increasingly tedious and lengthy. However, it’s important more than ever considering that the time taken to complete is up to six months and longer in some cases, to understand the fundamental issues causing this.
“Our member agents are on the ground witnessing delays and have bought their concerns and thoughts to the fore. Policy makers and the new Government at Westminster need to address these in order to speed up the house buying and selling process to keep the wheels of the housing market turning as it’s a vital cog in boosting the economy.”
Hearing from agents across the UK, the industry body said the reasons for the elongation are multifaceted, interlinked and variable. As one agent summarised:
‘I think it’s a mixture… I think solicitors are under resourced and don’t get paid in line with doing what they do, so they take on too much work and have no sense of urgency. I think lenders are taking too long to send out mortgage offers. Generally, the whole system is much slower to the previous 30 years.’
However, agents identified key challenges and delays, which they believed accounted for the bulk of the problem. Firstly, agents reported that the sales process is outdated (‘Dickensian’) and administratively intensive. Furthermore, the administrative burden has been growing due to successive legislative changes:
‘Far more paperwork is now required due to increased legislation.’
Propertymark says this is problematic as the existing system was not designed to deal with large information flows:
‘The system of property transfer was designed for much smaller amounts of information to be considered. There is now so much information in the system. It arrives on the solicitors’ desk at different stages and takes time to cross reference the client best interest, lenders requirements and best practice as the conveyancer sees it.’
Agents noted that despite the existence of technology, which could be leveraged to streamline the process, the adoption and integration of these technologies was patchy at best:
‘The system is awfully dated with solicitors having different methods-some do digital, some don’t. It needs to be streamlined and digitised.’
Next, agents identified areas where they experienced regular delays in the production of the information required to progress to contract exchange. This included information flows from buyers, sellers, surveyors, and mortgage providers. However, most agents pointed to lengthy delays in the provision of local authority property searches as a key issue.
Agents posited several reasons for solicitor-based delays. Some suggested that solicitors had ‘slowed’ because of challenges in the operating environment, which had made them more risk averse.
More broadly, agents reported that there was a ‘shortage of solicitors’ meaning that firms were ‘under resourced’. In fact, 59 per cent of agents suggested that solicitor resource constraints were the key reason for extended exchange times.
As a direct impact of resource constraints, it was reported that ‘solicitors seem to be taking longer to action activities and respond than before.’
It should be noted however, that the perceived resource shortage extended beyond solicitors. One agent reported a ‘lack of manpower across stakeholders’, and another suggested:
‘Solicitors are most certainly under resourced… [However], the organisations that surround it are under resourced… The surveyors, banks, and local authorities.’
For balance, it should also be recognised that agents can also be responsible for delays, with some members highlighting that ‘agents also need to have their houses in order’. As one member reported, ‘some agents don’t use a PIQ at instruction’ or ‘fail to disclose material information’.
5 responses
Digitising is not the answer to this. There are issues, primarily, in my experience, (which is vast) with getting local searches. I can’t answer for all the other land lawyers, but most of the good ones that I know don’t have any difficulty getting files ready, pronto.
If, by Dickensian, the writer means that most conveyancers are over-worked, underpaid and considered to be the lowest form of solicitor, then you can call me Bob Cratchit.
If it were “a Dickensian legal process” it would be much swifter. I think we need to take a closer look at the TMI mentioned by Stephen Watson of Orbital Watson. He suggests that TMI means “Too Much Information”. There’s a heck of a lot of it about.
A little bit like Japanese Knotwood. The data these days is invasive, creeping in everywhere, and too much of it in places where it is not needed. Beware the avalanche and the masses of “alleged” stakeholders all wishing to get invasive and monetise the newest data solution.
I wonder if there is an elephant in the room here? Does anybody know the growth in consultant numbers over the time period quoted, from March 2016 to now. My guess is there would be a high percentage growth.
This week I have dealt with three separate consultants, all tied to the same Company. In each case they have been a nightmare to deal with, on one file exchange was delayed because she was unavailable for a few days and her assistant could not deal with the case.
I will not go into further specifics here on the issue, but there is a lot I could write, and I believe this out of control growth in consultancy is something which urgently needs to be addressed. Another failing of our much-loved Legal Services Act unfortunately.
This isn’t proper research and the opinions expressed are no more than that, opinion.
The funny thing about this is that in years prior to now the process moved more quickly yet we are told regularly that the reason things move more slowly is a lack of digitisation. We have a system flooded with technology all promising to make things speedier, more certain and efficient.
Let’s accept that technology has its place because it does. What is the issue? The over reliance on technology is the issue. Legislation being more complicated isn’t the issue-the reduction in the number of experienced and qualified conveyancers is. An increase in the amount of paperwork? What precisely?
Slow local searches? That’s not true either.We don’t experience anything like the long timescales for searches being returned as we have previously.
Regularly my firm and many firms like my firm will complete from receipt of the Memorandum of Sale in 8 weeks.
What causes delay? When a factory conveyancer is involved or when technology is employed at the expense of a qualified or experienced conveyancer applying legal thinking and Standard Enquiries are spewed out in huge (often repeated) numbers.
Digitisation isn’t the solution because data isn’t the problem. Force feeding factory firms and others like them who over rely on technology at the expense of legal thinking is the issue. How do I know? Because of our experience of how we perform and how firms like us perform.
Estate Agents have the data on every single conveyancer. That data should be analysed so that the speedier businesses can be identified along with the slow coaches and then the business model utilised can be explored and proper research data produced. An analysis on how long mortgages are granted would help too. We are told digitisation has helped make that process run smoothly, again experience says otherwise.
Instead of cliches and propaganda proper research is required.
Qualified and experienced conveyancers are the solution. Technology and digitisation are not the solution to current issues.
As someone said above; elephant in the room. Yes we know about issues with compliance, fees, wages, leasehold/building safety act and our work involves a lot more risk that needs mitigated. That has been talked about a lot. But what about us as individuals, are we simply not doing a good enough job?
Consultancy and WFH. Despite what people might say, I think that this is part of the problem. I have no doubt that there are some good people out there but I see a lot of linked in posts expressing delight at taking the dog for a walk and taking children to and from school. The whole country has got used to WFH and despite what is said in the media I am not an advocate for it and I believe it is less productive. I am somewhat ‘old school’.
Management. I am lucky, I am employed in a good firm and the Management team are very on the ball. There are a lot of firms where this is not the case. Partners are retiring and are being replaced by increasingly young individuals with no business instincts. If I am a Partner of a firm and I see conveyancing taking 12-20 weeks, I will be bringing my employees up on that and I would be showing concern as to why from a business perspective we are not extracting the billing quicker. Why are we taking 3 weeks to issue contracts? Why are we taking another 4 weeks to raise enquiries once the searches are in? When I was trained (quite a few years ago now) that type of behaviour would not have been accepted.
Time frames. I have seen figures where we are 40% down on work where we were 5 years ago but transactions times are 50-70% longer. This says to me that we are not as productive as we once were. This will be for a myriad of reasons; risk, compliance, training, hoops etc. But at some point we need to ask the question; is it simply just us not being as good as we once were?
Clients and Agents: I don’t think clients and agents are helpful as they once were. This whole country has fallen into a trap (via COVID and WFH) as to a lack of productivity. If I have a client come and instruct me I expect them to be on the ball. If I ask a client to do something it is not for the good of my health it is for a reason. It is taking clients significant amount of time to move on some matters and the agents are no where near as good at communication, customer service and chasing as they once were. At times, it seems all they want to do is agree the sale quickly and move on to the next instruction with no follow up.
There is a massive list of reasons why conveyancing and conveyancers are failing this industry. We have got to get our heads out of the send and stop blaming other people and look at ourselves. Yes others are to blame as well but unless we look at ourselves first and foremost, we can not happier ‘hollier than thou’