The latest Today’s Conveyancer podcast sees industry expert Kate Faulkner OBE deliver her verdict on the current state of the property market, the ills of the home moving process, regulation of property agents (ROPA), upfront information and the work being done by the Home Buying and Selling Group to improve the experience for all.
Since starting her career in food Kate has since become a respected commentator and consumer champion in the property industry. She has launched a property portal, worked in relocation, part exchange and new build and now runs a communications agency, helping consumers with their property projects.
Asked for her thoughts on the current state of the market Kate is typically honest.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen. We’re entering an economic recession with the most robust property market I have ever seen. But we have some extraordinarily tricky economic issues from inflation to mortgage rate rises and the cost of living. “
“We’re looking at maybe 5-10% price falls and on the transaction front perhaps around 850,000-900,000 transactions.”
Kate points to the continued shortage of homes as a risk for lettings which she says is going to be harder hit this year than buying and selling, and the impact will be felt more on flats than houses.
“There’s this vast difference between the flat and the house market. I think the house market will carry on. In the past we needed first time buyers to keep the market moving but because we’ve got so many people trading down as well as trading up I’m not expecting to see the fall in first time buyers anticipated this year, to impact so much on the rest of the market.”
Since 2000 the average number of transactions annually has been 1.2m, falling as low as 600,000-650,000 during the 2008/09 recession and as high as 1.6m. It makes life difficult for all involved says Kate.
“When you want to make change and its busy it difficult because everyone’s too busy. When you want to make change and its quiet its difficult because we don’t have the people because our business has just halved.”
Moving on to the work of the Home Buying and Selling Group, at a recent roundtable there was a suggestion the work of the group might have gone as far as it could without legislative intervention into the home moving process. It’s a sentiment Kate agrees with, albeit with some caveats.
“If our business is compared to buying a toaster one more time I’m going to scream. But we broadly face 2 main problems.
“If change is not mandated we are asking people to change all their IT systems, CRM systems and retrain everybody. That’s a big ask.”
“If you have a chain of 3 buyers, it’s no good only 2 out of 3 doing them making all the changes we need. They all have to do it.”
Kate points to the need for a universal approach to property data sharing in order to create greater trust and surety in the information shared by all parts of the process.
“A Property Data Trust framework is an important part of making data accepted by everybody.”
“The future of our business relies on us having data that we can all trust from the day the property is marketed. It’s a huge investment from government and industry and we need mandation.”
The good news, says Kate, is that we’re pushing on an open door. Despite the turnover of housing ministers, Kate saves special praise for the civil servants who continue to work behind the scenes to change the home moving process.
And there are things we can be doing right now that will improve the process.
- Conveyancers and legals must be instructed up front by the Seller at the point of listing and all documents ordered, including searches to reveal any issues
- Buyers must be financially qualified at the point of acceptance, and any outstanding searches must be ordered in the first week of instruction
- Home movers must be ready to move by 1pm
Kate is effusive that there must be an industry movement to educate movers that this is the new way of buying and selling your home, and that we all have a part to play.
“We know what we need to have a fantastic buying and selling process. And we’re on it. We’ve got our to do list, we’re working well with government, we’re working well with the industry, the trade bodies, the regulators, the redress schemes, we’re all pulling in the right direction. That’s huge. And don’t underestimate that.”
“We have phenomenal people in the industry and its those people who are going to deliver a phenomenal home buying and selling process.”
You can listen in to the podcast below, subscribe via your preferred podcast provider, and catch up on all the Today’s Conveyancer podcasts at todaysconveyancer.co.uk/podcast
One Response
‘home movers must be read to move by 1pm’
Errr, no. The call is for keys to be released by 1pm. Moving companies don’t have an issue. We do our end correctly. The issue is conveyancing, and, given what this site is I’m not surprised the wording is different.
To be clear, the call is for funds, done, and keys released by 1pm.
To stop making move day so utterly miserable for hundreds of thousands of people. Afterall, move day is actually what this excitement is building to.
To then have it wrecked because conveyancers can’t get the execution right has always been grossly be unfair.
Moreover it’s wrecking the lives of thousands of moving company employees and causing house staff retention issues.