Conveyancers have responded to the government’s modernisation of the home moving process with a degree of scepticism according to a poll run by Today’s Conveyancer.
One in three (34%) said the government’s proposed ‘modernisation’ of the home buying and selling process was a positive move, with the remaining respondents describing it as a ‘negative’ move (42%) or ‘neither positive or negative’ (24%). The overwhelming sentiment was that technology and data sharing were not in and of themselves, a bad idea. Rather there are a litany of other measures requiring government intervention which could have a more immediate impact.
Commenting on the poll one respondent said they felt the proposed collection and sharing of data ‘is a useful exercise as a precursor to using it for anything remotely useful.’ In response another suggested digitisation was a ‘deviation’ from the real issues, and so was simply a distraction and waste of time.
Across the week, responses to this publication and on social media have reflected a mood of frustration amongst the profession. Regulation, anti-money laundering, referral fees, HM Land Registry and leasehold management companies have all been identified as potential quicker, simpler interventions that could be made to improve the home buying process.
‘Hideously complex stamp duty on second homes, a dysfunctional Legal Services Act, a badly drawn Building Safety Act, underfunding of local authorities…’ and more wrote one commentator in this publication.
“The Government could legislate to ban or cap referral fees… reduce the burden of excessive AML… allocate more funding to the Land Reg… legislate to repeal of s121 of the LPA, or the £250+ ground rent dilemma The list goes on and on. Instead we’re supposed to get behind a programme of digitisation that will have minimal impact in practice because a “lack of digitisation” is not and never has been a key issue.”
said another on LinkedIn. The powers that be should be minded to spend time talking to the profession it wants to interfere so much with.
There is plenty to be positive about say many in the profession. There is a recognition digitisation is no Silver Bullet. The regulators and membership bodies broadly said as much in their comments after the announcement. But if we can make a comparison to a plug; which is a universally recognised adapter, without which nothing electronic could work; there are fundamental foundational blocks which need to be right in order for the whole process to be moved forward. If we were all using different sized plugs and sockets, there would be very little effective connectivity as is largely the case now. With those building blocks in place, and a universal system by which we can start to create connectivity through standardised data formatting and sharing, there is an argument to say the speed of progress could well increase.
That’s certainly the view espoused in a recent Today’s Conveyancer Podcast in which it is suggested the ‘digital maturity’ of the property world has reached a point where each individual section has introduced increasing levels of digitisation; from lenders, through to mortgage brokers, estate agents and conveyancers; the next step is to join them together using the formats and protocols agreed through work like the Property Data Trust Framework.
Perhaps the poll also reflects ‘tech-fatigue’; a general malaise around the ‘wonders’ of technology and the impact on conveyancing. For all the investment the length of time it takes to go through the home buying and selling process is longer than it has ever been and the profession is simply fed up of hearing about about all the ways they could or should be doing their job better?
2 responses
The narrative being pushed by Pinnochio and his/her friends shows a huge lack of understanding of the legal process. Is it any wonder when the charge is being led by non-practitioners who continue to promote the benefits of ‘referral fees’ (to which there are none) and that all of sudden conveyancers who are based in another country are able to check and spot mistakes in the legal information?
Before conveyancers are criticised for being dinosaurs let me say that I know of no one who wouldn’t adopt AI and law technology if it actually made the process more efficient.
The process is inefficient for reasons that AI and technology cannot make better.
Put simply it is the shortage of qualified conveyancers and the failure of law firms to recruit and train conveyancers so they are qualified and capable of conducting a property transaction efficiently rather than simply processing it and waiting the Technical Team to review the case. The business model is the problem and arguably an over reliance on technology.
If only the SRA and CLC and indeed LSB cared about the consumer’s experience then maybe the inefficient businesses could be closed if they don’t reform.