Calls to modernise the UK’s ‘siloed and fragmented’ property-buying process highlight how the industry has been left behind.
Last month, giving evidence to the Commons Select Committee, the chair of the Open Property Data Association had some forceful points to make. Run by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the Committee was seeking input as to whether the consumer experience of home buying and selling could be improved. It also sought to investigate whether any such improvement should take the form of voluntary initiatives, or if legislation would be necessary.
Maria Harris, OPDA Chair, said the entire process of home buying and selling should be digitised. Evidence she supplied to the Committee demonstrated a reduction in timescale from acceptance of offer on a property through mortgage application to exchange of contracts to just 15 days, when using the OPDA’s data standard for digital property packs. Further, the evidence showed ‘…zero fall throughs, zero fraud, a much better customer experience and more certainty around the moving date.’
Harris further went on to say that this solution removed ‘hundreds of hours’ from the process, citing that the ‘waste of time is not there’.
CEO of the Home Buying and Selling Group Kate Faulkner also gave evidence on the complexity of the process, citing a list of 300 things the buyer, lender or removal company may need to know before agreeing to a house purchase offer. ‘We have fantastic runners in each sector, but we’re not good at passing that baton to each other’, she said. Harris added that it was ‘…not helpful that all these batons are based on paper or forms, and that they are all slightly different and need slightly different things.’
With less than one percent of property information currently available digitally, Harris said that only with a collective move from the whole market could full digitisation be achieved within three years.
On the face of it, it’s easy to think that this is simply interested parties putting forward a solution which benefits them. It seems unlikely that the OPDA would argue against a system which provided more digital data integration, after all. It’s also tempting to believe that such solutions are focused only on consumers with no thought to the firms which would have to implement them.
However, consider the amount of time which is routinely taken up by just such issues as were highlighted here. The manual completion of various different forms, the laborious process of transcribing information from one format to another constantly. Scanning of manually completed and signed forms, only for originals with wet signatures to require posting and storage.
Whereas it’s understandable that a trust, a will or a power of attorney would need a physical piece of paper, with the majority of UK properties now digitally registered, it seems a folly that so much of the conveyancing process still relies on paper. Mortgage Lenders accept applications and issue offers by email, yet we require a manually signed mortgage deed to complete the transaction. HMLR stores title records and plans digitally, yet we are required to get manually completed forms from clients in relation to information about leaseholds and other details. Dozens of different systems, operated across various disciplines including mortgage broking, conveyancing, and estate agency, all supposedly working towards the same goal along vastly different roads, often in parallel.
It feels like change is inevitable – indeed, it is arguable that the property sector is one of last analogue holdouts in the UK of the 21st Century. It’s time that the profession adapted to the changing world around it, and embraced the power of digital solutions to revolutionise the industry for the better.
This article was submitted to be published by Compass as part of their advertising agreement with Today’s Conveyancer. The views expressed in this article are those of the submitter and not those of Today’s Conveyancer.
5 responses
I simply don’t recognise the paper form based system described by Maria Harris of the Open Property Data Association (OPDA) and Kate Faulkner of the Home Buying and Selling Council (HBSC). It no longer exists. Information required for moving house is invariably now gathered using digital forms completed on screen and delivered by email. What is the problem?
As for requiring a signature to a mortgage deed to complete the process – what could be simpler? This is the most practical and cost effective way to evidence legal obligations and is readily understood by consumers. Why complicate it? Why introduce additional cost? Why mandate procedures for digital signing that consumers neither readily understand nor trust?
The ODPA and HBSC are leading the discussions on improving home buying and selling but their central idea – that digitisation of the process will speed up conveyancing and reduce fall throughs – is misconceived. People buy and sell property for a variety of reasons. Inevitably people’s circumstances change, some choose to manipulate the process for their own ends: this is often what delays property deals and leads to fall throughs. No amount of digitisation will remove these human factors.
The OPDA/HBSC crusade for digitalisation is endlessly promoted but their arguments for it are becoming tired and wearisome.
Sick to death of Law Tech hyperbole.
The conveyancing process currently takes longer than it did in the 90’s, when it was almost entirely paper based.
Lack of digitisation isn’t the problem.
Let’s look at the kind of firms responsible for the 22 week national average – then we can have a proper debate about this.
I could have written this!
I don’t understand why those who advocate digitisation appear unwilling to analyse the data estate agents hold that will identify the slow businesses and allow an analysis of their business model.
The reasons advanced for the 22 weeks timeframe aren’t evidence based and seem more to do with disguising the truth about factory firms and the payment of referral fees. The myth is that the SLAs protect the consumer. Nonsense.
Why were these people at Parliament again “Last month”? The problems are at estate agent level – had my own councillor knocking on my door last night (no doubt for a Tory vote) saying the state agent wouldn’t accept his offer of £30k over asking price because he was buying with a mortgage. The seller wanted a ‘cash’ buyer as it would be quicker. Digitisation is not the answer – it’s a red herring. Yes it would help a lot of people if things were done electronically yet they are strangely quiet as to the issue of fraud, cyber attacks and deep fake AI being able to intercept. If the British Military, NHS, et al can be attacked – what is being done to keep the “digital” property safe and secure?
Deal with the underlying abuse going on in the system such as leasehold and service charges then we may get somewhere. The “process” is beholden to third parties who have no repercussions for providing misleading or false information and now HBSC have got their tentacles everywhere getting the Law Society to do their dirty work for them.
This should not be led by people who have no idea what goes into the process – Kate and Maria are not lawyers. The person who claims to represent conveyancers appears to be registered in Scotland and certainly does not (according to Today’s Conveyancer’s own poll) represent the majority of conveyancers. Time for these people to be discredited.
Lawyers would you please stand up, regardless of qualification. We need to maintain our integrity. Also agree with Chris – the factory outfits need to take some responsibility for their own behaviour for being too greedy to be able to service clients properly.
I’d like to see the HSBC deal with people who cannot sell their homes due to building safety issues or re-mortgage. Shared Ownership is another kettle of fish being promoted as the ‘affordable’ route to home ownership yet it is nothing of the sort – perhaps the govt ought to be sued for misrepresentation? £000s spent on legal fees and yet no one has stood up to the govt to say this is wrong to exclude millions of people who have bought in good faith from being able to sell their properties.
It is worrying that, due to building safety issues highlighted by the Conservatives’ ill-thought-out Building Safety Act, people are trapped in flats identified as at High Risk. It’s all very well banning some of these materials on new builds yet allowing companies such as Barratt Homes to leave such products on existing buildings. Everyone now knows the danger. And the flat owners left in these buildings have seen their properties down-valued as no one will give a mortgage for a property in a danger zone.
Yet Barratt Homes is building properties all over the country on which mortgages are available. I suggest that before buying one of their properties, people look at some of the reports that this company has responsibilities for. One serious example is the Royal Artillery Quays. One of the reports produced by investigators states, “The High Risk identified for all blocks is primarily due to poor workmanship in the installation of the External Wall Insulation.”
Would people knowingly purchase a property from a company responsible for building properties left in such a dangerous condition? Particularly in view of the fact that Barratt Homes prefers to leave residents in unsafe properties rather than set a precedent of carrying out remediation.
The Earl of Lytton’s highly respected Building Remediation Scheme is something that the new government, along with organisations that are stakeholders within the property sector, should take seriously. Surely, seven years after Grenfell, residents should be living in safety, with those responsible for the creation of High-Risk buildings should be held accountable. After such damning reports, I would think, too, that those involved with Building Control would be looking into the quality of workmanship in new build properties.
All of the talk about Data is largely self-indulgence by many who have monetised it and want people to buy into it. So much data is readily available, it is just not being handled correctly. That’s where the process falls down. Much is being done by some very capable people who genuinely want to improve the process. It will come; however, in the meantime, there should be great clamour about the “siloed and fragmented” property-building process. That’s where the Government should be stepping in.