Written by Sarah Debney, Orbital Witness
How is it October already? Before we know it the Christmas rush will be upon us. Yet for most conveyancers, that doesn’t usually mean glad tidings and a season of goodwill. It’s more a question of gritted teeth – a hard slog with the prospect of a lie down and a stiff drink to look forward to when it’s eventually over.
Although conveyancing seems to be less seasonal than when I first entered the profession, traditionally the period between Christmas and New Year (and into early January) still tends to be an opportunity to catch up on all the things that inevitably get de-prioritised in an effort to get people moved in and enjoying Christmas in their new home. New instructions tend to slow too, providing a brief but welcome lull after the usually hectic final quarter of the year.
An improved market
However, the housing market continues to show signs of recovery: Nationwide reports that UK house prices are rising at their fastest annual rate in nearly two years, driven by falling borrowing costs and expectations of further interest rate cuts by the Bank of England. House prices are increasing too: up 3.2% in September compared to the same month last year, marking the strongest growth since November 2022. The average house price now sits just 2% below the record highs seen in the summer of 2022.
Yet unlike other years, there’s an additional consideration that will no doubt add to the workload of the conveyancer in the coming months: the change to SDLT rates coming into effect on 1st April 2025.
Preparing for April 2025
There’s a lot at stake for clients: for a first-time buyer, if they purchase a property on 31st March for £425,000, they pay no SDLT. Yet purchase the same property on 1 April, when the temporary rates end and you’ll pay SDLT of £6,250. The change is expected to mean around a third of first-time buyers in England will pay more stamp duty from April next year.
With the average house price across the UK standing at £266,094, the reduction of the price at which SDLT becomes payable from the current £250,000 to the previous £125,000 means the majority of clients are likely to be affected – particularly those buying in southern England and the south east.
Resourcing your firm for the rush
Barring any changes in this month’s Autumn Budget, conveyancing firms now need to think about how they’ll resource themselves for the change. Some of those considerations may include:
- how to keep existing conveyancers in place
- whether new conveyancers can be recruited (and brought up to speed) in time
- managing absence requests over that period
- managing client and introducer expectations
- when to start quoting the higher SDLT rates for new and existing clients
- dynamic pricing
- keeping volumes at manageable levels without jeopardising introducer relationships
- managing the risk that can come with peaks in volume (and the pressure of a hard deadline)
Given how difficult and time consuming it can be to recruit and retain experienced conveyancers – particularly in the kind of busy and highly competitive market the end of the last stamp duty ‘holiday’ caused – firms may need to look at other ways to meet demand whilst maintaining quality.
Too late to recruit?
Some firms will likely look at taking on temporary staff and/or upskilling existing staff to deal with a wider range of tasks to free up busy conveyancers from the more routine tasks. With average transaction times creeping up, keeping cases moving swiftly in the last quarter of this year in order to prevent backlogs in the critical first quarter next year will be vital. Clients and introducers will be alive to any delays – especially where the knock on effect is that they miss the 31st March deadline.
How about technology?
One area which can be hard to successfully upskill for in the time available is title checking. While some firms may look at outsourcing temporarily (although cost and capacity is likely to be an issue here), others will take the opportunity to look more strategically at alternative ways of working and make use of automated solutions which offer unlimited processing capacity and ensure consistency of approach at a fixed cost.
And embracing technology now to boost efficiency and service quality has proved for some conveyancing firms the right solution. One of the products conveyancers are choosing to adopt in order to increase caseload capacity is Orbital Residential: enabling conveyancers to review documents quickly, effortlessly and accurately – reducing the time taken on title checking per transaction by up to 60 minutes.
Technology adoption is saving conveyancers time responding to enquiries and reporting to clients and helping to flush out abortive transactions earlier before time is wasted, allowing experienced conveyancers to handle more cases. It also helps junior conveyancers upskill quickly and safely to take on more complex cases.
Whatever the approach taken by firms, one thing is clear. The first few months of 2025 are going to be no holiday for conveyancers: it’s how firms look to address those challenges now that will stand them in good stead for the hard work ahead that 2025 promises to deliver.
This article was submitted to be published by Orbital Witness 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.
