Surveys from the Open Property Data Association (OPDA) and the Homeowners Alliance suggest moving home is such an unpleasant and expensive experience, it’s bringing the market to a standstill.
A survey of 5,000 home buyers by OPDA found 66% are reluctant to go through another move, with one in five saying they’d been significantly put off. Among the 35-44 age group, that figure rose to 73%.
Around a third of the respondents to OPDA’s survey said the difficult of buying or selling a home had affected their family plans (34%) or career moves (31%), with just over a quarter (28%) claiming the process prevented them from downsizing.
“These findings are a major alarm bell for the housing sector,” OPDA chair Maria Harris warned. “If so many people are reluctant to move again, it’s going to have a significant impact on housing supply, worsening mobility, particularly for those already struggling at the bottom of the housing ladder.”
The tenth annual homeowner survey from the Homeowners Alliance painted a similarly despondent picture amongst the respondents, who included 1,233 homeowners and 554 aspiring homeowners.
High costs remain the biggest barrier to moving home, with 74% of the homeowners questioned citing financial pressures including mortgage rates, deposit requirements and stamp duty payments.
For first-time buyers, lower deposits (42%) and lower mortgage rates (39%) would help them onto the housing ladder, while homeowners aged 55 and over said a lack of appropriate housing was the main issue.
“The message from homeowners is clear: moving home in Britain can feel too expensive, too slow and too stressful,” said HomeOwners Alliance CEO Paula Higgins.
She added: “… there’s no question the system needs to improve. Tackling affordability, addressing stamp duty and fixing the broken buying process will make it easier for everyone to move when the time is right.”
Phil Spencer, TV presenter and founder of property advice website Move iQ, agrees. Commenting on OPDA’s survey, he said: “We all know moving home is a stressful experience. But these findings suggest the process is so bad most people would rather stay put than contemplate moving again.
“Buying a new house should be exciting, not stressful.
“Digitalisation has transformed so many elements of our lives for the better, and the housing market needs to move out of the dark ages. A system build on smart data would make life better and happier for buyers, sellers and property professionals.”
Both the HomeOwners Alliance and OPDA advocate for improvements to the home buying process, including Smart Data.
The government’s Smart Data Strategy, published last month, found that smart data for home buying could create £14.1 billion in net social value and contribute £2.06 billion annually to UK GDP by 2043, making it the single most economically impactful smart data use case across all sectors studied.
3 responses
What a blatant case of getting survey results to fit your narrative. Utter rubbish IMO
1) the market is only marginally down on last year and is better than the pre Covid average
2) if there is a slow down it’s NOTHING to do with a lack of digitisation and everything to do with consumer confidence with wars and rapidly increasing cost of living.
3) There is no single solution to what OPDA etc are banging on about. The real issue is a lack of people entering the profession ie not enough conveyancers which is nothing to solve quickly and certainly not with a smart data strategy.
4) most firms are adopting some fantastic tech with widespread use of digital onboarding , enhanced case management and AI tools – these all create marginal gains but we are aiming against a tide of problems which the above article chooses to ignore
Agreed Richard
This piece warns that stress and high costs are “bringing the housing market to a standstill”. But once again, OPDA has stepped forward to frame the story, without acknowledging the commercial conflicts that shape its commentary. We’ve seen this before with OPDA’s curious claim that conveyancing involves “300 documents”.
OPDA’s narrative subtly shifts blame onto the “process” and, by implication, the professionals who uphold it. It ignores the real market distortions, referral‑fee steering, and lender panel restrictions that prioritise throughput over professionalism.
Conveyancers are not the cause of the slowdown. They are the only actors consistently acting in the public interest, protecting consumers in a market shaped by forces far beyond their control. If we want honest analysis, it must come from independent regulators. Not bodies whose members profit from portraying conveyancing as outdated and obstructive.
The question is no longer whether OPDA’s commentary is biased. It is:
how long will we allow conflicted narratives to undermine the very professionals keeping the system safe?
How will digitisation make mortgages more affordable or stamp duty less??
As has been said many times digitisation is not the silver bullet.
The issues are that there are large conveyancing businesses connected to large estate agency and mortgage broking businesses which operate a business model to suit the investors and shareholders
Neither the SRA nor CLC nor Trading Standards nor CMA are willing to investigate the business models and the arrangements between various parts of the models to see if they are acting in the consumer’s best interests.