For years, the property industry has circled the same uncomfortable truths. Transactions take too long, too many fall apart, consumers lose money, professionals lose time, and confidence in the process continues to erode.
Around one in three UK property transactions still fail before completion. Collectively, fall-throughs are estimated to cost consumers and the industry an estimated £400* million every year in wasted fees and abortive work. A further £1 billion in estate agent and conveyancer effort is lost annually to inefficiencies and duplicated processes across the transaction chain.
The current debate around upfront information in property law is not about whether the system has problems. The industry has understood that for years. It’s about whether the profession is finally prepared to tackle one of the root causes directly: the fragmented, delayed, and often duplicated way information moves through a transaction.
In short, the conversation has shifted from whether upfront information should exist to whether the systems, workflows, and operational cultures inside firms are capable of supporting a new way of doing things.
The long shadow of failed reform
Every modern discussion about upfront information inevitably begins with Home Information Packs.
Introduced in 2007 and abolished in 2010, HIPs continue to cast a long shadow. For some, they remain a warning about over-engineered policy imposed on a market that was not operationally prepared for it.
Nevertheless, it is notable that, despite HIPs disappearing, the underlying principle never really did. The industry has continued moving, incrementally but unmistakably, towards earlier disclosure and greater transparency.
The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 established the legal framework for the disclosure of material information. More recently, National Trading Standards Estate and Letting Agency Team guidance pushed estate agents towards more detailed upfront disclosure obligations through its staged material information framework. That evolution was not without friction.
The incorporation of material information requirements into the TA6 5th Edition became a significant flashpoint within the profession. Concerns emerged around liability, practical implementation, and the blurring of responsibilities between agents and legal professionals, while some conveyancers felt the changes had moved ahead too quickly without sufficient consensus across the sector. The subsequent withdrawal of NTSELAT guidance following the implementation of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 only added to the uncertainty.
In many ways, the Law Society’s TA6 6th Edition, mandatory for CQS-accredited firms from March 2026, represents something of a recalibration. The more extensive material information requirements introduced in the previous edition were removed and repositioned within a more streamlined post-offer framework, reflecting a desire to stabilise the position while wider proposals continue to develop.
Viewed over time, an overarching pattern becomes visible. The industry has spent nearly two decades repeatedly returning to the idea that transactions work better when critical information is surfaced earlier.
The structural problems upfront information is trying to solve
The reason this debate persists is because the underlying issues remain stubbornly unresolved. Research and industry analysis consistently point to four structural causes behind delays and fall-throughs:
- No meaningful upfront financial commitment from buyers
- Limited property information available at the point of marketing
- No binding contractual commitment before exchange
- A conveyancing system operating under growing capacity pressure, complexity, and duplication.
Upfront information cannot solve every structural weakness in the system, but it is one of the few areas where the industry can make meaningful operational improvements now.
Why the government’s 2025 proposals matter
The government described its Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s (MHCLG) 2025 reform package as “the biggest shake-up to the home buying system in this country’s history”, signalling that upfront information is moving steadily towards a structural expectation.
The proposed reforms include mandatory disclosure of:
- Tenure, council tax band, EPC rating, and property type
- Title information and seller identity verification
- Leasehold terms, service charges, and building safety information
- Searches, planning information, and flood risk data
- Chain status and floor plans.
The government’s modelling suggests the reforms could significantly reduce failed transactions and shorten transaction timescales.
Whether those projections prove accurate remains to be seen. But two consultations launched in 2025 — one on wider home buying and selling reform, and another specifically examining material information disclosure requirements — suggest the debate is moving beyond theory. As the sector awaits an expected reform roadmap, firms must now ask whether their existing systems and workflows are capable of supporting earlier disclosure effectively.
The case and concerns for upfront information
Supporters of upfront information point to a persuasive logic. If buyers receive critical legal and property information early, they can identify issues before investing months of time and significant legal costs. Deal-breakers emerge sooner. Duplication reduces. Conveyancers spend less time repeatedly gathering the same information from multiple parties. That argument becomes particularly compelling as conveyancing costs continue to increase, reaching £2,434 in Q1 2025 (an 11.9% year-on-year rise).
Auction transactions are frequently cited as proof that upfront information can materially accelerate transactions, with 95% completion rates and 56-day timescales illustrating what is possible when information is assembled earlier and contractual certainty arrives faster.
International comparators, including Scotland’s Home Report system and seller-funded disclosure models in parts of Europe, suggest that earlier property information can work at scale, although direct transplantation into England and Wales is rarely straightforward.
There is also a growing recognition that the current process is placing unsustainable pressure on a shrinking conveyancing workforce. Any model that allows lawyers to focus more on legal analysis and less on repetitive administrative data collection has obvious appeal.
Consumer appetite for earlier disclosure also appears clear. Industry research found that 89% of buyers want upfront legal information before committing to a transaction, while 68% of sellers said they felt positive about providing information earlier in the process if the system remained proportionate and manageable.
Proponents also argue that earlier disclosure supports a fairer and more transparent market. With only 37% of people expressing trust in estate agents (Ipsos MORI, November 2024), such reforms are increasingly being viewed as part of rebuilding wider consumer confidence in the transaction process.
Yet the counterarguments are equally convincing.
Critics question whether shifting greater disclosure obligations onto sellers before a buyer is secured creates disproportionate cost exposure. Others raise concerns about verification and liability. If information is shared between agents, conveyancers, lenders, and third parties, who ultimately bears responsibility if that information proves incomplete or inaccurate?
There are also practical concerns about “information inflation”. The more data gathered upfront, the greater the possibility of generating additional queries, complexity, and delay. In other words, poorly implemented upfront information could simply create different bottlenecks rather than removing existing ones. That could put additional pressure on an already stressed workforce.
And there remains a genuine digital readiness challenge inside the profession itself. Not every firm feels operationally prepared for the level of digitisation these reforms may ultimately require.
Ultimately, this debate is not really about whether transparency is desirable. Most participants broadly agree that it is. The real challenge is designing a process that improves certainty without creating unsustainable operational burdens elsewhere in the chain.
The Law Society’s position reveals the real issue
The Law Society’s response to the government’s consultation encapsulates the current tension.
Broadly speaking, the Society supports the direction of reform. But it has also warned against introducing binding pre-sale contractual models until there is a genuinely consistent standard of upfront material information across the market.
That caveat matters enormously because increasing contractual commitment within a system where information remains fragmented, duplicated, inconsistent, or delayed risks introducing new liabilities faster than it removes inefficiencies.
In other words, the infrastructure underpinning upfront information matters just as much as the policy ambition itself.
The future horizon: digital property packs, Project 28, and shared trust infrastructure
If the current reforms proceed, the next phase of the market is likely to look very different from the traditional conveyancing process firms have operated for decades. Increasingly, digital property packs and logbooks sit at the centre of a system built around standardised property information shared across the transaction chain.
In theory, the advantages are obvious. A single trusted source of verified property information reduces duplication, improves consistency, and enables multiple professionals to work from the same dataset rather than repeatedly rebuilding it independently. But achieving that vision raises significant questions around data ownership, liability, verification standards, and how professionals safely rely on shared information across firms with varying levels of digital maturity.
Shared and trusted information flows are also central to initiatives such as Project 28, which are pushing the industry towards far more ambitious transaction timescales. That pressure is only increasing, as the average time from instruction to completion has now risen to 123 days, taking around 60% longer in 2025 than in 2007. Achieving 28-day exchanges requires more than incremental process improvements. It demands an entirely different operational model built around earlier preparation, trusted digital identity verification, interoperable systems, and significantly reduced duplication.
Why intelligent client onboarding may be the missing link
This is where the conversation around upfront information becomes particularly interesting. Most reform discussions focus heavily on what information should be gathered. Much less attention is paid to how that information is gathered in practice. Yet the two are inseparable.
Upfront information is only as effective as the processes responsible for capturing and verifying data at the outset of the transaction. If onboarding remains fragmented or repetitive, those inefficiencies simply flow downstream through the rest of the matter.
One practical example is the continued duplication of AML and identity checks across multiple professional parties, with buyers and sellers often asked to submit the same documents repeatedly through separate workflows. A seller asked to provide identity documents separately to an estate agent, conveyancer, and broker through entirely different processes is not experiencing a market designed around intelligent information flow. They are experiencing a market still organised around institutional silos.
What changes when onboarding becomes intelligent
When firms implement genuinely intelligent client onboarding processes, information becomes more complete earlier in the transaction lifecycle. Searches can often be initiated sooner, title issues surface earlier, and compliance, ID verification, and source of funds checks become embedded within the workflow itself, rather than layered onto transactions later under time pressure.
As clients come to expect the same clarity and responsiveness they encounter in other digital services, better onboarding also acts as a competitive differentiator. That has strategic implications for client retention, referral behaviour, and operational scalability.
Importantly, the evidence base is no longer theoretical. Across the UK market, tens of thousands of matters are now being onboarded digitally each month through modern onboarding platforms, alongside large volumes of integrated ID and AML verification checks. Firms using more intelligent onboarding processes are already seeing measurable differences in transaction readiness and speed of progression compared with traditional paper-led approaches.
That does not mean technology alone solves the wider reform challenge. But it does suggest that the success of upfront information reform may depend on whether firms rethink how information is captured and prepared at the earliest stages of a transaction – the point at which conveyancing work actually begins.
Resources
– MHCLG Home Buying and Selling Reform Consultation October 2025 (gov.uk)
– The Law Society Home Buying and Selling Reforms: Member Survey and Policy Response (lawsociety.org.uk)
– Landmark Information Group ‘An Industry Aligned: Moving Towards Certainty’ (2025)
– iamproperty Research Consumer Appetite for Upfront Information (September 2025)
– Today’s Conveyancer TA6 Sixth Edition Coverage (March 2026)
– Legal Futures Government Unveils Major Home-Buying Reform Plan (October 2025)
– ProConvey UK Property Transaction Transformation: 2025 Progress and 2026 Outlook (January 2026)
– Ochresoft / Landmark Can Upfront Property Information Transform the Conveyancing Process? (March 2026)
– Mortgage Solutions Earlier Conveyancing and Upfront Information (November 2025)
– The Negotiator UK Has One of the Worst Property Fall-Through Rates Globally (April 2025)
– Ipsos MORI Veracity Index Estate Agent Trust Scores (November 2024)
– Minerva – Case Studies and Documentation (minervaportal.com)
– Enact Conveyancing Homebuying and Selling Reform: What’s on the Horizon?
This article was submitted by Minerva as part of an advertising agreement with Today’s Conveyancer. The views expressed in this article are those of the advertiser and not those of Today’s Conveyancer.
