The Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) is urging practices to engage with opportunities to improve conveyancing transactions, after it emerged that a significant majority of conveyancers do not feel confident in the process.
The CLC’s third quarterly Confidence Tracker has revealed that 85% of respondents feel unconfident or neutral about the sales process, with a quarter (25%) feeling ‘very unconfident’. The average transaction time for the large majority of conveyancers was reported as being between three and four months, although one in 10 said it was longer.
The number of conveyancers who feel confident in the housing market has also declined, down from 72% in the last quarter to just 65% now. Buyers’ confidence has also suffered, falling from 46% to 38%. However, despite the downturn, market confidence has improved considerably since the start of the year when the survey found that just 56% of conveyancers and 29% of buyers felt confident in the process.
The stamp duty changes in April continue to have a lingering effect on sentiment and may have dampened the mood of the market after a spike in activity, the CLC suggests.
Stephen Ward, head of strategy and external relations at the CLC, commented:
“It has been a somewhat turbulent first half of the year for the property market, but it is encouraging to see that two-thirds of conveyancers are still confident, and we can hope that will increase over the coming months as the market continues to stabilise following the stamp duty changes.
“What is concerning is the number of respondents who are not confident that the conveyancing process is improving, and I urge them to look at the work of the Home Buying and Selling Council and the Digital Property Market Steering Group.
“There is a genuine commitment and drive to reform the property transfer process because we simply must reduce the number of transactions that fall through and improve speed and certainty for buyers and sellers, through improved data sharing, security and communication.
“The entire home buying and selling industry must focus on the needs and expectations of clients first and foremost, so we urge practices to engage with the opportunities available so that the benefits of emerging new digital processes can be fully realised in the consumer interest.”
3 responses
The answer to your last paragraph is in psychology. Not ‘digital transformation’.
It always has been.
Somebody needs to provide a cogent rationale for how ‘digitisation’ will compensate for poor communication and service levels.
Fall-throughs are not caused by process.
The reasons are broadly the same in 2025 as in 2005.
Digitisation and simplification will clearly deliver a smoother process for Conveyancers. Which has to provide client benefit.
Do not however keep dressing up these two things as solely about the client. For in truth it’s about bringing lower costs and increased profits to the conveyancing firms. Which in itself there’s nothing wrong with.
Fall-throughs however are not solely a product of time taken. Not by a long shot.
Anecdotally I would suggest that it was quicker to buy a property in the 1980’s when we had no internet, no email, and rudimentary phone systems than it is now. Why? Bureaucracy, red tape, over-regulation, a profit rather than customer focused banking sector and public authorities like the CMA who seem more interested in towing the line of the large companies in the property buying process. Level the playing field, increase transparency and ban referral fees. Let solicitors charge a decent price for a conveyance so that they are incetivised to innovate and be creative in providing beter customer service. Conveyancng is not a commodity.
Had it occurred to anyone that purported “innovation” in conveyancing has created the increased timeframes?
An obsession with technology and workflows instead of training people to qualification so that they can confidently conduct a conveyancing transaction (no Standard Enquiries and no delay for the technical team review) would improve the process and give people a career.
Constantly trumpeting the end of conveyancers because AI will take over doesn’t make working as a conveyancer any more attractive.
Invest in people, speed up the thinking, make conveyancing a career with progression and legislate for estate agents to be regulated and create funding options that make chains redundant.
A free market that works best for consumers rather than a market wrapped up in referral agreements that creates and rewards inefficiencies.