One of the companies at the heart of the campaign to provide more upfront information to prospective buyers has struck a key deal with conveyancers.
Gazeal, which asks sellers to provide information about the property for sale when it is first listed, is now directly licensed by the Law Society. That means this information can be used in the Solicitor’s Contract Pack.
The upfront information is also made available to the buyer before offer and provided to each party’s conveyancers on acceptance.
Gazeal says providing this information upfront can typically save up to two weeks in preparing a property for exchange; if used in tandem with a reservation agreement, fall-through rates can be cut from 33 per cent to just three per cent, the firm claims.
Gazeal currently has almost half a billion pounds worth of properties listed on its platform and has completed over 1,000 upfront legal packs for movers.
"With the stamp duty holiday deadline extended until the end of June at the current rate and until the end of September up to £250,000, a buzz around the property market is set to remain" says the PropTech firm’s co-founder, Bryan Mansell.
"However, the stamp duty holiday extension means the conveyancing system will remain under pressure. Therefore, agents need to do everything they can to progress sales securely. The two weeks that can be saved by asking sellers to provide information about their property upfront could be the difference between a buyer of a property priced over £250,000 making the new stamp duty holiday deadline at the end of June" he adds.
Attempts to improve the speed and transparency of the house buying process is continuing on several fronts.
Yesterday we reported that the Home Buying and Selling Group - an informal industry body looking at reducing fall throughs and simplifying house purchase - had made what it regards as a breakthrough on a definitive list of information required from every property that goes on sale.
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Interesting. Completing data upfront is indeed a good thing we encourage sellers to do it as soon as the property goes to market and make editable protocol forms available to download. It is however fascinating to see that a new form - the BASPI - is elsewhere being championed to revolutionise the industry when ostensibly it's the same questions and same data being collected. I worry that we will have an argument over what to complete rather than getting on and doing it. The key is engagement and buy in from agents and those that look for differentiators will be rewarded with more vendors quicker exchanges and fewer fall through's.
You make a good point Mike, however, surely the information on the TA forms is critical and if they can be completed without duplication then this works for everyone.
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