How tech can lead the way in speeding up the home buying and selling process

I am somewhat disappointed, yet not surprised, when I see the headlines ‘blaming’ various fractions of a property transaction as the cause behind the ever-increasing number of weeks it takes to complete a house purchase.

Now of course, there are many ‘people’ involved and it is easy to blame each other, but as a technologist I have to look to the process and challenge the approach. If we started today with a clean sheet of paper – would we end up with the current process as is? Probably not.

I am reminded of the time I got lost in Dublin on my way to the rugby and stopped to ask for directions, to be told that if I wanted to get there, then I wouldn’t start from here! That was of course a joke, but I think the sentiment of it must hold true with how we continue to approach a housing transaction. To my mind, there is still a mentality of ‘we have always done it that way’ and a real resistance to change.

There have been a number of market disruptors over that period – has the process really changed? 

I have been around the property market coming up to 20 years, and whilst there have been a number of market disruptors over that period – has the process really changed? It certainly isn’t simpler as there is far more regulation than there ever was and it hasn’t got any quicker, so what are we doing wrong? 

One of my observations is that we appear to look forward rather than work backwards and in the main we wait for each stage to complete before starting the next. It’s like having a whole team of developers but only using one of them at a time – let's think about some parallel processing to speed things up and start the bigger, or slower, bits first. There are a number of lessons we could take from a production line such as car manufacture and perhaps we should consider the JIT (Just in time) controls that are employed in these efficient assembly plants.

The current focus on upfront information is important

My points above are why I think the current focus on upfront information is an important theme that needs some serious attention. If we understand at an early stage what ‘car’ we are trying to deliver, then we will know what part manufacturers need to be ready at an early stage.

Where there has been a great deal of change over the years is the amount of technology and widgets we can throw at the problem, but this in itself is not a perfect solution and can lead to additional complexity. 

The increasing sentiment of ‘portal hell’ where similar, if not the same, information is needed to be keyed in to service one of the widgets (parts) needed to create that complete picture. There are numerous, depending on who you are: estate agent portals, listing portals, lender portals, ID/AML services (several times!), quote portals (digital onboarding), conveyancing transactions portals, Land Registry services, HMRC services – and this ignores any services such as utility switching and insurance. 

Now, not all of the above are performed by the same stakeholder in the transaction, but there are times where the effort is duplicated and hence time lost.  All of which leads me on to one of my key messages and a personal focus of mine - integration.

We must make the transition between the widgets seamless for what is - after all - a shared customer

Mostly a new widget will add value to a transaction - and I don’t mean cost, although this is also true of course and is to my mind one of the barriers which I will address later. Value can be obtained in making information available earlier so we can create efficiency, it can reduce risk making compliance easier to achieve, and it can often save time. 

But if this is all achieved through perceived additional cost and duplication of effort then adoption is generally slow and some of the new tech industry drivers fail. This is where, I believe, there needs to be a focus on open APIs – and collaboration between vendors to ‘join up the process’ and make the transition between the widgets seamless for what is, after all, a shared customer. 

Tech providers have to realise that they have to compete on the value of their widget and the service and support they put around it - rather than an artificial barrier ‘protecting’ their offer from the eyes of competitors. Going back to my car manufacturing analogy, all tech providers want their latest offering in new model vehicles, which means making sure their latest widget is always available in time, when it is needed by the manufacturers, and integrates smoothly with the other components in the vehicle – at the right price point, of course.

I am encouraged by the Property Data Trust Framework (PDTF)

I spent the first few years in the property industry helping create the OSCRE (then PISCES) data schemas, but these were really concentrated on how to order property searches. I am encouraged by the effort being placed by a number of widget providers in creating the Property Data Trust Framework (PDTF) which is not only looking at the data needed in the transaction, but how we go about getting it, automating it and sharing it via open APIs. 

I’m definitely all in favour of this approach and I hope many of you reading this article want to join me in the drive for digitalising the transaction and removing those collaboration barriers. Let’s not get our car to the end of the production line and realise that nobody ordered the keys!

*Paul Albone is COO at tmgroup