PropTech Today - Simpler, faster, cheaper

As is generally the case, we didn’t start out with solutions, we started with questions…. two, actually.

The first was, ‘Why does it take so long to sell a house?’

And the second, ‘Why do so many deals fall through?’

It takes around 5 months to sell a home in the UK – a little longer if it’s a flat.

Why is that?

Well, it’s a complicated business and there can be many parties involved. It’s not just the buyer and the seller, there can be local authorities, HM Land Registry, Water companies, surveyors, mortgage lenders, management companies you name it - not to mention a chain!

Then there’s all the other necessary documents required: title deeds, planning consent, building control approvals, boiler certificates, leases, deeds of variation….the list goes on.

Material delays

We know that there were 1.26 million homes sold in the UK in 2021. Just imagine how many hours, days and weeks it took those sellers to find their paperwork. How many lawyers wrote off for information and then sat waiting for a reply.

Without the relevant paperwork, all property sales and purchases will be delayed with all the associated waste of time and money….not to mention the stress to the buyer and seller.

In a recent Law Society survey of solicitors, 76% said the lack of documents caused material delays, 88% said the required documents were not available from their clients and 90% stated the lack of documentation added material cost to the conveyancing process.

And, of course, the longer it takes to progress a sale, the higher the risk of it falling through altogether.

Following a consultation on the issue in 2018, the Government published an action plan to improve the home buying and selling process in England.

It included the following proposals to reduce the time from offer to completion by:

Harnessing advances in technology
ensuring that relevant information was made available to buyers upfront when the property is marketed
setting fixed timeframes and maximum fees for the provision of leasehold information
requiring local authorities to develop and pilot a standardised reservation agreement.

So that was our challenge. How could we harness technology to make the process of buying and selling houses simpler, faster and cheaper.

But how could we do that? We’re lawyers and conveyancers – not technology whiz kids.

So we hired the expertise that we needed, added it to our specialist knowledge, followed the Government guidelines on improving the Home Buying and Selling process and created a database storing essential documents related to a property purchase. It took us two years. But we came up with two things.

First, our ‘Sale Ready Pack. The pack includes the new National Trading Standards obligations on material information, free HM Land Registry office deeds, a legal mini-report on title, a complexity rating score on the deeds and a defective title indemnity insurance to cover breach of any defects that have been highlighted early, so defects can be fixed by the time any offer is accepted.

Second, we created a Logbook portal which enables sellers to store scanned copies of all their own relevant documents: the boiler certificates, the building control approvals, the guarantees and the warranties.

And it acts like an interface between client and lawyer/conveyancer (if the client waives, estate agents, too) – massively reducing the time it takes to track down and deal with all that documentation.

Making our customers feel supported is the most important thing for us at AVRillo and we believe our new products – will speed up the buying and selling of properties, accelerate the re-mortgaging process and save time and money all round.

And when the buyer eventually comes to sell, once their Logbook is up and running, additional documents can be added during the years of ownership. Everything will be to hand when the time is right.

What could be simpler?

Sale Ready Pack