Upfront information – help us bring down the barriers

Barriers to entry are a big concern for any sector, particularly those who need a greater number of technology innovations to help alleviate a shortage of resources.

In our world, barriers to reform are just as important, particularly in a market where the average completed transaction time for a house sale/purchase is currently up around the six-month mark, when in other jurisdictions across the world they have been able to get this down to just a handful of weeks.

Which might beg the question, if it’s possible there, why not here? Especially when the solutions to almost all of the barriers we have identified are plentiful and, a number of firms are using them already. But, have we missed any of these barriers? And what do property professionals feel is stopping us getting to a better place, with quicker completion times, greater certainty, and a house-buying/selling process which doesn’t take half a year to complete?

To that end, the Land Registry ‘Removing Barriers’ Working Group, which is chaired by the CA, has put together a survey for property professionals to complete which asks all stakeholders to highlight, in this case, what they see as the potential barriers to the adoption of Upfront Information (UFI).

Increased business cost

It is available via this link here, and I would certainly ask all property professionals, regardless of what sector you work in – agent, surveyor, valuer, conveyancer, mortgage adviser, you name it – to work through the questions and to give us your opinion on what those barriers might be, and then send the survey to your network and ask them to have their say too and fast; it closes on 7^th July.

We often hear people say that some of the following barriers exist, for example, is the barrier to you and your contacts delivering on Upfront Information a fear of the risk of an increased business cost for training and system development? What about the worry that you can only go as fast as the slowest in the chain, and if others refuse to accept the documents obtained it won’t improve the process?

And then there are questions to consider around whether some believe there could be an increased professional liability cost and how this is covered? Maybe you simply don’t think it will make any tangible difference? Or do you believe there are IT issues that need to be overcome, particularly in terms of legacy system upgrade requirements?

Might it bring in increased costs to the seller as they will have to provide it? And might this put people off in terms of bringing their home to the market to sell? Or do you believe it will actually increase your workload and will disrupt the market to such a degree that you would prefer to keep everything as it is now?

These are some of the potential barriers the survey will ask you about, but it also asks you to highlight any other ones that you feel are relevant, and it gives you the opportunity to provide your own thoughts on all things UFI

The survey should only take you around five to eight minutes, and your responses will be completely anonymous, which should mean you can be as honest as you like in terms of what you believe is potentially standing in the way of us delivering UFI.

Now, far be it, for me to pre-empt the results of that survey – because it may well highlight some areas that we have not thought of and therefore haven’t needed to come up with the solution for just yet – but back in 2015/16, the CA produced a White Paper called ‘Modernising the Home Moving Process’ after we ran a “BIG Question Survey” to find out what the problems were that were causing you frustration and delaying the transactions.

Better technology

Time has certainly moved on since then and we have clearly seen some sizeable and notable changes, particularly in terms of technology, but what remains clear to me is that the vast majority of solutions we provided within that White Paper remain as relevant today as they did back then.

In fact, you could justifiably argue in the case of the delivery of UFI, that we have better technology to be able to secure all the benefits that we believe it can bring, not just to customers themselves but also all those firms working within the current process.

We talked back then about collating the Property and Title information on the marketing of a property, and working ahead of the current method in order to provide that information to prospective buyers, which in itself would engender greater certainty, avoid the delays in getting that information, resolve any issues found within the Title, ensure less chances of fall through far later in the process when all parties were emotionally invested, etc.

And, of course, driving down aborted transactions – still incredibly high over the course of any year since then – would ensure greater efficiencies for stakeholders, would mean less wasted time/resource/cost, would turn pipelines quicker, and would help everyone get paid far quicker in the process.

Completely relevant

Recent research from Moverly suggested fall throughs cost agents alone £1.27bn in 2022 – that’s over 315,000 sales aborted over the course of the 12 months, and accounts for nearly a third of all transactions. What a difference that money would make, and that doesn’t even consider the lost income for all other stakeholders relying on sales completing, or the boost to the economy sales deliver.

You can reacquaint yourself with the ‘Modernising the Home Moving Process’ White Paper from November 2016 in the download section of our website, and I think you might find it instructive in terms of the solutions we were outlining nearly eight years ago, based on the BIG Question survey results from the year previously, and how many of them are still completely relevant now.

Certainly, for us as the CA and our member firms, we believe this is an argument we should absolutely continue to keep making. Probably even more so, given the current housing market and how it is dealing with lower transactions, greater costs, etc. Please help us all, fill in the survey and continue to fight for this much-needed reform.