Representatives of the finance, legal and property sectors have welcomed the government’s pledge to speed up the house buying process.

A surprise government announcement over the weekend claims it is “working hand-in-hand with the property market” supported by HM Land Registry (HMLR), and is shortly beginning a 12-week project to identify the design and implementation of agreed rules on data for the sector, so that it can easily be shared between conveyancers, lenders and other parties involved in a transaction. 

HMLR will also build on existing work in digitising property information and lead 10-month pilots with a number of councils to identify the best approach to opening up more of their data and making it digital, whilst the government pushes ahead with plans for digital identity verification services including in the property sector. 

The government says fall throughs – which impact one in three transactions – currently cost people around £400m  a year, on top of the four million working days lost by conveyancers and estate agents alone which is equivalent to £1 billion.  And it claims that information such as building control and highways information is predominantly paper-based or recorded in non-machine-readable formats. On top of this, where data is available electronically, there are no established protocols for accessing, sharing and verifying that data which leads to more delays.  

The plans have been welcomed by different players in the transaction process. 

Rightmove chief executive Johan Svanstrom comments:”If the plans set out today can further the access to information and an improved transaction process, it’s also critical to drive industry-wide adoption of tech solutions and collaboration to make it a success. 

“Our latest data shows it takes fivepainful months on average to move into a home after having an offer accepted. This is on top of the initial two months it usually takes a seller to find and agree an offer with a buyer. It means someone listing on Rightmove today would only conclude their sale in September, and that kind of timeline is really not good or effective for anyone. The current process also contributes to an average of more than one in five home sales falling through, and hopefully a better process can help reduce this as well.

“It’s not an easy task as there are so many data points, and different ways of gathering them, for a home listing and sale. The tech and data teams at Rightmove have been digitising and standardising data collection for many years, and we think it’s definitely achievable to take it further with the right technologies, and a strong public and private effort. We look forward to helping the government with their plans for progress. We can leverage our platform reach to support home-movers and help our estate agent partners realise this benefit.”

And Beth Rudolf of the Conveyancing Association calls the government proposals “incredibly positive” and says: “We have been heavily involved in pushing forward the digital property data agenda and what greater provision can achieve. We believe this is not just about its use for home buying and selling, but it will provide far greater benefits across the lifecycle of property, enabling parties to have the right view of the property data whenever they transact or need to act, whether that is a remortgage, altering or finding a planning application, for letting purposes, or retrofitting to meet net zero targets.

“There are also some wider benefits that are often discounted but which should be generated by this, including: for the economy in terms of not having people in housing ‘stasis’ for long periods of any year meaning they can get on with their lives, be economically active and contribute to UK GDP; the environment, as it will mean the government can see the quality of the housing stock digitally allowing it to target where its funding/grants/loans should be delivered in order to achieve retrofitting; the NHS, in terms of helping reduce the health issues often caused by people living in poor housing conditions; plus our housing sector, and the conveyancing industry in particular, as it will reduce waste and duplication of tasks which often adds significant amounts of time to the whole buying/selling process.”