When it comes to the home buying and selling process, I wonder how consumers might sum it up in one word?
‘Efficient’, ‘quick’, ‘effective’, ‘smooth’, ‘timely’ or ‘baffling’, ‘stressful’, ‘tortuous’, ‘long’, ‘frustrating’, or somewhere in between?
Perhaps they will have been fortunate to have sailed through to completion, always informed and aware of where they are in the process, working with a conveyancer who puts their needs first and is ultra-focused on the end delivery?
Or perhaps they will be stumped from the outset? Unable to communicate with their professional service providers, unaware of what is going on, unsure of what to do next, and disconcerted by every step, it seemingly being shrouded in mystery?
Or somewhere in between?
The long and the short of it is, I suspect, most people will be between the A-grade, top-notch service and process of the former, and the scrapping the barrel, uninspired and untransparent latter.
What, of course, we want to see is the vast majority of cases being much closer to the top of the division process, and only a very small minority unfortunately having to deal with the relegation zone operators.
It would be fair to say we’re not at that point yet, and while advisers can clearly do their bit by encouraging their clients to use those conveyancers who represent the very best of our industry and who are fully-immersed in the sector and what it should be doing service-wise, there are some fundamental problems with the process itself which if solved, would make it better for all.
I’m sure you’re acutely aware of the work that has been going on in order to help deliver this – a big focus on upfront and material information to add greater certainty into the process, use of technology solutions in areas such as digital ID and digital signatures, calls to have information filed and readily available via property logbooks so there is less need to duplicate, or even search, for that data when a property is put up for sale, etc.
These, for the most part, are solutions driven by the industry itself, but as we know when you have thousands of firms active in one space, unless you mandate activities you’re still likely to have a very different service offering depending on which firm you use. Some firms will embrace these solutions, many won’t. And there lies a serious problem.
It is therefore not surprising that many in our sector have been calling on the Government to act and, while it doesn’t appear minded to at the moment, the calls keep getting louder and (perhaps) we edge ever closer to legislation to deliver in this area.
At the end of March, the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (LUHC) Committee announced an Inquiry into improving the home buying and selling process in England. Written responses have now been accepted and at the end of April it will begin taking evidence from various stakeholders.
Conveyancing, as you might imagine, will figure prominently in any discussion of what measures might be implemented to improve the process. The Committee highlighted questions on the potential for ‘a lack of transparency around conveyancing services’, plus it asked for answers on specific questions such as the benefits of using reservation agreements as is the norm for new-builds, digitisation, plus whether consumers have all the information they need in order to know which conveyancer to use, and if not, how could that information be better presented to them.
The obvious answer here is to look at the role of mortgage advisers and how they can both signpost consumers to the best conveyancing firms, how they can advise and recommend via portals like Broker Conveyancing, and how – by doing this – we can get consumers access to professional conveyancers who work quickly and efficiently, speed up the whole process and, combined with the other measures announced above, get the average time down significantly.
We all want to see transactions taking weeks rather than months, and we’ve long been an advocate of the adviser taking a pivotal role in the conveyancing process because the numbers tell us this is much more achievable with a trusted adviser partner to hold the consumer’s hand through this.
The other important part of this Inquiry is that it’s a cross-party endeavour and, while this doesn’t necessarily mean its recommendations will be accepting by whichever party forms the next Government, it does seem more likely the results won’t be ‘tainted’ by any party political affiliation, and perhaps we can hope there’s a better chance we’ll get some broad and tangible acceptance.
My view is industry solutions are only likely to get us so far, particularly when we have thousands upon thousands of conveyancing firms active in this space, but many of those are only doing a very small numbers of cases, and therefore their impetus to change is simply not there.
Make this mandatory and we are likely to up the levels to a much higher minimum standard straight away, plus you will probably get rid of those firms that are not committed, and consumers will not get the wildly-different service propositions they can receive right now. And that has got to be positive first step.
Keith Young is managing director of Broker Conveyancing