BLOG: Can this former estate agent make home-buying reform a reality?

Few of the lunchtime City diners yakking all around us could have guessed that Matt Hahn, the man sat opposite me in this bustling restaurant, is one of the people key to getting the Government’s home buying and selling reforms over the line.

Hahn is no earnest housing minister but instead is a senior figure at LMS, which runs a network that connects up a panel of 4,000 conveyancers and dozens of mortgage lenders to those moving home via its online platform.

What makes Hahn a lynchpin is both the power of the organisation he leads and also his little black book of contacts gleaned from stints at Foxtons, Savills, Knight Frank and OnTheMarket.

Hahn has one key job to do at LMS – get more estate agents to sign up to its recently-launched collaboration with Lloyds Bank and Connells called the National Property Transaction Network (NPTN), which brings brokers, lenders, agents and conveyancers onto a single platform; moves key steps and information to the start of the process; and allows information to be shared between all parties.

When asked why his network stands a better chance of getting the property industry to coalesce than the many other efforts under way, he has several persuasive points to make.

Deeply rooted

One is that LMS is already deeply rooted in the property industry with the vast majority of conveyancers and some 15 lenders (with more due to be announced soon) already signed up, along with 100 pilot estate agency branches.

Hahn’s job is to close that gap within the estate agency sector – and he faces a big task. Some agents have criticised LMS because its system doesn’t solve all the problems within the conveyancing system in one go – for example the nitty gritty of making leasehold sales smoother. But he says that if the ‘upfront’ information nut can be cracked now and for example – as Connells recently said – local searches mandated at the point of instruction – then these other niggles can be sorted further down the line.

Agents also have many other comparable platforms knocking at their doors including Coadjute, Landmark, iamproperty and ProConvey, to name a few.

Labour reforms

The other reason for LMS’s likely success is that it has a friend in the Labour Government, whose ministers it has been talking to and who are hopeful that the NPTN will be key in making housing minister Matthew Pennycook’s reforms a reality. After two consultations, guidance is expected any day soon from MHCLG.

This is expected to include pre-exchange binding agreements, pre-marketing sales packs, new digital tools, minimum estate agent qualifications and a code of practice, all to be introduced within three years and, it is claimed, will cut home selling by four weeks.

LMS’ NPTN already features many of these reforms including a hook up with the Open Property Data Association to make it easier for agents, conveyancers, brokers and lenders to work together digitally on a sale in real time – and all designed to eliminate the duplication and constant re-checking of information and accreditations that dog thousands of house sales every year.

LMS’ overall aims are lofty – to ‘power all residential property transactions’ in England and Wales, selling itself as being a part of the national infrastructure rather than ‘another platform’ having a crack at improving conveyancing.

Hahn is also candid about what the future might look like once the industry has a single platform to use when getting property sales done – including that the portals could soon have a role. One idea Hahn suggests would be to include a ‘digital sale ready’ sticker for portal listings, an interesting comment given LMS has been working with Zoopla to tool-up its conveyancing offering.

Big advantage

If someone were to ask me why I think LMS has a decent chance of achieving its goals, it is that its existing connections and relationships within the sector give the organisation a big advantage over many of the other platforms competing with it.

This includes that the NPTN is open and not a closed system – any estate agency can use the NPTN regardless of size or affiliation – and the network is not dependent on jittery investors for its financial future; all three backers are going concerns.

It also covers the whole transaction landscape – whereas many other initiatives tackle just one part of the conveyancing system’s problems.

Let’s hope Hahn succeeds – it would be good if The Neg never had to publish another story detailing how the home buying and selling system is broken.