BLOG: Bringing the property industry together to improve conveyancing – will you join us?

I’ve spent more than 50 years working in conveyancing, 30 of them at the coal face, and founded the Bold Legal Group along the way.

In that time, I’ve watched countless transactions drag on, or fall apart entirely, not because of anything wrong with the property or the price, but because of inconsistency on the legal side that has nothing to do with the deal itself.

Despite technological advances, property transactions remain complex legal processes fraught with potential pitfalls. Connells Group reported last month that it’s now taking more than 100 days on average for a sale to progress from offer agreed to exchange, the slowest this has ever been recorded.

For leasehold transactions it’s worse still, at around 155 days, 58 days longer than freehold, the widest gap on record. Nearly a quarter of fall-throughs now happen more than three months into a transaction, up from under a fifth in 2019. I recognise every one of those numbers on the ground.

A recent case makes the point better than any statistic could. A contract pack went out to a firm acting for a buyer, and six additional enquiries came back.

The sale fell through for entirely unrelated reasons, and the same pack was sent to a different firm. Forty-six enquiries came back. Same papers, same property, but wildly different standards. This is the problem I’m trying to fix.

It’s unnecessary inconsistency dressed up as caution, and it’s exactly the kind of thing that makes agents want to tear their hair out, and makes buyers and sellers think conveyancers are deliberately putting obstacles in the way. I can tell you we are most definitely not, but I understand why it looks that way.

Why it happens

It’s not that today’s conveyancers are more difficult than they used to be. They’re under more pressure than at any point in my career. When I was practicing, I probably had 10 or 12 plates to keep spinning. Today’s conveyancers have 20 or 30.

Anti-money laundering requirements, identity checks, source of funds and source of wealth investigations, leasehold reforms, complicated Stamp Duty responsibilities, lender requirements, increasing regulation: all of it has added layers of complexity to a process that was already hard for consumers, and frankly for agents, to follow. Every one of those checks exists for a reason.

But without consistency across firms, the same file can produce six enquiries in one office and forty-six in another. There’s no way for an agent or a client to predict which they’ll get.

Meanwhile, everyone involved expects the speed of Amazon from a process involving multiple professionals, legal obligations and often several linked transactions. That gap between expectation and reality is where most of the frustration on your side of the desk comes from, and I don’t blame you for feeling it.

Taking action

That’s why I’ve launched the Conveyancing Improvement Collective, or CIC: a practitioner-led group bringing together experienced conveyancers from firms of all sizes, small, medium and large, to agree practical fixes rather than push for wholesale reform overnight.

We’ve started with two objectives. The first is directly the enquiries problem I’ve just described: reducing the volume of unnecessary, inconsistent enquiries that slow transactions down for no good reason. The second speaks directly to that 58-day leasehold gap: confusion around Mortgagee Protection Clauses in leases, which we’re working through with lenders and other stakeholders.

More issues will follow. The approach stays the same every time: identify a specific problem that’s slowing transactions down in practice, build consensus among practitioners, solve it, and move on to the next one. No grand relaunch of the whole system, just steady, practical fixes to the things that keep tripping everyone up.

Need your help

Conveyancing doesn’t happen in isolation from the rest of the transaction. Agents see the consequences of our inconsistency before we do, sometimes as an anxious call from a client asking why the sale has suddenly stalled again.

You have a better vantage point to see where the process breaks down for buyers and sellers than most conveyancers do, because you’re the one fielding the fallout.

That’s why the CIC isn’t intended to be conveyancers talking only to conveyancers. We want agents and other property professionals involved in shaping where we focus next, because the problems worth fixing are the ones actually costing deals, and you’re often the first to know which ones those are. Here’s why that matters to me personally.

What’s at stake

Every transaction is someone’s life moving forward. A family growing. A retirement beginning. A relationship ending. A fresh start, finally within reach. Get the process right, and you clear the way for that. Get it wrong, and you hold it up for reasons that have nothing to do with the deal itself.

Some years ago, I helped a stranger resolve a complex issue that was blocking the sale of their property. I assumed that was the end of it. About a year later, an email arrived out of the blue: completing that sale had let them and their child leave a highly unsafe situation and start a new life abroad. I think about that case whenever I hear “just another enquiry” or “just another delay.” Behind every one of them is a real person whose next chapter is on hold until we get it right.

I’m 68, and I have no interest in walking away from this profession while it’s still in this state. The Government’s roadmap for improving the home buying and selling process is a genuine opportunity for lasting change, and the Bold Legal Group and the CIC want to help shape it, alongside the people who deal with the consequences of a broken process every day.

If you’re an agent who’s watched a good deal nearly die over enquiries that made no sense, or a lease clause nobody could give you a straight answer on, I want to hear from you. The CIC is inviting agents and other property professionals to help shape what we tackle next.

Rob Hailstone is founder of the Bold Legal Group and the Conveyancing Improvement Collective.

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