Conveyancers WERE to blame for the recent house sales bottleneck, says report
Mio says conveyancers were overwhelmed by the surge in transactions, but also hampered by sluggish searches at many local authorities.
A leading sales progression platform has revealed why it thinks so many house sales were delayed during the pandemic, leading to increased friction between frustrated agents and floundering conveyancers.
Progression platform Mio, which is operated by the tmgroup, says the ‘perfect storm’ was created by two key factors – a conveyancing industry that was not ready for such a huge surge in transactions and the effect of Covid on local authorities, many of whom restricted the capacity of their property search services.
The claims are made after TM Group interviewed 800 property professionals, many of whom said conveyancers were unable to cope with the surge of transactions as the market revived in late 2020 and early 2021 after the worst lockdown ended, and later when many buyers sought to take advantage of the stamp duty holiday.
“Many local authorities reduced and restricted access to their search provision service too, which saw average search times double at certain periods,” says its CEO Joe Pepper (pictured).
“There were several high-profile authorities where search times increased by over a month.”
Three solutions
Pepper says three areas need to be addressed to ensure the conveyancing process can cope with a future surge in homes sales like the one seen last year.
These are to end the ‘postcode lottery’ of local authority searches – something the government is already tackling to a degree via its digitalisation project – but also standardise the time it takes legal firms to open case files and begin the conveyancing process which, tmgroup says, can vary from a few days to a month.
The company has also hints that home buyers should be required to have a conveyancing firm lined up and ready to go much earlier in their housing-hunting journey.
Read TM Group’s ‘The New Normal’ research in full (requires registration).
Utter rubbish. This is like saying the NHS was responsible for Covid
Conveyancers were not to blame per se. There we many factors that caused transaction times to extend. I also find it unusual that a company should blame its clients for the delay!
Please use the research to lobby parliament to invest in local government and fund much needed improvements. Local Authorities need to digitise and make their data & information FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable).
The consumer experience would be vastly improved if property data was shared from the outset. Everyone within the transaction could have instant access to the real-time information it needed. For example search data could be refreshed at key stages and would never expire, lenders could use more property data to assist mortgage applications…buyers get to make informed decisions, even before viewing the property…the list goes on…!