Conveyancing senior urges agents not to fear more up-front property info
Beth Rudolph says progress improving the sales progression process is being held back by estate agent myths about property information.
Providing more information to home buyers and making it easier to process the data digitally should not be feared by estate agents as sales ‘deal breakers’, a senior conveyancing industry figure has said.
Beth Rudolph (pictured), who is Head of Delivery at the Conveyancing Association and who also used to be an estate agent, says the property industry – not helped by the HIPs debacle during the 1990s – incorrectly believes initiatives to give buyers information up-front are a bad thing.
“These are the myths that we are fighting,” she says. “The idea that you don’t want that kind of information bandied about is wrong – because all you’re doing is pushing the problem further down the sales process, and causing sales to fall through.
“Remember that every seller has a duty to disclose any defects before exchange of contracts including, the recent SPS Groundworks case proved recently – in the property advert.”
Rubbish
Rudolph also says the other myth that putting up financial barriers for vendors will depress stock levels is also ‘rubbish’.
“The mandatory Home Report in Scotland, which costs between £500 and £1,000, has not impacted transaction or stock levels since it was introduced [in 2008],” she says.
Rudolph spoke to The Neg following the latest update to the digital BASPI conveyancing form that agents are required to complete, which now asks for even more information about a property to be supplied.
This includes its UPRN reference number, a requirement for buyers to receive its property logbook on completion and the declaration of any ‘smart equipment’ within a house.
There are also plans to automatically add local authority search information at a later date, as well as key information such as confirmation of its ownership status – i.e. leasehold or freehold – confirmed by the Land Registry.
The new BASPI also includes the need to include any details of spray foam loft insulation – there are some 200,000 properties in the UK with this type of insulation, many of which have not had theirs installed properly.
Bringing in another HIPs-style WILL have an adverse effect on stock levels, as it did previously.
Comparing Scotland (around 100k transactions a year) to England (around 800k) is not helpful either; I remember that the pre-HIPs research was carried out on the market in Denmark…….
I can’t help but think this article is more an attempt to take the focus away from the poor service being offered by many conveyancing companies and the ridiculous length of time it takes to get to exchange these days. Perhaps an overhaul of the tick-boxing, no sale, no fee culture would be a better place to start.
I must say I disagree with the first line in this article…”Providing more information to home buyers and making it easier to process the data digitally should not be feared by estate agents…”
Lack of digitisation in estate agency is not the problem. The profession, in my opinion, holding back the digitisation of sales progression is the very profession the writer of the article comes from.
It is conveyancers who take piles of files home with them during homeworking requirements and whilst many estate agents also were not geared up for the homeworking digital, cloud-based age, many more are now.
It would be interesting to hear if the majority of conveyancers now are able to do likewise.
It does depend on the market.
Talk to any agent about discussions during take-on and distractions from instruction are the last thing they want to bring up. I really don’t see how this will change in reality.
The other concern, as I highlighted in a recent article is about “false positives”. An issue might be disclosed that is actually a non-issue and requires interpretation, but may put off a buyer.
Not saying that upfront information isn’t 100% valid, but let’s be a little judicious about what information we provide.
Not all disclosure is good disclosure.