Exclusive: Land Registry to work with industry to speed up property sales

The Land Registry is looking at ways it can help speed up the home buying and selling process with announcements due very soon, a source close to the organisation has told The Negotiator.

It has already begun this process with an initiative to provide guidance to document signature and identity tech suppliers such as DocuSign and Adobe to encourage innovation and new products within the conveyancing arena.

But the source says the Land Registry is hoping to issue more guidance on how the many tech firms in the sales progression and conveyancing world can help speed up and digitalise the process.

Pandemic

The Land Registry realises that the pandemic has put agents, home buyer and sellers as well as conveyancers under huge pressure to speed up the process, and that both Covid working restrictions and the stamp duty holiday have added urgency.

During the post-Spring market the Land Registry will reveal how it sees itself influencing the conveyancing arena.

“But the Land Registry doesn’t want to just thrust it at them – it’s got to be collaborative,” the source says.

“It wants to find solutions that benefit the whole sector including those who are buying and selling their houses, and then consider how far it goes in working with the sector.”

Such a move would be a significant shift for the Land Registry, whose role has traditionally been in the post-completion process of registering or updating propety titles and providing house prices.

But it is also looking at speeding this up to eliminate the two to three week gap between a property being sold and the new title and house price being recorded, including a new tool within its online portal used by conveyancers which will eliminate the need for paperwork.