Home Sale Pack has formally launched with a service that aims to shorten the homebuying and conveyancing processes by ensuring that buyers have up-front access to all of the vital information they require to make a decision on whether or not to purchase a home, rather than having to wait until they’re weeks into the sale.
The company points out that in 2023, 269,728 home sales fell-through, leaving buyers, sellers, and agents in a state of limbo, and potentially having a catastrophic domino effect on many other sales linked to its chain.
One key reason for fall-throughs is the amount of time it takes to complete the conveyancing process. Current estimates put the average conveyancing timeline at 12 – 16 weeks.
Home Sale Pack will aim to reduce timeframes by providing buyers and conveyancers with relevant, up-front information, from planning permissions and local authority searches, to survey results, EPC ratings, and the newly announced material information requirements, the latter of which are required under consumer protection regulations.
How does it work?
A seller can either register directly through Home Sale Pack’s platform, or they can be introduced through their Estate Agent. Sellers then verify their ID, confirm the boundaries, order title documents and searches and complete their property forms through the easy to follow steps. Home Sale Pack then goes on to find as much additional, formal information as possible and raise any corrective actions required by the seller within a property health check, before finalising a sale ready pack.
Home Sale Pack has been brought to the market by Ruth Beeton and Simon Priestley, both of whom are highly-experienced conveyancing solicitors at HS Conveyancing Ltd and know the process inside out, including its obstacles, delays, and pitfalls, all of which have been directly addressed with their new technology solution.
Home Sale Pack is currently developing Artificial Intelligence technology that will automatically and comprehensively find any and all information about a property, thus eliminating the tiresome administrative duties that have come to consume the majority of a conveyancer’s daily work.
Ruth Beeton, co-founder of Home Sale Pack, said: “Property transaction timelines have become far too long and as a result fall-throughs are far too common and expensive to consumers and the property industry alike.
“We have created a solution that gives home movers an easy-to-follow digital roadmap to obtain and display as much information as possible – upfront. Making the process faster, more reliable and less stressful.
“It is no longer acceptable that our industry makes people wait until the eleventh hour to have access to the information they require. We simply must do better, and Home Sale Pack is the ideal solution based on the decades of ground-level conveyancing experience we have. We aspire to become the industry standard in up-front information to the benefit of everyone involved in the property buying and selling process.”
I don’t care if the boiler has been serviced – let conveyancers get back to practising law
This really isn’t rocket science is it!
The conveyancing industry really needs to get itself into this century.
I will wait to hear from solicitors telling me why it is so difficult, but auctions have been able to exchange on the day of purchase for many decades, without IT, so why can’t the private treaty system be done in a realistic four weeks in regards to legal details.
Is that really that hard to do?
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Agents just need to suggest that seller’s instruct a conveyancer earlier on.
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I’ve always thought of it as justification of the fees.
For the first time I was charged when a buyer pulled out, that’s the last time I use that Solicitor.
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Home owners being advised by their agent on market appraisal of the need for boiler servicing and electrical safety checks would also go a long way to speeding up the process.
So many homes now need upgraded electrical consumer units (fuse box – even fairly modern homes are no longer compliant) or partial/full rewiring.
Get these done before listing and so much pain will be averted later.
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Really! Delayed conveyancing is caused by agents not telling clients to instruct solicitors early enough or not getting their boilers serviced??!!!
That absolutely beggars belief because that to me suggests conveyancing is a tick box exercise, which we are regularly told it isn’t!
This is really simple then, on these comments from solicitors, bring back a HIP like product and conveyancing ( not mortgage or funding) delays should be minimal!
Please correct me if I am wrong!
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That is not the cause but it could be part of the (delay) cure. If conveyancers can work with agents on the MI requirements, and they can identify and rectify potential problems earlier on that must help going forward. Call it what you like, if it is a HIP like product, so be it.
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So Rob, with all of the countless exchanges we have had over the years in which you denied that MI has anything to do with HIPs, in light of this comment, are you now ready to admit that you were wrong?
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I have always said/thought that MI could evolve into a HIP like product, but that that was not the main intention of Trading Standards. For the sake of your own sanity Colin, you really need to let our little past feud go. But, I’ll make it easy and draw a line under it for you now. I was wrong:)
Had some great feedback at a conference yesterday about law firms working with agents and making the new MI guidance work for them both and for buyers and sellers. As I have been saying for a long while it is a real opportunity for those who grasp it.
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There is no feud and there never has been, Rob. I have always attempted to the best of my very modest ability to correct ‘misinformation’ in the conveyancing sphere, particularly if the person or group propagating it holds some influence, or otherwise lacks accountability. Inevitably some people take offence but that is an occupational hazard.
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We all have upfront information already – it’s called the contract pack.
The delays in conveyancing actually come AFTER:
1. A buying conveyancer taking a minimum of 2 weeks to open a file / receiving every scrap of client paperwork back
2. Conveyancers raising enquiries because that is the step they always do and to not raise enquiries worries them
3. Asking enquiries that are pointless (old boiler service records, and certificates available on public websites)
4. Conveyancers not starting any work without having all their usual searches in first
5. Conveyancers not starting work until the Grant of Probate has been found
6. Having no client respect by taking on too many clients
7. Stuck for how to deal with an enquiry so they push it to the bottom of the to do list
8. Sending out a contract pack without actually reading the TA6 and pre-empting likely enquiries
9. Not replying to enquiries and instead concentrating on the onward purchase, causing the former to be behind
10. Not caring to be prompt as ‘why bother, I dont get paid more nor do I get promoted, I have no reward to go the extra mile, I get a salary come what may’
11. The conveyancer is too busy trying to attract new work that the existing work is handled badly
12. Recruited ‘conveyancers’who don’t have the mindset to be able to juggle a multitude of clients which is a pre-requisite of a prompt conveyancer
13. The chain hasn’t been put together at the same time, so a buyer at the start might find the chain doesn’t come together for weeks and weeks ‘the seller needs to find somewhere to move to’
14. Conveyancers get stroppy with the agents for pointing out the conveyancer is being slow and then the conveyancer refuses to speak to the agent and goes deliberately slow
15. Junior conveyancers learning as they go along, rather than in the office BEFORE the work is allowed to go out
16. Conveyancers who sit waiting – ‘we are still waiting for ….’ – rather than being proactive to encourage a response
17. Conveyancers not sorting our source of funds and source of wealth right at the beginning and then halting everything at the exchange point
18. Conveyancers who must have their files signed off by a senior member of staff before they can exchange (which invariably loses days, if not a week)
19. Conveyancers who over rely on tech and there is a system issue with no backups
20. Overlooking the fact that there are two registered charges to request repayment statements for, or a third party Restriction requiring consent
21. If HIPs were anything to go by, overlooking the fact that the LPE1 refers to the need to get ground rent information from any managing agent
22. Not using the standard form contract from the Law Society but sticking in a whole load of pointless contract clauses
But while we wait on the above…..we can be in awe of what a full contract pack we have.
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