A coalition of 23 leading organisations across the UK property sector has launched Project 28: A Charter for Faster, More Certain Property Transactions – an industry-led initiative that sets out a practical blueprint to overhaul the UK’s inefficient and fragmented homebuying process.
The Charter aims to tackle long-standing issues that cost home movers an estimated £400m annually in fall-throughs and waste around four million working days for estate agents and conveyancers. The cumulative cost of these inefficiencies is thought to exceed £1bn in lost productivity each year.
At the heart of Project 28 is a call for the digitisation of key property information and better data sharing across the sector. These changes are designed to modernise the conveyancing process, reduce transaction times, and boost both industry efficiency and consumer confidence—delivering tangible benefits to the wider UK economy.
The 23 member organisations behind the Charter represent a powerful cross-section of the industry. Together, they:
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Support over £600bn in mortgage transactions annually
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Facilitate more than half of all property listings
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Produce over 1m environmental and search reports each year
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Have on average three touchpoints per property transaction
The Charter includes eight operational commitments that members have pledged to implement, focused on reducing delays, increasing transparency, and restoring trust in the property market.
A key ambition of the initiative is to cut the time from sale agreed to exchange to just 28 days. Currently, the average transaction time sits at 109 days, according to the latest Landmark Information Group Property Transactions Report. While this marks a slight improvement from 115 days in 2023, it remains significantly slower than previous years—19% longer than 2019, and 65% longer than in 2007, when the average was just 66 days.
By uniting under Project 28, industry leaders hope to drive meaningful reform and lay the groundwork for a faster, more reliable homebuying process that better serves buyers, sellers, and professionals alike.
+ Increased relevant upfront data provision
+ Boosting adoption of secure interoperable data repositories
+ Promoting visible best practice via a recognisable marque
+ Early instruction of seller-side conveyancer – ensuring legal work begins at listing.
+ Provision of relevant upfront information and condition reports – reducing delays and surprises.
+ Ensuring data collection and availability – supporting faster, informed decisions.
+ Ensuring trusted data – improving confidence through reliable sources.
+ Access to a secure, interoperable data repository – giving all parties real-time access to key documents.
+ Early commissioning of leasehold packs – avoiding late-stage legal delays.
+ A recognisable marque to indicate best practice – helping property professionals and consumers identify best practice.
+ A quality fee for quality service – ensuring professionals are fairly remunerated.
Simon Brown, CEO, Landmark Information Group said: “Project 28: A Charter for faster, more certain property transactions is a pivotal moment for the property industry – a united response to a system that has, for too long, been too siloed, let down consumers and slowed economic progress. Landmark is proud to drive forward this change, bringing the right people, data and insights together across the entire transaction chain, as part of this industry-led initiative.
“Sitting at the centre of the property ecosystem, Landmark has been uniquely positioned to lead the development of practical, immediate commitments that will improve speed, certainty and trust.
“This Charter offers a realistic path to meaningful reform. We now urge Government and the wider market to act with us in transforming the experience for home movers across the UK.”
Verona Frankish, CEO, Yopa, commented: “Buying or selling a home should be exciting, not exhausting. Yet too often, consumers face uncertainty, wasted time, and unnecessary costs because of outdated processes. At Yopa, we believe the industry has a responsibility to work together to change that.
“This Charter sets a bold, practical path towards achieving a 28-day target from sale agreed to exchange – delivering faster, more certain transactions that benefit everyone: buyers, sellers, and the professionals who support them.
“By embracing digital solutions, improving transparency, and aligning best practice, we can transform the moving experience and restore trust in the process and our industry. Yopa is proud to stand alongside our industry peers in making this ambition a reality – and we’re ready to play our part.”
Nick Hale, CEO, Movera, remarked: “This industry-wide initiative is much needed, to help speed up house buying and selling and make the process smoother, more secure and more transparent. With the average transaction currently taking more than 100 days to complete, it’s clear that the UK property market needs significant reform and we all need to work together to achieve the proposed 28-day transaction target.”
Justin Parkinson, managing director of Decision First, which operates Lender Exchange, added: “Visibility and transparency are the bookends of the property industry. Without them, expectations are set too high leading to unnecessary disappointment and frustration. With them, all parties involved know where they stand and what to expect.
“The Project 28 Charter, the commitments set out in it, and the support of the companies signed up to the Charter are the foundations for providing much needed transparency across all aspects of the transaction, from listing, through valuation, mortgage offer, right through to completions and post completion registration, and we’re delighted to lend our support to this charter.”
All very good, especially now when it’s a quiet time but you can have a wonderful conveyancer but transparency is needed on a platform that it’s obviously who’s holding up, that old chestnut of “waiting for the searches” doesn’t bade well if they are sent off two weeks after engagement.
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Signatories include Landmark Information Group, Yopa, Connells Group, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Legal & General, Nationwide, TwentyCi, L&C Mortgages, Simplify and Mortgage Advice Bureau among those pledging their support to drive meaningful reform across the property transaction process.
The Charter sets out eight industry commitments designed to improve efficiency, transparency and trust:
Early instruction of seller-side conveyancer – ensuring legal work begins at listing.
Provision of relevant upfront information and condition reports – reducing delays and surprises.
Ensuring data collection and availability – supporting faster, informed decisions.
Ensuring trusted data – improving confidence through reliable sources.
Access to a secure, interoperable data repository – giving all parties real-time access to key documents.
Early commissioning of leasehold packs – avoiding late-stage legal delays.
A recognisable marque to indicate best practice – helping property professionals and consumers identify best practice.
A quality fee for quality service – ensuring professionals are fairly remunerated.
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“This Charter sets a bold, practical path towards achieving a 28-day target from sale agreed to exchange .”
Would love to see the Charter, and understand the practical path.
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Just introduce compulsory upfront information upon listing – it works in Scotland
Scotland = RICS Level 2 survey + EPC + TA6 (TA7).
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An easy quick win for sure
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Perfectly possible now, providing there is no chain, an existing mortgage offer (if one is required), no issues with the survey and reasonably efficient conveyancers. It is usually non-conveyancing factors or inefficient/inexperienced conveyancers which hold things up, in my experience.
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This is fantastic news for the industry!
Upfront Information has been delivering this in pockets across the country for a long time, but without industry consensus it’s impact was always constrained by chains.
We’ve seen first hand the positive impact of a) getting all the conveyancing information together at day 1 marketing and b) getting the lawyer instructed at the same time, which are core to this proposition.
Agents (and their sellers) now have a tangible choice – do you want to 28 day service, or not?
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Unfortunately much though I would love to believe it possible, I just don’t see it being realistic – it would require a sesmic shift in conveyancing practices that I not sure many solicitors are currently able to achieve. And it assumes local authorities get searches back quickly, and not all hit the 10 day target…………. I think we all agree the current system is hopelessly outdated and requires massive change and good luck to them , I really hope this move pushes the industry forward, but I think most people right now in a chain would think 6 weeks from agreeing a sale and moving was a miricle never mind 28 days!
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This will not work unless proper experienced competent conveyancers are consulted and involved which the above does not suggest is the case. Indeed the conveyancers as referred to have never probably managed a 28 day transaction in their history.
Early instruction of seller-side conveyancer – ensuring legal work begins at listing.
Provision of relevant upfront information and condition reports – reducing delays and surprises.
Ensuring data collection and availability – supporting faster, informed decisions.
Ensuring trusted data – improving confidence through reliable sources.
Access to a secure, interoperable data repository – giving all parties real-time access to key documents.
Early commissioning of leasehold packs – avoiding late-stage legal delays.
A recognisable marque to indicate best practice – helping property professionals and consumers identify best practice.
A quality fee for quality service – ensuring professionals are fairly remunerated.
I am looking at some of these points. an someone please explain, in clear defined Englsish, what data is and where it is going to be colllected from and stored and how it is going to improve conveyancing times?
As regards remuneration, it is the factory firms who are involved with this who are again the problem with regard to low fees? This makes no sense.
This project is going to solve nothing as it doesn’t stop referral fees. More significantly I cannot see anywhere a mention of better training for conveyancers which is the most important consideration. Until there is investment for training of the people who actually do the job, which everybody seems to overlook in the race to the bottom of the technology chasm, nothing will improve.
Until proper conveyancers working in the profession are consulted on these projects nothing is going to improve. Technology is NOT the answer.
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Don’t tell me, you are a conveyancer
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100% Simo, can spot it a mile off.
You read so often about ‘proper’ conveyancers being consulted on change in the industry. But the majority of conveyancers who voice their opinions on these articles or Linkedin are always so negative and never offer any practical solutions.
Anna, how about some positivity, how about some collaboration to make change happen? There are hundred’s of ‘proper’ conveyancers out there who are forward thinking and quietly getting involved in projects like these and open to change.
It’s a shame organisations like the Property lawyers Alliance are so negative, but it 3-5 years they will disappear as the right law firms and conveyancers embrace technology and the right changes and move the profession and the home buying & selling process forwards.
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Radical suggestion. If you have nothing sensible to say, say nothing!
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The broad aspirations are sensible but once again, the voice and concerns of the Homeowner aren’t included. In this mad land grab for data we need to ensure that the Homeowners’ right to control use of their own data is central to the process. This ‘self-sovereign’ approach to data, with the Homeowner at its heart, needs to the core of any ID-based permissioning system otherwise we will end up in a property data scandal (we are almost there anyway).
The relentless focus on Upfront Information also ignores the difficult fact that they key area of concern is at the end of the process. We need to ensure each Home purchaser is given all digital information at the end of the process, and other systems are wiped (beyond the statutory needs of some parties to store some information for a statutory period). EVERY transaction should result in the Home purchaser being given a secure Digital Property Logbook – a ‘secure, interoperable data repository’ that they control – that becomes the starting point for the next time the property is sold. Without doing this, we are just ensuring more of the same madness next time the property comes on the market.
Its time to bring the Homeowner and Digital Property Logbooks into the process.
Nigel Walley – Chair of the Residential Logbook Association
PS the last thing the industry needs right now is yet another unaccountable industry group full of vested interests? If this group isn’t the DPMSG or the Home Buying & Selling Group (or Council), then what are those groups for?
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No mention of stopping the ping pong of voluminous, irrelevant additional enquiries which have plagued Conveyancing for decades – when I first started working, there was Law Society guidance against raising these, but nothing has changed.. if anything it has got more out of control
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