With the closure of the Straits of Hormuz resulting in an increase in the price of heating oil and chocolate, it was inevitable that we see it blamed for the recent report of another increase – the length of time it takes to buy a house.

Like the discussions that are generated about previous fuel crises when the price of oil goes up, whenever statistics for transaction times are published, the topic of delays in home buying and selling come to the surface.  These normally start with accusations of a “broken process” but quickly degrade into a journey through the three S’s of Blame – Sloth, Stupidity and Sanctimony.  

Which is a little like the three D’s of property but with a lot more vitriol.

It’s a matter of perspective

The most interesting aspect of the frustrations of how the “house-buying-and-selling” machine works is that you’ll get a different answer depending on which cog you speak to.  Never is this more apparent than visiting the Holy Grail of all things toxic – LinkedIn. We all know what it’s like, but it shares the same gravitational pull of the McDonald’s at Waterloo Station after eight pints of Peroni, which puts that of Jupiter to shame. 

Agents post that it’s due to “slow and incompetent lawyers”,lawyers post that “we’re overburdened by compliance”, mortgage brokers post “lenders are a challenge” while the public post AI images of mid-thirties male ( it’s always men ) lawyers with their feet on a desk surrounded by piles of paper and books entitled “Property Law”, with the word “Why?” written underneath in 46 point Arial font.

Which highlights that where you think the problem is depends on your personal experience and makes solving it rather more difficult than issuing press releases containing platitudes about digitisation.  

Clearly it’s people

The one thing everyone agrees with is that we all want the process to be quicker.  There are conspiracy theorists who believe that not only were the moon landings fake, but lawyers deliberately delay tasks such as ordering searches or replying to enquiries, but this makes no sense.  Delays are due to conflicting demands on their time – everything can’t be a top priority.  This can be caused by many factors, such as a high caseload, having to deal with a particularly demanding client or knowing the related transaction is not progressing at the same speed, so the focus should be on those cases likely to exchange sooner.

Before we can improve things, we need to understand the root causes of delay, which is fair to say are the combination of chains and people.  Given that chains are just other transactions (also involving people) this points to individuals as the common cause.This is clearly illustrated by our onboarding process which is 100% electronic through our portal, prefilled with most of our clients’information that we have already collected.  In our tests, we were able to enter all our details, ID and complete all the property forms in under an hour.  So why does it take us 6.5 days on average to onboard a client?

Delays from people, that’s why.

It’s a theme that runs throughout transactions.  Whether its donors completing their identification, sale clients replying to the buyer’s enquiries, answers from managing agents or clarification from underwriters, we are all relying on individuals for answers or detailsand they are busy, distracted or have higher priorities.  We have no control over this.

So how do we address this?

The answer, like everything these days, is technology, although not in the way some people try to tell us, because we work in a People&Paper&PDF world.  As Dave Brailsford demonstrated with the Olympic cycling team, you need to improve all elements by 1% – the theory of marginal gains, as opposed to the elusive big bang approach of universal data formats or digital networks.

Technology should be used for checking forms that clients have failed to complete correctly, identifying missing accounts because the management company didn’t include it or spot where title information has been keyed incorrectly at Land Registry.   If we apply it in specific areas like these to remove the burden currently involved in manually checking documents, this will free up our time to talk to the people involved and ensure we get the information more quickly.  

Sadly, as President Trump is realising, this change will take longer than many would like, but we need to start and the technology exists that can achieve this. We just need to use it.

Peter Ambrose is the owner of The Partnership and Legalito.