A new material information solution, designed to help reduce transaction times and fall through rates, has been launched by Complete ASAP.
The new offering aims to ensure the agent remains compliant at every stage, with ASAP ordering all of the property information documents while a sales progressor works with the vendor to complete a full digital Property Information Questionnaire (PIQ).
The aim is that within two to three days the agent will have a comprehensive buyer information pack for a specific property. The bundle will incorporate Land Registry documents, including all OC2 filed entries such as leases, old conveyances/transfer deeds, key property information, and the completed PIQ.
The details in ASAP’s Buyer Information Pack can also be used to populate Law Society TA forms, so a client only needs to provide this information once.
Richard Megson, managing director of ASAP, said: “As champions of upfront information, the team at ASAP has been giving the new NTSELAT guidelines our full attention. Simultaneously, we are listening to the needs of our agents, given the collation of specific property information has become a legal requirement.
“We wanted to bring a solution to market which would help to support committed buyers and sellers. I believe our new Buyer Information Packs have the potential to make a significant impact when it comes to reducing transaction times and fall through rates.
“Our approach to material information has been designed to become a seamless part of our complete and instruct services. It will keep agents compliant every step of the way, avoid any disruption to their current process and ensure a smooth customer journey for their clients – who will only need to impart any information once.”
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 hold.
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Products like this are exactly what the agency and conveyancing industry needs, a benchmark in innovation that gets everyone to where the legislators have decided we should be. Well done.
The only challenge now is getting all that information to consumers in a single click on all portals and all agency websites.
This is not a negative comment aimed at ASAP and should not be read as such. I’m all for any project that helps professional estate agents comply with laws and regulations thrown their way. But getting all the info, neatly collated and gathered, onto 700 data feeds into 3 main portals and 20,000 agency websites, in an attempt to make (at least) 200 data fields a single-click silver bullet that’s acceptable with the portals, that’s the elephant in the room.
It’s really going to cause a few people a bit of reflux because in 2020, I’d already identified the inevitable consequence of the shift from buyer beware to agent beware. I’ve solved the problem in a way that’s beneficial to agents and conveyancers, both of whom are facing the disruption created by CPR rather than being more beneficial to service suppliers. I created an industry standard solution that allows all of the complimentary stakeholder services to give agents what they need in the way agents need the service delivered. A way that favours agents rather than the agents’ service suppliers.
Most agents will not understand the opportunity that’s at their feet right now, but they all need to understand the importance of systems like this. The bit I’m working on right now is to identify the agents who haven’t bothered or who simply don’t know what they should already be providing.
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Seems to me all conveyancing is nowadays is an excuse for people with no legal knowledge to try and make money from a confused, leaderless profession.
There are serious issues which nobody ever attempts to resolve. Deal with those and hopefully the rest will follow.
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I recently tested a material information service that claimed to be material information part c compliant, provided by people apparently with some legal knowledge- it wasn’t open property data association compliant so although the data claimed to be correct it stood in perfect isolation from being compatible with agency crm systems, portals, agents websites or any other stakeholder system.
That particular service came forth, out of 4, in a comparison of similar services available to agents looking to solve the problem of material information- essentially it was old school conveyancing with a not enough about it to convince the agent it would get all the information that had been gathered together to where consumers could see it in a single click.
The problem the agency industry and the conveyancing professions are trying to solve requires full, respectful, mutual collaboration. Legal knowledge is a big part of the solution but without all the symbiotic service providers working together nothing will move any further forward than it has done since the legislation change that has driven this disruption came into effect over 10 years ago.
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