Teal Legal, the technology company behind the Home Owner’s Passport (HOP), says that it has launched a new took that will help agents meet new material information rules announced by the National Trading Standards Estate and Letting Agent Team this week.

The announcement that new compulsory information, designed to help home movers make informed educated decisions about a property, must be included on all listings has been broadly welcomed by the property industry.

A property’s council tax band or rate and the property price and tenure information – for sales – must be included on all property listings by the end of May 2022 and these data fields will start to appear on portals over the coming weeks.

These changes represent the first phase of a project by the National Trading Standards Estate and Letting Agency Team in partnership with industry leaders and the UK’s major property portals, to define what constitutes material information for property listings.

Developed in response to estate and letting agents’ requests for clarity on what information should be disclosed as standard when marketing a property, Part A of this three-phase project includes information that is considered material for all properties. A further two phases are being developed, which will incorporate further material information such as restrictive covenants, flood risk and other specific factors that may impact certain properties.

Teal Legal says it wants to ensure that meeting these new requirements are not an onerous task. It points out that pulling together upfront information, even for complex cases, has been made easier thanks in part to the work that has been carried out across the industry over the last few years to make conveyancing data available online.

Teal says pre-pandemic, much of the documentation which was required by the material information rules was not easy to get hold off, with much of it being buried in conveyancers’ paper files.

Despite the challenges, many agents have been gathering this information together anyway, downloading title deeds, or getting documents direct from vendors; but it’s not necessarily been a particularly quick or cheap exercise.

Sally Holdway, director at Teal, said: “We have been involved in various working groups and task forces over the last couple of years looking specifically at the challenge of getting hold of digital conveyancing data earlier in the process, and the dial has really moved considerably in our view.

“Projects such as the Home Buying and Selling Group’s Technology Task Force, HM Land Registry’s LLC1 programme and the Law Society’s TA6 Part 1 are all pushing in the same direction, to facilitate interoperable, instant data to become the norm.

“And this is translating into direct use cases. The new Trading Standards listing requirements are a great example. There are software tools available that can gather up the required information from various sources, such as HM Land Registry and package it up neatly for agents without incurring delays to listing or any significant costs, removing the headache.

“But it also means we can go further than that. In our own particular Material Information software, we also triage the transaction to see whether it is likely to be complex and provide interactive reports for buyers.

“In addition, the data sources for material information will also facilitate the generation of property packs, which if the agents pass on to lawyers, will save weeks in transaction times.”

It is this interoperability of conveyancing data which means that other stakeholders such as lawyers, brokers and surveyors, will also benefit, further reducing duplication and bringing down timescales and fall out rates, according to Teal.

New material information rules a major step towards mandatory disclosure in listings