New technology which claims to reduce the time to reach exchange of contracts down to 11 days in the new build sector is to be launched into the secondhand homes market by spring.
The technology, Yourkeys, has been used to transact its first property, on a development by MBU Capital in Stevenage.
The technology claims to digitise the entire transaction process from beginning to end, tying together all the major stakeholders including conveyancers, mortgage brokers, lenders, house builders and estate agents.
Yourkeys CEO Riccardo Iannucci-Dawson said the system sets out to solve fragmentation in the process and to slash transaction time from what it says is an industry average of 63 days.
He said: “The problem is that there are lots of companies involved in each transaction and their systems don’t talk to each other.
“We saw the opportunity to build a data layer that pulls together inputs from everyone involved in the process.
“This was a huge challenge but working with our partners, we achieved it and now have over 2,500 companies directly integrated into the platform.”
The technology pulls together over 200 data sets from multiple sources to reduce buyer on-boarding time from weeks to just minutes: ID verification, anti-money laundering checks, mortgage applications and dozens of different documents are pulled together in minutes which can be instantly passed down the supply chain.
Yourkeys, which is backed by Mortgage Advice Bureau, is currently focused on the new build sector.
However Iannucci-Dawson says that the technology will be adapted for the second-hand market by Q2 this year.
He said:“We’re aiming to complete 10,000 transactions nationally in 2020 with at least 60% coverage of all legal firms and IFAs, and that includes the second-hand market.
“We already have some big nationwide companies ready to trial this new functionality, so it’s very exciting times.”
Cute, but just more of the ‘we know the real problem with home moving is the poor quality of the actual conveyancer allowed to touch the legal papers, but we cannot fix that so let’s try and sell some all bells IT as a red herring solving nothing’
Sadly, no hardcopy documents pass between lawyers in new build anyway. It is already all digital now.
The time to exchange is down to the buyers mortgage being issued, as the lawyer’s time is only about examining the legal pack, not a task much longer than a few days (as conveyancers have 60+ clients so spread it out over seberal days). Technology cannot fix that.
The real change to timing would be:
1. If developers improved the quality of their conveyancers who prepare the plot pack as we see some shocking packs
2. If Developers provided a local search (rather than making buyers do a separate plot one, as what a waste as they are not even lived in houses so why do individual plot ones…the Council are the only winners) One or two Developers save weeks by giving a search but so few do – odd.
3. If the Deceloeprs’ lawyers actually prepared detailed notes on the title, with warranties and representations etc, so it would take seconds for the buyer’s lawyers to go through what is often 4 inches of title paperwork, al lot of it complicated, and none of which is relevant to the actual plot. Too often the selling lawyers have a single or only double side of general chatter, of no help…..because they themselves do not understand it.
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Hi TwitterSalisPropNews,
All good comments but I thought it might be worth offering some clarity on your responses.
1. As you know, when a new reservation is taken on a site it can take weeks to pull together all of the information required to proceed. ID verification, address checks, AML, UK finance forms, getting res fees paid and signed, gifted deposit declarations and proof of funds to name just a few. In fact there are over 200 bits of information that need to be collated by the various parties. Yourkeys links in to more than 20 different data sources to pull together this information in minutes. Saving everyone heaps of time. Buyer gets a better onboarding experience and lots of the up front admin work is completed. Who wouldn’t want that?
2. On searches you’re exactly right, they take forever and cost time. That’s why we digitally request local authority searches as soon as we receive an instruction. This means the results are there when the reservation is made. Saving, again, weeks!
Finally, communication in the process is a huge issue. Any sales progressor will tell you. Their days are spent chasing updates from dozens of stakeholders to accurately ascertain where each sale is in the process. Painful! As we’re directly integrated into the case management systems of the conveyancers and IFA’s we can pull updates and feed them back to the agent, vendor and buyer in real time. No duplication of effort on the side of the conveyancer, no need to call and chase them every 2 hours and real time updates at every step. Everyone is clear on what’s happening and what’s next.
Happy to meet you and discuss in more detail if you’d like.
Riccardo
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