Propertymark says it is keen to work collaboratively with the conveyancing world to ensure all parties can broach solutions that will benefit agents, consumers, and conveyancers alike, and sees the Onboarding Summit on 23 February, hosted by InfoTrack, as a crucial platform for progress.
Simon Wilkinson, Propertymark board member, will be presenting at the summit to lead discussions on how agents work to speed up transactions and reduce fall throughs of sales.
Wilkinson will be joined in this session by James Munro from Trading Standards, and Peter Rodd on behalf of The Law Society to discuss how to capitalise on the business opportunity and improve the client experience.
The Onboarding Summit is aimed at legal minds and centres on using digital processes to find efficient ways of working.
Wilkinson commented: “As a Propertymark board member, I have been active in brokering collaboration between all parties and pushing the agenda for transaction reform digitisation. This event is key in bringing more stakeholders together to see the advantages of a shared approach.
“Following on from DHLUC’s Levelling Up white paper, it is vital that we grasp the opportunity now to ensure that we increase consumer confidence and supply by ensuring that all residential properties coming to market are sale ready rather than market ready which in turn will speed up the process and reduce the proportion of transactions that fail.”
Comments (3)
Indeed, in the auction world there is generally between two and three weeks from when the property is listed for sale and the date of the auction. Virtually every single lot will have a data room full of the relevant legal documents required for a purchaser to satisfy themselves as to the legal position of the property. Over 35,000 lots go to auction and there are very few issues post auction because the legal documents have been provided up front for review.
Purchasers are happy to make an offer on a property for sale by private treaty without seeing any of the relevant legal documentation, but would never consider buying a second-hand car without reviewing the logbook, HPI and service history! Up front legal documents in the auction world allow quick guaranteed sales, and if the same was done in the private treaty sector, there would be quicker exchanges and less fall throughs. All vendors will have to assemble a raft of documents before the exchange of contracts so why not do it at the beginning of the sales process, and let interested parties have the benefit of being able to inspect them and make a more informed and solid offer.
Following the DHLUC white paper it is encourageing to see the estate agents joining the work that many others are doing with UP Front Infomation. Lots of people are focusing on what information should be avaliable when. PIP Vaults allow esttae agents to open a dataroom for every property where they, the seller and the solicitor can post documents that can be shared with potential buyers. Quicker conveyancing is on the way, and the change in the process will reduce the hugh wastage of fall throughs.
It does occur to me that so much of what conveyancers are doing [and to an extent agents] is based on what platform they use, if any, and whether they can talk to each other. What is needed is a simple universally accessible place everyone involved in a transaction can go to in order to see any and all documentation involved in a transactions. I’ve said before here but if it can be done at Auctions, then why not private treaty transactions. I’ve said it before but David Sandeman runs the EIG and is closest I reckon with his dataroom, i.e. a PIP Vault. Why isn’t this cheap, simple and more importantly – tested – solution more widespread? Agents can drive this by taking up solutions and presenting them to their conveyancers – surely they’d have to pay attention wouldn’t they….