Conveyancers have called for up-front information to be made available to would-be purchasers, and also for a secure portal where all parties can track the progress of transactions, in ideas reminiscent of Home Information Packs and the ill-fated Chain Matrix.
The Conveyancing Association has launched a ‘white paper’ discussing ideas to improve the home-moving process in England and Wales.
The trade body says the system in England and Wales suffers from a lack of transparency and certainty, and delays.
It wants to see legislation for an e-Home Report, similar to the Scottish system, that could be completed online.
Beth Rudolf, author of the report and director of delivery at the Conveyancing Association, said: “We do not support the return of costly and cumbersome Home Information Packs. What we do support is the preparation of information for the sale of property in an electronic home report.
“This has been proven to reduce the timescales to exchange of contracts in England and Wales by estate agents and conveyancers who already work together in this way, as well as from research into other jurisdictions which shows that this is pivotal to the reduction of time and stress in the home-moving process.”
The report also suggests a centralised ID verification process with the Land Registry and an ultimate aim for a centralised home-mover portal that could be accessed by all parties and to cover off all necessary forms, client identification, mortgage details, searches and co-ordination of dates.
Readers may remember the Land Registry shelving ideas for a similar centralised system called the Chain Matrix in 2007.
Rudolf said: “While the Chain Matrix did offer the potential for providing more transparency to the home-moving process, it ultimately failed because of the double keying of information, but more importantly the estate agent was not empowered to create the chains and the conveyancers were simply not in a position to identify the links in the chain without the estate agent’s input.
“What we need in the current cyber risk climate is a secure portal, which could have been afforded by the Chain Matrix if it had gone ahead, whereby all parties can communicate without the risk of criminal interception.”
Other proposals include requiring a legal commitment on offer with a five working day cooling-off period and having completion monies sent through the day before completion to provide certainty for the seller.
Solutions to the discussion paper, ‘Modernising the Home Moving Process’, will be discussed and debated at the Conveyancing Association conference on December 1.
Eddie Goldsmith, chairman of the Conveyancing Association and partner at law firm Goldsmith Williams, said: “Working within this industry, I believe we’re all aware that at present we do not have a home-moving process which is fit for purpose.
“Since the beginning of the recovery of the property market, conveyancing times have steadily increased from eight weeks – from offer to completion – up to the latest estimate which places transaction times at 13 weeks.
“For leasehold transactions the length of time is often greater. It is against this backdrop that the Conveyancing Association decided to embark on a project to identify why these delays occur, how the process works in other countries, and by undertaking research and talking to as many stakeholders as possible, to identify potential solutions which can get us to a far better place for all concerned.”
Meanwhile, there is still no sign of the Government’s promised call for evidence into improving the home-buying process. This was announced in the March Budget by former Chancellor George Osborne, but nothing has been heard since.
A Conveyancing Association spokesman said its own “white paper” is a separate piece of work.
How would you improve the home buying process? Show us in a video message!
The process would be sped up hugely by no delays in Solicitors raising and answering queries
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Totally agree and Solicitors can’t raise the queries until they get the relevant information to check through. So speeding up delivery of the property information title, local search and mortgage offer would mean that the queries would be less and raised sooner. Surely?
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No, not really. There is a huge disparity between solicitors on this. Some are well organised and run in a very professional way using experienced conveyancers doing a good job at a fair fee. It would appear that others work with very poorly trained, short term, staff, working down to a fee and trying to get people to do an 8 hour day for 4 hours pay and managing to provide a service to match! They also somehow end up paying a “referral” fee to agents as well. You get what you pay for and deserve the quality of conveyancing you get.
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Absolutely…..if it was done near the start of the process. But we also need lenders to speed up their front end of process. It can often take weeks for them to get a surveyor out, and many buyers don’t like committing to the conveyancing part and associated costs until they know the survey result and whether they are going to proceed with the purchase.
I know lenders don’t want to do surveys until they have assessed applicants properly, but this is a really time consuming part of the process.
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A “skinny” HIP (or whatever the CA are calling it ) is a complete waste of time unless it includes the local authority and drainage search in it… these, alongside the evidence of title, are the key documents needed to enable lawyers to raise their due diligence enquiries at the outset. Anything less than that does not help at all.
However, I can’t see us going back to a HIPs equivalent – too many vested interests felt threatened last time to enable them to survive, and the cost was seen as a deterrent to selling.
Sending monies the day before completion seems really sensible, as long as it actually happens… the whole point will be defeated if simultaneous exchanges and completions are still allowed to happen on the day itself.
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HIPS Lite would be a complete waste of time. You either go the full hog or don’t bother. What is needed is a full auction pack, obviously without going to auction. That is the whole caboodle to exchange contracts minus the survey, which most people would want to sort out themselves anyway even if there were one in the pack.
Of course, this can’t work in practice because home owners would have to start paying more than a few hundred pounds up front or lose it if their house doesn’t sell. Most people won’t be prepared to risk losing that sort of money and won’t put their properties up for sale, which is exactly why HIPS was cancelled.
The only real answer is to amend the Law of Property Act as have many other English Law jurisdictions (about a fifth of the population of the world if you include the USA, interestingly!).
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Radical thought here.
Why do conveyancers not invest more in staff and technology so the the process is sped up?
Maybe even start working hours that fit in with buyers and sellers in the 21st century? – Mon – Fri 9-5 and an hour for lunch is just not practical.
Other industries, companies, services have had to adapt over time why are solicitors still stuck in the 1920’s?
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Simple. The can’t invest in technology and staff because they are only getting the instructions because of cheap fees.
They don’t work Saturdays (some very good ones do) as they claim they can’t work outside banking hours.
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On eye recently 52% (i think) solicitors clients come from estate agents.
I have no problem recommending a a solicitor if they are more expensive, if they provide a service to the clients.
As for “Outside banking hours” – Still plenty they can do without the banks.
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Once we asked a conveyancer for a quote and he quoted. When asked ‘are you sure?’ he said that he couldn’t do it for any less, to which we said ‘no, are you sure you can do the job at all at that level of fee?’
Dear conveyancers, please, please be brave enough to charge more and deliver the highest level of service for the extra money.
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Why is the blame for slow conveyancing constantly being blamed on the ‘system’.
Why is it that certain solicitors seem to always take a lot longer than others?
Why is it that some solicitors still dictate letters to secretaries and don’t use e-mail?
Maybe its an industry that should start looking inwards a little rather than looking to add yet another layer of documents?
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After the conversations I’ve had with two solicitors this morning, making HIPS mandatory (with caveats) cannot happen soon enough!
“Well, I’m not calling him….he should be calling me”
Meanwhile, in the other solicitors office…
“Well, I’m not calling him, he can call me!”
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That’s not a need for HIP’s that’s a need of attitudes of solicitors needing changing!
What for the fanboys coming out in sympathy and support of solicitors ……. Chris’s comments sums up what we as agents have to put up with yet its us with the poor industry reputation.
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We have this all the time, ‘I’m waiting for a response to my letter to them’….other side ‘I’ve responded and am waiting for them to get back to me’….back to other side ‘we havn’t received it yet’….back to other side ‘they havn’t received it yet and you said you sent it a week ago ….can you send it again’ (and if we hadn’t intervened it would have been weeks with nothing happening)… and so on….The process should just work….but whenever we don’t chase… it always feels as though its ground to a halt somewhere. Does anyone else feel like this?
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Virtually every sale.
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Many conveyancers work outside the hours of 9.00 to 5.00. They just don’t shout about it and take calls etc so they can get on with the ‘legal work’ they are being paid to do without being interrupted with the same question from agent, broker, client and other side etc. In addition to this, they now have emails to ‘immediately’ respond to.
I have been away from the ‘coal face’ for a while now but the only way I could stay ahead of the game was start work at 6.00 am (or earlier), work lunch hours and until 7.00 pm (or later) most nights. Plus sometimes, another 10 hours on a weekend.
Between the hours of 9.00 to 5.00 I took calls and saw clients, out of office hours I read leases, searches, title deeds, section 38 agreements, replies to enquiries, mortgage offers etc. The list is pretty much endless.
Put a conveyancer in an office without interruptions and, in my opinion, the work would get done much more quickly.
If you keep doing the same thing you have always done, you will get the same results!
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Like agents; there are good and bad solicitors, hard-working and lazy ones. And, like most things in life, people only tend to hear about the bad ones. The system isn’t working well at any point in the process and needs a long overdue overhaul.
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20 odd years in estate agency, 1000’s of sales dealt with.
Probably only 1 consistent good solicitor in that time i have dealt with and they have now retired.
Issue is conveyancers are stuck in the past and poor at meeting expectations in todays market. – But why would they change, it would mean a worse role for them.
Bringing a Hip back in a Light or Mini form would not make any difference. It did not last time round!
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And don’t start me on estate agents today!
I had a property viewing booked in for 11.00 am last Saturday (something I am looking to rent). Got there at 11.00 (as arranged), no agent, waited 20 mins, phoned agent three times, answering machine. Waited another 10 mins, no return call. Tried another number got through. “I will find out where my colleague is and get back to you immediately.” 20 mins later, they got back to me, “My colleague was at the property at 10.45 and waited until 11.00.” We then had a heated discussion as to who had the right time. I have no doubt it was me as I wrote it down on a note pad (with the negotiators name) as the appointment was made. “My colleague will be back in an hour to re-arrange.”
Having pretty much been called a liar an idiot or both over the meeting time, I hot tailed it over to their offices and took a deep calm breath:
Me: “Could I just ask why you took 20 mins to call me back when you knew we had been waiting for half an hour?”
Residential girl: “I was too busy to get back to you.”
Me; “So, after keeping me, my wife and three kids waiting for 30 minutes outside a property in the cold it was ok to leave us for 20 more minutes?”
RG: “I didn’t have to call you back at all!”
Me; “Why not?”
RG: “I work for residential not lettings.”
Me: “But you work for the same company!”
RG: “Doesn’t mean I have to call you back.”
Me: Unprintable!
Me to Lettings girl: “Why didn’t you call me from the property to see where I was?”
LG: “They won’t provide me with a company phone and it would be a breach of data protection to give me your number.”
Me: Unprintable
In addition to this experience, we tried to view a property a few weeks back. Different agent.
Agent: “We can’t show you around today, we don’t have a key.”
We went to view the outside and liked what we saw. Three times we phoned the agent and three times we were told they don’t have a key. Despite showing real interest in the property, we never heard another word.
You are right Chris. As we are both West Country domiciled, let’s arrange a meet?
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Were you calling Purplebricks?
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Sorry, read further down and you say you were able to go into an office, so that answers that.
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Poor effort on agents behalf and not even worth trying to defend – HOWEVER this certainly is not the norm. In my experience buyers keep you waiting, we just smile and say no problem.
Also not wanting to defend the c**p agent but you are not paying for a viewing its all free to you.
When a client has engaged a solicitor it has cost them, the agent also wants to see a sale go through so they can get a fee as unlike a solicitor we do not get paid if it falls through.
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But yourr clients are paying you to be professional and facilitate the buyers. Most conveyancers are in the same position as the EA of not being paid until completion
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You are right but you miss my point.
If a property i have on my books falls through today and they are buying through another agent i will most likely get a call from the seller giving me notice or at the best notice to go multi agency. If i do not sell the property 6 months work could have been for nothing i do not get a penny.
If the sale falls through for the solicitor, they just wait until they buyer finds a new property or the seller finds a new buyer, In the end the solicitor will get paid.
And the reason most sales fall through is not due to mortgage, or poor service from an agent In the main it is because either solicitors have taken too long and buyers still look round or their circumstances change OR one solicitor does not agree with another and no progress can be made.
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It sounds to me as if they cocked up and then did what loads of people do…tried to defend and cover it up with lies. Also backed up with a member of staff who acted as though they didn’t really care. I never understand why agents don’t just admit they have made a mistake and apologise…hold the hand up, and say I am sorry, I forgot about it, I put it in the diary wrong (whatever the truth is)…I am terribly sorry..it was my mistake. It deflates the situation, and most people will respond favourably…because they know we are human and all make mistakes.
The worse thing you can ever do is lie….people pretty much know you are doing it and what does it do….makes them angry.
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Sorry Smile but 45 plus minutes of my time in the cold (and the time of my family) without including traveling etc does not make it ‘free’.
Lots of conveyancers now do ‘no sale no fee.’ Or a reduced fee if re instructed on another transaction.
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I stand to be corrected but “No sale, no fee” is all a myth really isn’t it?
What i mean by that is you still get the business its just delayed, you will not allow a purchaser / seller just to walk away. you will just not charge them an abortive fee but expect them to use you on the next sale / purchase. So just lengthening the time you may get the fee.
Also you do not return disbursements and many solicitors add a mark up on these not offered out for cost.
If we are selling a property and it falls through there is a pretty high chance they will go with another agent and we get nothing. Thats a real version of “No sale. No fee”
How about the many properties you do visit that you decide not to buy / rent – All of that is free……. Yet still some pressure groups saying admin fees are too high ….
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I did a ‘no sale no fee’. If they walked completely I charged a nominal £50..00. We refund all disbursements that have not been paid for.
Very few law firms charge a mark up on disbursements. Not as commercially aware as agents maybe?
Off to view that property now, I hope!
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As i say above there are exceptions to the rule but most only waive the fee should you continue and use them with the immanent sale / purchase.
Most conveyancers add a fee to disbursements, certainly the ones we come across.
Good luck with the property, at least it is not raining if they keep you waiting 😉
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Would anyone care to put this as an Arena forum topic for ongoing discussion?
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Think we have in the past, just seems to ebb away.
I think there are very passionate thoughts regarding HIP’s and general conveyancing process / attitudes.
Sadly my thoughts are its the conveyancers approach / attitude that needs to change – Where as they do not see a problem and feel being left alone in a room will sort it out and would be great if half their work was done for them when the sale came round, even though it has proven to stifle properties coming to the market and the quality of the packs / time relevance of them not being in tune with the process.
Hence we have this never ending vicious circle.
Maybe a new round table discussion you could film and upload?
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Good idea SP. Leave it with me.
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Excellent, a discussion about conveyancing – just my opinions of course but:
1. “Conveyancers” have not called for any such thing. Some conveyancers have. Rob Hailstone founder of The Bold Group…now his membership may have a view on the state of conveyancing, as that is a whopping group – with many interesting observations..
2. We DO have a home-moving process that IS fit for purpose BUT the standards are as low as I have ever witnessed, and the simple reason is the quality of the human being doing the legal work is no longer high enough. IT is a red herring
3. A “secure portal where all parties can track the progress of transactions” just imploded as an idea from The Law Society/Veyo, being a complete irrelevance to why standards are as low as they are in the conveyancing market
4. My experience is that 95% of emailed /pdf contract packages contain far more errors than their hardcopy counterparts. Why? I put it down to:
1. Who likes receiving multiple pdfs by email in our personal lives, let alone professional, having to open them, flip back and forth, try and get them open at the same time to cross refer etc….so….when pdfs come back, selling conveyancers will be less likely to bother to read them, and instead just throw it out to the buyers’ lawyer. Flipping through a hardcopy at your desk, and yes, far more likely to read.
5. A “secure portal where all parties can track the progress of transactions” is a red herring, as:
1. It means more robotic conveyancing, with a move away from personal communication by the conveyancer and their client, to an easier ability to stack ‘em even higher and muddle a ‘product’ with a ‘service’. Where the public have to look for ticks against a key stages chart, rather than a bespoke and detailed discussion once a week as to exactly what is happening and why, with an estimate of how long things might take to fix. Over and over again we have to excuse this volume style of conveyancing, which drags and drags, ‘conveyancers’ having almost no legal training and so do not know what to do, have no authority to action anything without apparent sign-off later in the week by the qualified lawyer who walks through the office, and so deals extend to… 13 weeks.
2. A portal is only as good as the conveyancers who will get involved in it, and at the moment, it is incredibly difficult to get so many conveyancers to return a call or email, let alone to positively go into a portal and action next steps etc.
6. 8-13 weeks? We have a policy to target a maximum of 4 weeks to exchange on all transactions. This IS possible, or we would not aim for it, but we do witness the typical loss of time:
1. 2 weeks to send out any legal papers, any at all.
2. 2 weeks to reply to a set of enquiries from a buyers conveyancer
3. Firms who have a policy not to raise any enquiries until they have both a mortgage offer and the Council search
4. Firms who will not Report to their clients even if they are in a County with a very long wait for a Council search…until the Council search arrives
7. I loved HIPs – free pdf merging software and 20 minutes later you had a classy product – well those that had all the correct enclosures, as just like auction packs, they were designed to have everything in. It landed on your desk and you might well be set to instantly Report to your client. The problem is, like so many auction packs I see these days, they were substandard, with missing documents.
8. Newsboy 14 is absolutely right: “There is a huge disparity between solicitors on this. Some are well organised and run in a very professional way using experienced conveyancers doing a good job at a fair fee. It would appear that others work with very poorly trained, short term, staff, working down to a fee and trying to get people to do an 8 hour day for 4 hours pay and managing to provide a service to match! They also somehow end up paying a “referral” fee to agents as well. You get what you pay for and deserve the quality of conveyancing you get.”
9. Richard Copus is absolutely right: “HIPS Lite would be a complete waste of time. You either go the full hog or don’t bother”
10. We reassure selling clients that the earlier they instruct us the better, and they will pay nothing extra, and in fact we will not charge to have a file open and ready, if they then choose not to sell. Means we are ready far earlier, and armed with answers to likely enquiries.
11. “Why do conveyancers not invest more in staff and technology so the process is sped up?” You give a mediocre conveyancer the very latest IT system, and you still have…. a mediocre conveyancer with the very latest IT system. IT is a complete red herring. Conveyancers already have super fast IT. It’s is called email. But ask an estate agent how many use it….
12. Charging cheap is such a warning sign of poor quality. You are cheap for a reason. My heart aches when a client asks for a conveyancing quote and says ‘I am after the cheapest just so you know’. Educating the public not to use cheap BUT also to secure a guarantee of no extra fees, as we keep hearing of the add-ons by firms.
13. The Protocol and CQS should direct:
1. Never use a letter when there are no enclosures.
2. Always publish your personal email and direct dial phone number on your stationary
3. Conveyancing firms (including their associate companies) should never act for seller and buyer in the same deal
14. Every single conveyancer is looking after 100 clients at any given time, so “He should call”, “No, he should call” will crop up, and it is not necessarily them being petty, but actually lack of time do their role and the role of the other slower one.
15. Be suspicious of the phrase ‘we are waiting on the other lawyer to reply’ as that it is so often code for ‘we haven’t read their reply yet’.
16. So many conveyancers do not get paid if it falls through. Weeks of work by a conveyancer, …that is a lot of overhead money/salary/time written off, as a new attempt starts the time/money all again …so the first set IS wasted. The conveyancers who offer a ‘no fee no completion’ scheme are typically the volume outfits who plough no effort in, so have little to write off, or the dynamic conveyancers who know they can chase and hound and get the deal done.
17. A conveyancer won’t get a second attempt if they cause their client the slow conveyancing leading to an abortive….well not unless the Agent’s terms say you must use the conveyancer (shocking, as that tarnishes the good estate agents).
18. This is rarely appreciated – estate agents telephone conveyancers because WE can make or break if they get paid for all their weeks of hard work to date. They have handed over the baton to us, and if we go slow/make legal mistakes etc, we can scupper their payment, when a better conveyancer may well have kept the deal on track (though goodness knows why some estate agents won’t align with the best conveyancers…)
19. I pretty much agree with Smile Please when they say: “And the reason most sales fall through is not due to mortgage, or poor service from an agent In the main it is because either solicitors have taken too long and buyers still look round or their circumstances change OR one solicitor does not agree with another and no progress can be made.”
20. We send out mystery quotes requests to other conveyancers, and not a single conveyancer has ever added a mark up to disbursements. Many shock us with ‘disbursements’ to reduce their headline rate, which most firms include (i.e acting for a lender, unregistered property, filling in a stamp duty return). Marking up disbursements I think would be a breach of SRA rules for a start.
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Hi Tim,
You should have been paid for that comprehensive reply…probably the most comprehensive one I have ever seen.
I agree with many points you have raised…particularly with your view on using good conveyancers. The last five cases we have had that have almost fallen apart have been due to buyers or vendors (against our advice) using cheap, bulk online outfits and them taking too long to sort everything out.
Just out of interest what is your view on solicitors that do not pay the agent their agreed fee until two weeks plus after completion? We have a solicitor that does it to us every time….makes us virtually beg for our fee. Stopped me ever recommending them to anyone to use though.
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AgentV – I was waiting for the outside traffic jam to die down :o)
We have the agent’s fee automatically set up to come out by bank transfer the day of completion, part of our financial statement to the selling client. If – 1 in every 1000, so rare – I am not authorised to pay, then I would alert you in advance too. I don’t want loose ends post-completion, as that eats up our additional time on a fixed fee, and is messy for everyone.
And, as you say, bad PR for the lawyer if they don’t communicate what is going on and just do not pay it/pay it late.
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