Conveyancing review

Industry must work together to overcome search difficulties

Karen Rodrigues

director of sales, eConveyancer

When it comes to a housing transaction, buyers, sellers, and intermediaries face no shortage of challenges. There’s a good reason why the process of home-buying is so often cited as one of life’s most stressful experiences.

One of the biggest frustrations that we regularly hear about from intermediaries and their clients is the amount of time it can take for local authority searches to be returned.

Understandably, the pandemic really affected the times such searches take, and things have not particularly improved since COVID was at its height.

The government has aimed for the target of returning search results within 10 working days; however, the reality really is rather different. There can be enormous variances in the time taken to complete these searches, depending on the local authority you’re dealing with. While some will be able to turn around the results within a week or so, with others you’re looking at far longer wait times.

In fact, we know that some local authorities are taking as long as 30 to 35 working days. In real terms, that’s up to seven weeks of simply waiting for those search results to be returned, with everyone involved knowing full well that the case cannot proceed without them.

This is a nightmare for everyone involved. Clients are left in a state of perpetual anxiety, particularly given the industry’s lack of transparency. They have no idea why their case has ground to a halt, nor how long it is likely to be before things start moving again.

This has a knock-on effect on other stakeholders, too. Intermediaries end up fielding calls from stressed-out buyers and sellers desperate for an update, taking up valuable time that could be better spent advising other clients.

In the worst-case scenarios, these delays don’t just lead to heightened stress levels, but actually cause cases to collapse entirely. That’s not just heartbreak, but a financial loss, too.

WHAT’S DRIVING THESE DELAYS?

There are various factors at play here. Resourcing is obviously going to play a part. The number of staff able to carry out the tasks required of these searches is not uniform across local authorities; while some will have a decent-sized team able to perform this job, others will be relying on just one or two members of staff. As a result, any illness, holidays, or unexpected absences can have a sharp impact on return times.

There are also differences in demand levels. Certain areas have seen greater levels of activity from would-be buyers; what’s more, some areas have become far more in demand as work and lifestyle habits have changed since the pandemic. As a result, the workloads faced by these local authorities has increased, resulting in longer turnaround times for search results.

Of course, it’s worth bearing in mind that this is a job that’s important to get right. It’s crucial that buyers be armed with accurate information about the property they are looking to purchase, and that means having the searches carried out properly and accurately. Cutting corners in order to cut those wait times serves no-one.

Yet surely there is room to speed things up somewhat?

WORKING TOGETHER

It is abundantly clear that in some areas, councils simply cannot cope with the search workloads they are currently faced with. There is no easy solution either, which is why it’s important for the property industry to come together to make the case to central government that this is an area that badly needs more funding.

After all, we have yet more schemes being launched aimed at helping people onto the housing ladder, like the revamped Right to Buy and the benefits-to-bricks proposals. But home ownership won’t happen without the right infrastructure, such as improving local searches.

Intermediaries and conveyancers alike have an important role to play in preparing clients for the potential timeframe they face in getting these searches returned, laying the groundwork so that they know what to expect – and why.

It’s also crucial that we work together to keep buyers and sellers moving swiftly when it comes to returning other forms of paperwork or documentation needed for the transaction. A delayed search result doesn’t need to be a disaster if everything else related to the deal is sorted promptly; it’s when there are additional delays elsewhere in the process that the case can hit trouble.

There are elements of a transaction that are simply beyond the control of intermediaries and conveyancers, which is far from ideal. However, by being proactive, together we can reduce the chances of those elements causing deals to collapse entirely. M I