3 minute read
Conveyancing review
Brokers must back those driving conveyancing change
Karen Rodrigues
sales director, eConveyancer
There aren’t many things more stressful for people than a housing transaction falling through. Buying a house is an emotional process – you may pin your hopes and dreams on that move, perhaps because it makes it easier to see family and friends, provides more space for your children, or simply because it’s in a nicer location.
Yet our inaugural Home Movers Report found that as many as one in three transactions collapsed last year. This isn’t just a deeply upsetting thing for people to go through, it’s costly too – the typical victim of a collapsed sale ended up wasting £2,000 on associated costs.
There are all sorts of reasons behind property transactions falling through, but we know that a lack of communication is a big one. Buyers and sellers are all too often left in the dark about what’s going on – sometimes until it’s too late and the deal has fallen through.
Indeed, the length of time involved in buying or selling a house is extraordinary. There is no good reason for a transaction to take months on end, other than the fact that our industry’s way of working has not really changed for decades.
It’s clear that we can speed things up, and improve communication to boot, by embracing a different way of operating, particularly by using technology more smartly. Technology can provide everyone involved in the deal with a better way of sharing documents and updates, which means not only that all stakeholders will be clear on the progress of a case, but also that unnecessary delays can be cut out quickly.
This change is coming to the conveyancing world – at eConveyancer we’ve devoted a lot of time and resources to developing the systems that will mean a smoother and more efficient process. For example, our purchase of Amity Law, an actual conveyancing firm, means that we can test products and approaches in a live environment, ironing out any issues before rolling it out to our full panel.
In fact, our commitment to effecting this change is one of the driving factors behind our Group’s rebrand to Smoove – we want to show the industry as a whole how determined we are to bring about a frictionless home-selling and -buying process.
CHANGE DOESN’T HAPPEN OVERNIGHT
Unfortunately, positive change isn’t something that happens immediately. It can take time to get the processes right, iron out the issues in the technology, and get everyone on board to make a tangible improvement in the way things work in the conveyancing sector.
A good example of this is DigitalMove, a service we offer via eConveyancer, which makes the process more transparent, efficient, and speedier for everyone involved. It’s a key part of how we make it easier for conveyancing lawyers to onboard their customers, and has led to eligible cases completing much more rapidly than is traditionally the case. Similarly, our Rapid Remo proposition has slashed the time involved with remortgage deals to timescales that rival those of product transfers.
However, it’s clear that there is much farther still to go. While everyone at eConveyancer wants to keep introducing ways in which we can use technology to produce a better experience for clients, this transformation is going to take time.
WE NEED TO WORK TOGETHER
I know that intermediaries aren’t satisfied with the way things work currently. Every intermediary I speak to has horror stories of how the legal side of a transaction turned into a nightmare, at times putting the deal in danger of collapse. Those stories have only become more prevalent of late – some legal firms are simply not set up to deal with the heightened activity levels we’ve seen over the last couple of years, and it’s led to disappointment and stress for clients whose deals have suffered delays and, in some cases, collapsed entirely as a result.
That’s why it’s so crucial for us to work together. Intermediaries can be clear advocates for change by working with legal businesses that aren’t happy with the status quo, and that want to push things forward.
United, we can help transform the house ownership process into one that’s far less stressful for our clients. M I
