Proptech digital solutions provider e4 Strategic has joined the Project 28 Charter as part of the property industry’s efforts to deliver faster and more certain transactions.
Established by Landmark Information Group, Project 28 brings together lenders, conveyancers, estate agents and technology providers around the ambition of reducing the period between sale agreed and exchange to 28 days.
The Charter sets out eight practical commitments intended to address delays and improve the movement of information between the parties involved in a transaction.
These include instructing sellers’ conveyancers earlier, providing more upfront property information, improving access to trusted digital data and enabling key documents to be shared securely.
CONNECTING THE TRANSACTION
Developed in consultation with UK lenders and conveyancers, e4 Strategic’s VERSA platform connects the parties involved in a transaction from mortgage offer through to post-completion.
It uses structured digital workflows, shared case visibility and secure communications to improve connectivity and reduce information gaps.
The company says this approach supports Project 28’s objectives around trusted data, information sharing and closer collaboration between property professionals.
“Delays rarely come down to one major problem.”
Andrew Vaughan (main picture, inset), Head of Customer Management at e4 Strategic, says: “The 28-day target is ambitious, but that is exactly why it is useful. If we start from the assumption that transactions will always take three or four months, we risk designing improvements around the current process rather than questioning why it takes that long in the first place.
“One of the lessons from working closely with lenders and conveyancers is that delays rarely come down to one major problem.
“It is often the accumulation of smaller issues such as information being requested more than once, a query sitting unanswered, an update being missed or one party not knowing that another is waiting for them.
“The test should not simply be how many transactions reach exchange within 28 days. It should be whether we can remove enough wasted time and uncertainty from the process that taking more than 100 days becomes the exception rather than the norm.”
