Last month, the government announced a proposal to reform the home-buying system in a bid to speed up the property transaction process, cut costs and prevent transactions falling through.
According to the proposal, it currently takes 120 days on average for a transaction to complete once an offer has been accepted – a delay which is impacting supply and demand in the market and having a knock-on effect on the economy.
Issues with data sharing and a lack of digitisation are cited as contributing factors, as well as the absence of clearly defined standards for some within the property sector.
However, we’re committed to revolutionising the home moving process, so we’re glad to see the government responding with this proposal to the work of the Open Property Data Association (OPDA), LMS’s National Property Transaction Network (NPTN) and the recent Project 28 Charter.
RIGHT DIRECTION
It is undoubtedly a step in the right direction, but as an industry we mustn’t sit back and wait until change is mandated.
There is plenty we can all be doing today to increase efficiency within our own organisations and help to speed up the property transaction process.
And why wouldn’t we? Faster transactions mean happier clients, and increased efficiency also frees up capacity to take on more work and increase turnover.
We have been actively doing this with great success for many years, and our impact plus momentum is building.
NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE
Here’s but an example of what is possible. In partnership with iamsold and Connells Group, we recently demonstrated what can be done when parties commit to actively making changes to overhaul the transaction process, achieving a milestone completion time of just three days between receipt of the draft contract pack and completion.
This partnership began 18 months ago when I sat down with Julian Lavender, corporate accounts director of iamsold, Jean Coughlan, home conveyancing director at Connells Group and various members of our respective teams.
Crucially, as a group we shared an understanding that speeding up transactions would require working together and considering the needs of other parties in the process, as well as our own.
HOW IT WORKS
Together we picked apart the conveyancing process, examining at a granular level what was and wasn’t working for our conveyancers and other key stakeholders.
We mapped out the buyer and vender journeys and the various case touch points – looking at who has (and needs) what, when.
We worked out what collaboration meant to us and what we would do if there was a breakdown in communication between our teams.
Together we left that meeting with a series of processes and protocols in place and later developed a custom-built workflow to improve process speed and ongoing communication.
PAIN POINTS
But we didn’t stop there. We also sought to tackle one of the biggest pain points our collective conveyancers experienced: lack of communication from the conveyancing firm on the other side of the transaction.
To tackle this, both ONP Solicitors (part of Movera) and Medway Law (part of iamsold) created a dedicated team to work exclusively through digital tools and personal communication with the other firm on shared cases.
Then, conveyancers from each team were paired together to work on all their cases in tandem, encouraging them to build a close relationship and work collaboratively.
Not only has this step delivered a marked difference in output – ensuring any problems are solved swiftly and efficiently – but it has also led to improvements in employee wellbeing, with many employees from both firms keen to join these teams and work in this way.
Everyone wants to be part of it, so we’re now looking into how we can expand this model to the wider business.
IMMEDIATE RESULTS
While our three-day record is a recent development, with these new ways of working we began to see results immediately, and the teams quickly delivered the collaboration’s previous transaction record of eleven days, as well as industry leading CSAT and NPS scores.
Since inception, our average days to complete a sale process is 44 days and our Net Promoter Score is 84.
This partnership demonstrates what is in our control. That we collectively have the power to make the home moving process better. And the appetite is there; it’s just about getting the right people in the room and investing the time at the outset to have those conversations and put steps in place.
It will take time, but perfection can’t be the enemy of progress.
As an industry we’re already innovating. We just need to work together now to take things to the next level. If we do it won’t take long for a new iteration of the home-moving sector to come to fruition.
