Industry expert view: David Opie
David Opie is managing director of Today’s Media – three online daily news publications serving residential conveyancers, will, probate, tax, trusts and estate planning practitioners, and the family law community. The group also holds regular industry events, including the British Conveyancing Awards and British Wills and Probate Awards, in a bid to inform, inspire and connect people across the different areas of law.
I believe the success of Today’s Media is in no small part down to the understanding and empathy we have with the communities we serve. We often forget what the daily grind of being a lawyer is like, especially for those at the coal face of consumer legal services, and news publications like ours play an important role in keeping them informed of the issues they need to know about. That is not a role we take lightly.
Take, for instance, our conveyancing readership. The day-to-day work of conveyancers is a tough gig. If you listen to those in the profession, one of their biggest challenges lies in trying to keep up with the public’s perception of home moving. Ten to 15 years ago, the average homeowner moved house every seven to 10 years; it is double that now. In many respects almost every home mover is like a first-time buyer; they simply don’t remember the process because it’s been so long since they last moved.
That makes managing client expectations hugely challenging. Most consumer surveys indicate the perception of home moving is it should take around eight to 10 weeks. The reality again is it is taking twice that length of time.
A typical conveyancer’s day will be spent trying to pull a contract pack together, send off for and/or review searches, review titles, raise pre-contract enquiries, respond to enquiries, chase chains for potential moving dates… and much more besides. All the while trying to keep on top of a relentless inbox, deal with a constant barrage of phone calls, and focus on the important work at hand.
The process of transferring titles from one owner to another, carefully, securely and legally is a huge responsibility. And by most estimates, twice as complicated as it was 15-20 years ago before much of the regulatory responsibilities around anti-money laundering, property due diligence, and lender expectations were quite what they are today.
HM Land Registry estimate it is the guardian of around £8tn worth of registered property. It is no small feat to maintain the safety and security of the UK’s housing stock and there should be no diminishing of the role of conveyancers in that process.
Speed v certainty
There are many who would wish for the home moving process to be speedier; indeed, many consumers already think it should be half the speed it is now. With all this technology about, it is assumed that we should be in a position to speed up transactions, but in fact it appears to have slowed them down!
But speed is a red herring; what all those involved in the home moving process need is certainty. Certainty that the transaction will go ahead. Roughly one in three property transactions fall through. The direct cost implication is estimated to be around £3,500 per transaction. Then take into account the tens of thousands of pounds spent in the short term when people move home on things like white goods, soft furnishing, electronics etc and the total impact on the economy increases exponentially.
Speed is important. There is a direct correlation between the likelihood of a transaction falling through, and the time it is taking. And if we can increase the speed of transactions, we can churn our business pipelines quicker, complete more transactions annually and ultimately increase revenue and profitability. But certainty is where the real wins are.
Digitisation
Technology undoubtedly has its part to play and there is an argument to say we’re very close to, if not over, the tipping point technologists will describe when they outline the digitisation of an industry.
Whilst there have been a handful of missteps along the way, over the last 10 years each of the individual components of the home moving process; brokers, lenders, estate agents, conveyancers, have all individually digitised their processes. What is missing is the integration piece between all the component elements. The pipework they can all be plugged into which will ultimately create a digital experience.
The same thing happened in retail and financial services. Once the pipework was introduced, digitisation and a digitised consumer experience came together.
It is felt the property sector is on the very cusp of this digitisation now with a huge amount of work going into the standardisation of data, accessibility, agreed protocols and methods of drawing on and re-using data to enable a much more joined up experience.
One simple example of this is the project to enable a home mover to verify their identity once, and for it to be used through the course of the transaction, whereas currently there are multiple points of verification, and concerningly, potential failure.
The speed of change has certainly not moved at the pace many would like but it is coming. And while there are calls for it to move faster, as the latest Digital Property Market Steering Group podcast said, efforts to modernise the home moving process must be necessarily tempered by the need to properly protect what is for so many of us, the single largest asset in our portfolio.
