The Conveyancing Association (CA) has stated that increased responsibilities placed upon conveyancers in recent years has resulted in considerable ‘scope creep’ for the sector and is placing increased pressure on the ability of firms and staff to complete transactions within the required timeframe.
The CA’s director of delivery, Beth Rudolf, presented evidence to the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee Inquiry into ‘Improving the home buying and selling process’ earlier this week.
Taking questions from the various cross-party MPs on the Committee, Rudolf highlighted how the work now required of conveyancers had grown considerably in recent years, resulting in average transaction times of 22 weeks-plus.
Rudolf (pictured) pointed to onerous leasehold, estate rent charges, managed freehold and the Building Safety Act, as just some of the extra areas which conveyancers now had to be on top of in order to ensure their clients received the right information and advice before proceeding.
She also pointed to the dematerialisation of deed packs which had occurred after 2002 – whereby deeds and other important documents were sent back to owners – as presenting a huge problem given many owners had lost these documents, not realising how important they were.
She said: “Scope creep has grown hugely in recent years and it presents conveyancers with a huge amount of work to go through. This has been made even more difficult by that dematerialisation of deed packs, and it needs solutions such as digital packs and digital logbooks to be able to bring all that information back together to cut down on the times that conveyancers have to spend trying to find this. In years gone by, that information was kept together and could be readily used by conveyancers in future transactions. Without the digital version of this, we can’t deliver the improvements we need.”
In a verbal evidence session attended by a number of other sector representatives including the Home Buying & Selling Group, the HomeOwners’ Alliance, the Open Property Data Association, RICS and Propertymark, evidence and views were taken on the ways and means by which the home buying and selling process could be improved.
Rudolf also highlighted just how long it was taking conveyancers to work through an individual transaction because of the extra work, the time it took to receive the information from other stakeholders in order to progress a case, and the subsequent time required just to update the client.
Rudolf added: “It used to be that transaction of a sale would take an individual conveyancer seven working hours and a purchase would take 10. Now, if you are manually updating on the progress of a case in a chain and that takes half an hour a week, then with transactions taking, on average, 22 weeks it means you are taking 11 hours of work just telling people you’re waiting for something, let alone advising a client when it arrives. It is a huge problem of where we have got to now.”
The potential benefits of a system where greater levels of upfront information on a property were provided to potential buyers was also argued by Rudolf, who said this would provide better transparency and would help stop people pulling out of transactions when they found out information which became too much of a challenge to them later down the line, or where the mortgage lender said, for example, the individual could not afford to buy the property.
Rudolf said: “That information should be given upfront so the buyer can digest it and so they can understand what it means to them. In the same way if you’re a seller and you get them instructing a conveyancer upfront before they find a buyer, and you ask them to fill out the forms that are necessary, they’re much more willing to do this at the start, because they want to get the process started. After they’ve found a buyer we know they are much slower in providing that information due to loss aversion.”
Rudolf also highlighted the need for mandation of the collection and review of upfront information on listing by conveyancers to identify the Material Information relevant to the property, asserting that it would speed up chains on which multiple conveyancers were working, along with greater use of digital solutions such as digital ID and digital signatures, and a greater focus on technology to deliver digital logbooks for each and every property.
She highlighted that ‘Buyer Beware’ only applies to information specific to the buyer’s intended use and enjoyment of the property, so on listing, the seller’s conveyancers should be able to review the title to advise their client on issues which would impact the average consumer.
