There is a growing need to transform the UK’s deplorable and archaic home buying and selling experience.
Astonishingly, in this everything digital age, the end-to-end homebuying process remains reliant on an almost Dickensian paper-based system of physical document sharing, multiple ID checks and wet signatures, and never-ending telephone and email tennis.
In no other customer-facing retail industry would we tolerate such a poor consumer and user experience, and this for one of the most important and costly transaction in our lives. Buying a home should be a cause for joy but instead, the process leaves itself open to heartbreak, failure, and unacceptable levels of fraud.
MISPLACED PRIORITIES?
For decades, housing supply rather than the transaction process has dominated policy and debate. Early promises from the new government are following this trend with an ambitious, and arguably, unachievable housing target of 1.5 million homes to be built over the current parliament.
Yet clearly the housing crisis isn’t just about hitting housing stock numbers. The challenge also lies in transforming how we buy and sell our houses and making the process more achievable for everyone.
A well-functioning and efficient property market is fundamental to economic stability and the financial wellbeing of the nation yet we have one of the least efficient in the world. It is scandalous that we average 22 weeks to completion, have a 30% failure rate and 85% of buyers have a stressful experience.
We urgently need reform and this can be achieved through digitisation, shareable property information, and improved data and technology standards. Today, less than 1% of property data is available in an interoperable digital format.
While the recent Budget did not address the transaction process, there is hope on the horizon with the new Data Use and Access Bill. Announced in October, the bill revolutionises how we think about, access, and share data. When passed, it will fundamentally change how customers engage with their data and will make homebuying simpler.
The bill gives consumers the power to access their property and identity data and enables sharing of that data with authorised and accredited third parties within a secure trust framework. It puts the customer in control and means they only have to verify their property and identity data once. This has huge implications for the document-driven and manual check approach that we employ today.
The Open Property Data Association has been campaigning for secure open data standards since our inception in June 2023. We’ve met regularly with government to highlight the challenges people and industry face and the inherent obstacles in the way our property market works.
In May, I gave evidence to the Select Committee’s ‘Improving the home buying and selling process’ inquiry, calling for legislation and development of the trust frameworks which already exist to enable the entire home buying and selling process to be digitised within three years.
“Those using our data standards for digital property packs have seen time reduced from offer accepted on a house and a mortgage to exchange of contracts within 15 days”
DELIVERING
We have delivered the first industry property data standards and shareable data tools, making these free and openly available to everyone. Those using our data standards for digital property packs have seen time reduced from offer accepted on a house and a mortgage to exchange of contracts within 15 days. Our work shows what can be achieved and alongside the new Data Use and Access Bill, will kickstart the changes that we need to reform the property industry and set us on a path to a faster, more efficient, and more transparent home buying journey.
Our mission is for every company, in every part of the mortgage and property transaction, to access and share open data in a digital, standardised, and trusted format. Our members who cover every part of the industry from OnTheMarket to Lloyds Banking Group are committed to achieving this and to overhauling the homebuying and mortgage process. We look forward to working with the new government on urgently progressing this and enabling a better homebuying process once and for all.
