The UK government has unveiled plans to fully digitalise the home buying and selling process to make it “fit for the 21st Century” and provide “much-needed certainty” to all parties involved in property transactions.
As part of modernising the industry, the government has committed to “opening up key property information”, to ensure data can be shared between trusted professionals more easily, and will also progress plans for digital identity services to “slash” transaction times.
In an announcement yesterday (9 February), the government said that enabling data sharing in property transactions will make it easier for people to get onto the housing ladder, as well as reduce the requirement to share ID in-person in the long-term and drive down the number of transactions that collapse.
According to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, more than 300,000 property transactions fall through in the UK every year, costing sellers £400 million and amounting to four million working days lost by conveyancers and estate agents alone, which is equivalent to £1 billion.
Housing and Planning Minister Matthew Pennycook said: “We are streamlining the cumbersome homebuying process so that it is fit for the 21st Century, helping homebuyers save money, gain time and reduce stress, while also cutting the number of house sales that fall through.”
Currently, information such as building control and highways information remains paper-based or is recorded in non-machine-readable formats.
Where data is available electronically, there are not established protocols for accessing, sharing and verifying that data, which leads to more delays, the government said in a statement.
Under a fully-digitalised home buying and selling process, it has promised that the information key parties need will be “within reach” immediately, while the necessary identity checks will only have to be carried out once.
The department is working with the property market, supported by HM Land Registry (HMLR), and has launched a 12-week project that will identify the design and implementation of agreed rules on data for the sector, so that it can be easily shared between conveyancers, lenders and other parties.
HMLR also intends to lead 10-month pilots with several councils to identify the best approach to opening up more of their data and making it digital, building on its work on digitising property information.
The work will be carried out in conjunction with the Digital Property Market Steering Group, which comprises industry and government experts committed to digitalising the home buying and selling process.
Maria Harris, chair of the Open Property Data Association, called the announcement a “significant step forward in the modernisation of the home buying and selling process”.
“The government’s commitment to streamlining transactions through digital property data will help create a more efficient, transparent, and cost-effective system for all, especially consumers,” Harris said.
“At OPDA, we have long advocated for smart, secure, and trusted data to be at the heart of this transformation, and we welcome this recognition of its importance.”
She added: “We are grateful to our members and supporters, particularly those who have worked tirelessly to develop Open Data standards and demonstrate their value in practice. This progress would not have been possible without their dedication.”
Further reading: New report calls on UK government to unlock £27bn Smart Data ‘revolution’
