Politicians have been told that conveyancers across the sector are facing ‘scope creep’ — due to increased responsibilities being paced on them.
Speaking at the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee Inquiry into improving the house buying process, the Conveyancing Association (CA) said this was 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, who is a licensed conveyancer and legal executive, said the work required of conveyancers had grown considerably in recent years, resulting in average transaction times of 22 weeks-plus.
She pointed to onerous leasehold requirements, 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.
Rudolf said there was also a problem with the dematerialisation of deed packs, which occurred after 2002. This saw deeds and other important documents sent back to owners. But many have subsequently lost these documents, not realising how important they were, creating additional problems for conveyancers.
She added: “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 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.
“Previously 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.”
This evidence session was also attended by the Home Buying & Selling Group, the HomeOwners’ Alliance, the Open Property Data Association, Rics and Propertymark, who all contributed views on how the home buying and selling process could be improved.
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. This is a huge problem.”
If buyers had more information upfront this would also reduce the umber of transactions that fall through due to buyers pulling out of the deal, or mortgage lenders not agreeing to funds.
“That information should be given upfront so the buyer can understand what it means to them.”
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.
The panel of interviewees were also unanimous in their view that regulation of property agents is required to ensure they are educated on the laws impacting them and action taken if they fail to comply.
