A faster, smarter property market? Inside the government’s reform roadmap

The government recently published a roadmap on their plans to reform the current home buying and selling system. Central to these proposals is the digitalisation of the conveyancing process to improve efficiency and transparency. A well-functioning system, the government argues, is one that “allows people to move into the right homes at the right time, enables households to put down roots in a community and supports labour mobility by making it easier to relocate for jobs.”

One of the key challenges identified is the lack of transparency throughout the transaction process. Information is often “missing, late or inconsistent,” with issues frequently emerging only after significant time and money have already been invested. To address this, the government wants to introduce the requirement of “upfront information” at the point of listing.

But what does “upfront information” mean? In simple terms, it is an information pack that sellers would be expected to disclose. For instance, key facts such as tenure, EPC rating, property type and council tax band. The government has also suggested expanding this to include standard searches (such as drainage and water searches, environmental searches), property information captured in the TA6 form and a property condition assessment tailored to the property age and type.

Currently, it takes an average of 120 days to complete a transaction once an offer has been accepted and around 1 in 3 transactions fall through costing £400m annually. It is hoped that by providing access to the right information at the right time, inefficiencies can be significantly reduced and a faster, more consistent and reliable process, enabled by modern digital tools, can be achieved.

At first glance, these proposals appear sensible and effective. However, a similar attempt was made in 2007 and later abolished in 2010 in the form of Home Information Packs (HIP). The HIP concept also tried to remove inefficiencies, but instead had the opposite effect due to the added upfront costs and because in many transactions “…the searches obtained would be out of date by the time the transaction progressed…” This led to a lack of trust, with buyers often commissioning their own searches and surveys instead.

The government seeks to address this issue by leveraging real time data sources, such as HM Land Registry, and proposing standard validity periods, such as 6 months for searches. This could ensure reliability, consistency while addressing the issues that undermined HIPs.

However, the reforms also go beyond improving information flows. The government recognises that transactions collapse because commitments between parties remain weak until late in the process. It has therefore proposed earlier, more binding conditional contracts once upfront sales packs are fully embedded, to strengthen commitment from both buyers and sellers.

Ultimately, the success of these reforms will depend on effective implementation, to avoid repeating another HIP scenario. Technology and digitalisation underpin the government’s vision for home buying and selling, and it is hoped that, by leveraging innovation, longstanding inefficiencies can be eliminated, enabling a more streamlined, transparent and reliable system to take root.