The group includes estate and letting agents, property lawyers, mortgage lenders and representatives of organisations such as Land Registry, the Law Society, the Society of Licensed Conveyancers, Conveyancing Association, Bold Legal Group, RPSA, Northwoods, The Property Ombudsman, Rightmove, and the Building Societies Association.
At the first meeting, chaired by industry expert Kate Faulkner of Propertychecklists.co.uk and hosted by TwentyCi, the property data and marketing technology company, members shared their experiences of problems faced by consumers when buying a home, and put forward suggestions for easing the situation, with government help where necessary.
Matt Prior, from the Ministry of Housing Communities & Local Government was at the meeting to hear the debate.
The discussion confirmed that one of the biggest issues facing home-buyers is the uncertainty, around both timescales and whether the sale will fall through, as 20-30% do. Research is now being carried out by the group into the feasibility of creating certainty through binding offers or reservations, as well as ways to provide consumers with better data to help their decision making process.
To facilitate change, smaller teams have been set up to investigate providing more information before sale, creating more certainty at offer stage, improving education, both of consumers and people within the property industry and ways to solve leasehold issues.
Founder and CEO of Emoov, Russell Quirk, commented: “I’m delighted to be a part of a group of such dignified stakeholders, and poised to use their various industry and regulatory expertise to at last improve the archaic and problematic house buying and selling process.”
