Even before major reforms to the homebuying and property sector take effect, there is opportunity for significant productivity gains across the property industry, a new report shows.
The research from the Future Property Transaction Group (FPT Group), a multi-stakeholder initiative instigated by PEXA, shows that collaborative digital adoption and process enhancement has the potential to halve the current mortgage completion timeline from an average of 126 days to just 59 days from application.
The report is the culmination of a regional pilot in West Yorkshire lasting more than 12 months, established with the goal of being a “regional proof point for a national problem”. By pooling over 40,000 lines of anonymised data from lenders, conveyancers, and tech providers, the group has identified a number of actions to help address the fragmentation and systemic inefficiency that costs the UK economy an estimated £1.5 billion annually in failed transactions.
The FPT Group proposes a balanced roadmap for stakeholders, covering three categories of action:
1. Immediate practical steps: Encouraging early legal instruction upon property listing and wider adoption of digital onboarding to address post-offer delays.
2. Future pilot opportunities: Launching an integrated digital transaction pilot and enhanced upfront leasehold information trials.
3. Strategic system shifts: Advocating for unified digital identity, supporting the shift of AML supervision to the FCA, and prioritising interoperable infrastructure that enables secure data sharing across the transaction.
The FPT Group’s analysis highlights that while the total 'time to move' currently averages over 200 days, many of the tools to address key friction points exists today, and if the market were able to operate at the speed of the top 50% of transactions, the average time to buy a home would be halved.
During the mortgage timeline, transitioning from manual to digital workflows can reduce the application-to-completion period by 53%.
Adopting digital Source of Funds (SoF) tools can also deliver an 80–90% efficiency gain, reducing processing times from 2–3 weeks of manual "back and forth" to just 2–3 days.
In addition, the report found leasehold transactions take an average of 34 days longer than freeholds, often due to a lack of early clarity regarding management company details.
Joe Pepper, UK CEO of PEXA, said: “The FPT Group was set up to provide a collaborative space in which all industry players can drive progress in the home buying journey. The market is under immense pressure, with consumers increasingly expecting faster progress and clearer updates, so anything we can do to ease the burden for conveyancers who are trying to deliver good consumer outcomes should be a top priority.
“There are clearly steps that we can take to drive progress in the short-term. Longer-term, the Government is quite rightly looking holistically at what positive reforms can support our industry and improve the home buying process. This shared endeavour shows the ability and willingness of the sector to come together and drive positive change. What is critical now, for both the industry, and government, is to act on this insight.
“It is clear that the priorities for the sector include digitising processes to address the top pain points, such as AML checks, creating a system that is more transparent and upfront with data, and setting far more realistic expectations with consumers for what is a significant legal undertaking. The stats around the time saving for digitising checks and the transfer of funds simply cannot be ignored.”
Maria Harris, chair of the Open Property Data Association (OPDA), commented: “With the recent progress of the Data (Use and Access) Act and the government’s identification of property as a priority use case for Smart Data, the timing of this report could not be more pertinent. The industry must now move from fragmented efforts to a cohesive, data-driven ecosystem. The insights gathered by this group regarding digital identity and data interoperability provide the tangible evidence needed to demonstrate how we can reduce transaction times and failure rates.”
