"The curtain call for 2019 couldn’t come soon enough for a conveyancing market which was rocked by political peaks and troughs"
Quarterly transactions saw a quarterly drop of 8% and an annual fall of 15% to 226,444.
Q4 transactions were at their lowest since Q2 2017 (210,964) – another period of heightened political uncertainty which saw the UK triggering Article 50 in March 2017, followed by the calling of the previous general election.
Additionally, the total number of active conveyancers fell to a record low of 3,920. This is a quarterly decrease of 41 firms and represents the second time since records began in 2011 that the total active firms have dropped below 4,000.
When broken down in more detail, the spread of transactions across the market points towards a trend of smaller firms coming out on top at the end of the year, in context of a period which saw significantly dampened activity.
Q4 unusually saw a rise in the number of firms doing 1-5 transactions per month - the only segment of the market to experience an increase in comparison to five years ago. There was a 3% quarterly increase in the number of “occasional conveyancers” from 1,629 to 1,678.
The top 1,000 firms by number of transactions experienced their worst quarter of 2019 for business, registering 161,120 transactions in total. This is a quarterly drop of 14% and a 20% decline on the same period in 2018. The top 200 firms also witnessed their most challenging quarter of the year and reported a 13% quarterly decline in activity.
Conversely, those firms outside the top 1,000 achieved their best quarterly figures for the year, surging by 8% on Q3. However, this still represents an annual decline of 2%, with transactions completed outside of the top 1,000 firms totalling 66,802 in Q4 2018.
The top 1,000 firms saw their market share fall to the lowest level since 2012, with the remaining firms seizing a 29% share.
However, the very largest firms at the top of the market were somewhat insulated from this trend. Despite fewer transactions in the market, they still saw their share of conveyancing activity increase annually from 5.4% in Q4 2018 to 6.0% in Q4.
Andy Sommerville, director of Search Acumen, commented: “The curtain call for 2019 couldn’t come soon enough for a conveyancing market which was rocked by political peaks and troughs, prompting several indicators to annual or even record lows in Q4. What has come as a surprise is the comeback of smaller conveyancers which gives us hope that the market is not broken from top to bottom, but remains in need of transformation.”
“Despite the market slowdown, property buyers and investors have not made a flight to the top but instead continue to work with smaller conveyancers who bring local, well-honed expertise to the table.
“Given the improved political climate at the very end of 2019, the next challenge for firms will be to ride the likely surge in demand as the backlog of transactions that were put on hold start to be unleashed as consumer and business confidence returns.
“Getting from a verbal agreement to a completed transaction can still be an excessively complex, drawn-out and inefficient process – adding financial risk and additional friction to residential and commercial property markets. Despite the promise of increased technology, the user experience often remains poor – for conveyancers and solicitors, as well as their clients – and continues to lag behind the advances seen in other sectors.
“In many cases, the technology itself is here, and for the decade ahead to truly deliver on the promise of industry change, we urge conveyancers big and small to harness available data and upskill in new innovations.”
