Minister Plans Digital Shift for Faster House Sales

Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook is taking advantage of the proptech boom to make buying and selling homes cheaper and more manageable.

The minister hopes homeowners and buyers will benefit yearly from his plan to digitise key property data in some million house sales a year.

Pennybrook also wants to cut the fall-through rate of one in three sales aborted.

He says the 300,000 sales that do not proceed waste around £400 million a year in unnecessary fees and costs for owners and sellers and £1 billion in legal expenses.

When asked how the conveyancing process could be improved, almost a third of adults surveyed by the Homeowners Alliance in 2024 said it should be faster.

Instant documents

Many countries have digitised the home-buying process, with Norway being one of the most successful. In Norway, the time from making an offer to handing over the keys is just a month.

Councils and government agencies will make property data instantly available to revolutionise home sales. This will make the process cheaper and much faster than the average five months lawyers and conveyancers take to complete a transaction.

The government has identified that buying and selling is frustrating due to the lack of digitisation and wants to make the data easy and instant to share among legal professionals.

Pennycook said: "We are streamlining the cumbersome home-buying process to fit the twenty-first century. This will help homebuyers save money, gain time, and reduce stress while reducing the number of house sales that fall through."

Property data, such as building control and highway information, is often paper-based or recorded in non-machine-readable formats. Where data is available electronically, there are no protocols for accessing, sharing, and verifying it, leading to delays.

Digitisation means no surprises

A fully digitalised home buying and selling process puts the information key parties need within easy reach- from mortgage companies to surveyors, with the necessary identity checks carried out once.

"Clear information early on will mean there are no surprises late on in the transaction which might cause it to fall through, so the transaction is completed smoothly without unnecessary time, energy or money spent," explained the minister.

The digitising process starts today, with the Land Registry (HMLR) announcing a 12-week project to agree on rules for data sharing in the property sector between conveyancers, lenders, and other parties involved in a transaction. HMLR will also explore how to make more local council property data public.

Conveyancing Association director of delivery Beth Rudolf believes the digitisation project will open the door to other uses besides speeding up home sales.

She said: "We believe this is not just about its use for home buying and selling, but it will provide far greater benefits across the lifecycle of a property, enabling parties to have the right view of the property data whenever they transact, whether for a remortgage, making a planning application, for letting or retrofitting to meet net-zero targets."