Stormy Skies Ahead Due to Stamp Duty Holiday.
Matt Gilpin, Founder and CEO at Sprift discusses the importance of data sharing and the single point of truth
It was welcome news for the residential property industry when the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak announced that there was a temporary increase in the standard rate stamp duty threshold (England and Northern Ireland) to £500,000 earlier this year.
The Stamp Duty Land Tax holiday has been a hot topic of conversation for many in the residential property industry – but are there stormy skies ahead as the end date of 31st March 2021 draws closer?
As transactions continue on their upward trajectory, I believe we must see the conveyancing and estate agency sectors collaborating closer than ever before, to ensure all completions occur before the deadline.
Attacking the anticipated lengthy transactions times will be critical for all concerned, and we’ll see many ‘burning the midnight oil’ in the months that lie ahead. The financial losses suffered as a result of lockdown will clearly be incentivising large numbers to close as many deals as possible between now and the end of March next year.
We know that conveyancing firms are already inundated thanks to the current frenetic market. However, the possibility of conveyancers closing their doors to new business because they are simply too overwhelmed by the large volumes of transactions, is already becoming a reality for some. We must do all we can to prevent this and to ensure the transactions that do proceed do so as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Now, more than ever, there are 2 key elements of the conveyancing process that could change and facilitate a superior handover and – ultimately – speed up the whole process, the real holy grail.
Firstly, there needs to be a real ‘joining of forces’, a big shift in the estate agent and conveyancer working relationship. And it is Property Data that has the power to unite them with estate agents now having the opportunity to furnish conveyancers with as much salient information as possible. And crucially, at property listing stage rather than waiting until an offer has been agreed between the buyer and seller.
Unrivalled data can help to provide real insight into a property, helping the conveyancer to answer questions such as: ‘how can I gain a real understanding of the property I am transacting?’ can only support the process. And, ultimately, the buyer needs to truly value the data being presented to them in order to make the appropriate purchase decisions.
I believe that agents shouldn’t underestimate the benefits of providing the best possible handover to the conveyancer. Consider that the conveyancer is unlikely to ever visit the property they are being asked to transact, so in addition to the Memorandum of Sale and EPC, share photos, floorplans, street view of the correct property, video tours or 3D walkthroughs, planning and build history and any land registry title information. The easier you make the conveyancers initial file set-up and the better their grasp of areas they need to investigate, the quicker start they will be able to make, with the desired outcome of attacking transaction times.
But of course, agents are busy too, and so technology must be the enabler here. Allowing agents access to a dashboard of data that can be called upon instantly for any property, to not only aid their research, but also to be the basis for a far superior handover to the conveyancer, all at the click of a button.
The second major shift is to see sellers engaging a conveyancer at the time that their property goes on the market, so that all the necessary documentation is in place when a sale is agreed.
I am sure that the most progressive agents are already actioning this and extolling its virtues upon vendors from the first valuation meeting.
In a challenging environment where every process and every activity seems to be impacted by delay, helping conveyancers to get the job done as efficiently as possible has become mission critical. The time is here for all parties involved to come together as one team in a bid to create a smoother house buying process and ultimately it is up to the estate agent to initialise the process.
The good news? That single access point for all relevant UK property data isn’t just a pipedream.
Enter Sprift.
Sprift is a platform designed to clean up UK property data and provide a single source of truth for everyone in the industry. How? By capturing data from every single property sale in the country (yes, even offline and private sales).
The result?
The most reliable source of property data in the UK – at your fingertips. With Sprift, you can save hundreds of hours’ worth of research and phone calls to local authorities and other key information holders, reducing the buying processes time not just by days, but by weeks.
To date, there are over 25 million properties stored on our platform, and we’ve saved our clients more than £19.5 million worth of research hours.
Contact us to find out more about Sprift’s UK property big data platform and how we can help you save time and win more business, or start your journey to faster selling by signing up for your free trial today
