The Labour Party has targeted digitising the homebuying process, saying it could shorten delays of almost five months.
The government said it would open up key property information, ensuring that data can more easily be shared amongst trusted professionals to quicken up the buying and selling process.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said “by making key information available at people’s fingertips, it will be far less likely for surprises to be encountered later on in the process. This will make it easier for people to get onto the housing ladder, reduce the requirement to share ID in-person in the long-term, and decrease the number of transactions collapsing.”
The government says fall throughs – which impact one in three transactions – cost people around £400m a year, on top of the four million working days lost by conveyancers and estate agents alone which is equivalent to £1 billion.
The government claims that information such as building control and highways information is predominantly paper-based or recorded in non-machine-readable formats. On top of this, where data is available electronically, there are no established protocols for accessing, sharing and verifying that data which leads to more delays.
But under a fully digitalised home buying and selling process, the information key parties need – from mortgage companies to surveyors – will be within reach immediately, with the necessary identity checks carried out once.
Simon Brown, chief executive, Landmark Information Group, said “for this transformation to be truly effective, it’s essential that government and industry work together to ensure seamless implementation and ensure a wide range of industry voices are engaged in future work on this issue. We look forward to collaborating with Government to drive this forward.”
The call comes amidst Angela Rayner, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, reiterating the commitment to build 1.5 million new homes over the course of the parliament.
Nathan Emerson, chief executive of Propertymark, said “It is essential that full attention is turned to implementing legislation that allows for this ambition to become a reality, and that there is wide-ranging engagement to ensure all plans bring the correct levels of infrastructure and help deliver a balanced housing mix on a regional basis.
Ultimately, to keep pace, there will need to be almost thirty thousand new homes constructed every month before summer 2029. We also welcome plans to help speed up the buying and selling process via the proposal of making better use of technology. The housing sector will benefit enormously from digitisation, such commitment will ultimately bring vast consumer value and help streamline systems that have long needed progression.”
The Government is being urged to invest in planning system
The British Property Federation (BPF) has urged Chancellor Rachel Reeves to better fund planning departments to improve the speed of UK housebuilding.
Currently planning departments are seen as a bottleneck when it comes to producing new housing supply, while the BPF also pointed the finger at an inefficient development approval system.
The organisation said there’s a need for 300 planners, adding that planning departments should be able to fully recover their development control costs, and income should be ring-fenced to protect the service.
Melanie Leech, chief executive, British Property Federation, said “the government’s reforms to the planning system will not deliver homes, infrastructure and growth unless the regulatory and planning system is made more efficient and adequately resourced.
To unlock the billions of pounds of investment needed to build more homes, employment spaces, infrastructure and to support improvements in key public services such as the NHS, we need the government to create a supportive fiscal and regulatory environment that will give the real estate sector the confidence to take long-term investment decisions. That requires a new smarter approach to regulation and ensuring that it is properly resourced.”
Alongside planning departments there’s a need for statutory consultees and other regulators to be better resourced, the BPF added.
As it stands, the backlog of applications going through the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) is causing projects to either be delayed or abandoned altogether.
Delays at Land Registry of between 18-24 months are saddling investors who no longer have an economic interest in a building with unnecessary legal commitments and is preventing new owners from taking full control of a building and making productive use of it.
The BPF calculated that legal teams waste 12,000 working days every year chasing applications, meaning targeted resources are needed to bring these backlogs down without delay.
The BPF argued for a 10-year rent settlement to support private investment to deliver an additional 240,000 affordable homes over a five-year period.
Stamp Duty Multiple Dwellings Relief should also be reinstated, according to the BPF, to support valuations and development viability of build-to-rent, which has the potential to deliver up to 30,000 homes a year with the right fiscal and regulatory environment.
The BPF said it wants to work with the government to review the current NHS funding system to enable private capital to address the NHS maintenance backlog, and support investment in new buildings. Public sector capital alone will struggle to deliver the improvement and upgrades needed in these estates to support productivity and address waiting lists.