Brown: Growing agreement about what change is needed
There is strong support among conveyancers, estate agents and lenders for the government’s home-buying reforms and many think they can now start planning for change, according to new research.
The reforms, as laid out by the government in June in its roadmap [1], chime with home movers too, with 73% of people who have recently bought or sold a home wishing they had known more about the property or its location before making or accepting an offer.
Landmark Information Group’s report, Property transaction reform: What the market wants next [2], drew on responses from 500 home movers, 100 estate agents, 100 conveyancers and 50 mortgage lenders.
They all described the same pressure points from different points of view, researchers found: missing context before decisions were made, risks surfacing too late, repeated follow-up and too little confidence that information would carry reliably from one stage to the next.
“The answer is ultimately sequencing the transaction in a logical order to bring about better certainty and speed,” the report said.
“The four priorities set out in this research suggest a practical direction for improvement: prepare earlier, close the upfront information gap, build greater certainty before pressure builds and make progress easier to see.”
Four in five of the property professionals agreed that meaningful reform of the home-buying process was long overdue and the results showed how many in the market felt able to begin preparing at this stage of the roadmap.
Some 68% of professionals said there was enough clarity for organisations to start considering what changes may be needed, while 64% agreed the roadmap was being developed with sufficient collaboration from across the sector.
But Landmark warned that the foundations for more certain transactions needed to be “built consistently across the market”.
Almost all movers agreed that having key property information available at the point of listing would make moving less stressful, as would that knowing their estate agent, conveyancer and lender were working from the same information.
When professionals were asked to identify the single most likely cause of an otherwise viable transaction failing, missing, incomplete or inconsistent upfront information ranked behind only mortgage-related issues.
Some 77% of conveyancers also identified upfront information and data readiness as having potentially the biggest positive impact on their productivity and business success.
There were already signs of improvements. Conveyancers said a third of files required additional enquiries due to missing, incomplete or inaccurate information, down from 43% last year and 51% the year before.
And while conveyancers estimated that they spent 34% of their working day chasing or being chased, the figure was down from 41% last year.
Landmark chief executive Simon Brown said: “The direction for reform has been set, but the real challenge is how we turn that ambition into practical delivery.
“Our research shows that home movers and property professionals are experiencing many of the same problems, whether that is making important decisions without the right information or spending valuable time trying to understand how a transaction is progressing.
“There is growing agreement about where improvements are needed, and the industry is increasingly coming together to address them.
“The opportunity now is to translate that shared understanding into action by making information available earlier, improving visibility and enabling trusted data to move more effectively between parties.”
Former licensed conveyancer Rob Gurney, the managing director of Ochresoft, added: “The reduction in additional enquiries is encouraging, but conveyancers are still dealing with too many issues that could have been identified before a transaction reaches the legal process.”
Separately, the latest industry sentiment tracker from the Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) has found stamp duty reform the top of the wish list for next week’s Budget.
More than one in four conveyancers (27%) wanted to see stamp duty changes, closely followed by measures to improve mortgage affordability and access to finance (23%), greater fiscal and tax certainty for the property sector (17%), and more support for first time buyers (15%).
Confidence in the stability of the property market has sunk to its lowest (26%) since the regulator started its quarterly survey at the start of 2025.
Stephen Ward, director of strategy and external relations at the CLC, said: “Current market conditions are undeniably challenging, and it remains to be seen whether the Chancellor will intervene, but we have weathered worse storms and what we must not forget is the government’s roadmap.
“These long-awaited changes will revitalise the market, making a meaningful difference to both consumers and to those working in it, but it needs the support of everyone across the property sector so I urge the industry to embrace the plans and work together to deliver them as swiftly and effectively as possible.”