A digital property transaction plaform launched this week could slash turnaround times for complex mortgage cases by up to four weeks, the creators have claimed.
When You Move is an integrated platform designed to speed up the correspondence between all of the parties involved in a property transaction, from agent and broker to solicitor and end client.
According to the makers, the desktop and app-based service offers real-time updates and case-tracking and enables documents to be uploaded and verified electronically.
Brokers receive the same, or a higher, referral fee, while the solicitor almost doubles their legal fee in some cases.
The client pays the same total fee as with most other conveyancing referral platforms, and When You Move takes a fraction of the referral fee due to its ability to run the whole transaction through the platform.
At the time of launch on Monday (18 September), When You Move was able to facilitate in excess of 1,000 cases, and five property law firms, including Gordon’s Property Lawyers and Right Choice Conveyancing, were on its panel.
According to an independent survey of 2,000 UK adults commissioned by When You Move, a quarter (24 per cent) of UK homeowners have wanted to sell their home but decided not to as the process was considered too long and stressful.
As a result, £1.4tn-worth of property has been left off the market over the past 10 years.
Chief executive Simon Bath said: “The onboarding process for the legal aspect of a property transaction is an area of huge delay dude to the creation, posting and acceptance of onboarding documentation. This delay can be as bad as four weeks in some traditional firms.
“When You Move will provide a tech solution that could cut this to a matter of hours, therefore taking out a huge chunk of time that it takes to buy or sell a property.”
Nick Green, broker at Coventry-based Alternative Estates, said the system his firm uses for conveyancing is already automated and uses the services of 10 property law firms.
He said: “They are only as quick as how quick the seller fills in the information and returns the documents. I don’t know how they can speed up the process. You still have to have fixtures and fittings property information forms and the client might not send them back for two weeks.
“Also, how thorough are the searches going to be? If you fast track the local authority search and it has missed off information, you could end up with a motorway in your garden.”
simon.allin@ft.com
