“There have been so many question marks for so long, people are just sick of it,” he says.
According to Mr Murphy, a London-based mortgage adviser until two years ago, housing has not seen any major downturns – in fact, demand is growing, with prospective homeowners looking to take advantage of a fall in prices.
He explains: “Prices-wise, London is down by 15 per cent or more from where it was three or four years ago.
“But I would say there is a big uptake in interest, and there are definitely more people out there looking for property.”
He adds: “There are lots of parts of London where prices have dropped, so there is quite good value to find out there.”
Brexit uncertainty
So how has Brexit impacted housing in London? Mr Murphy explains: “There was a knee-jerk reaction when the referendum first happened.
“Now, most people I speak to say mortgage applicant registrations are up, and more people are looking for a property this year than at this time last year.”
He says Brexit has not affected housing too negatively, though it has had some impact.
Nevertheless, he says the impact has already been felt over the past three years.
He says: “It has been a slow descent, but house prices were already on their way down anyway, so most likely this was just slightly exacerbated by Brexit.
“But most people are not sitting there in a blind panic saying, ‘I am not going to buy a property’.
“Eventually, you do get to a point where people... need to get on with their lives they need somewhere to live.”
Mr Murphy says: “The big factors currently restricting the market place would be stamp duty and the initial cash outlay or deposit.
“But the reality is a mortgage is always cheaper than renting in the long term.”
Streamlining mortgages
In 2017, Mr Murphy led the development of the mortgage technology platform Smartr365, with a mission to streamline the process of taking out a mortgage, after having witnessed the inefficiencies of the industry throughout his career as a broker and mortgage adviser.
Currently, it takes 10 to 12 hours to process a mortgage and so the point is to speed things along and improve efficiency through better communication with all parties involved, he says.
He adds: “If someone else had already changed it, we would not have needed to, but when we looked around for what was needed we saw an opportunity, so that’s what we focused on.”
The mortgage technology platform, which allows mortgage brokers and advisers to manage clients’ portfolios easily from one place, benefiting from automated updates, was officially up and running in December 2018, after receiving a £3m investment from Legal & General.
Mr Murphy says he wants to create efficiency. He explains: “We are very much focused on the application journey, keeping all parties – purchaser, intermediary, conveyancer and lender – in the loop and digitising the process.
“It is a cloud-based system, which streamlines the process and empowers better financial decisions and planning for clients; combined with bank-grade security, it gives clients access to all of their financial data in one place.”
For advisers, this means it reduces the time required to process a mortgage and allows them to manage their clients’ portfolios easily from one place, but the leading reason for increased technology and integration is to improve and enhance customer benefits, he continues.
Frictionless process
Over the next few months, Mr Murphy says one key focus will be to get lenders to accept Smartr365’s frictionless process.
Mr Murphy explains: “This is an automated process to identity, address and income verification.”
He continues: “We have these processes built within Smartr365 already, and we feel that once lenders accept these processes or accept processes automating these key steps, then the entire transaction can move much, much more quickly because submitting applications quickly doesn’t actually help you very much if the rest of the process is slow.”
He explains: “There is a requirement currently from mortgage lenders on brokers to fulfil certain requirements around identity and income verification.
“The onus is put from the lender on the adviser and there is an accepted definition of what the broker should do: see the individual face-to-face and verify their documents, that they are one and the same; but the accepted method of doing that is a face-to-face transaction.”
Victoria Ticha is a features writer at FTAdviser.com and Financial Adviser
