How is the housing market going to normalise in 2022?

Although the residential property market in 2022 looks set to be at a more normalised pre-2020 position without the high transactional volumes of 2021, the indications are that there will be a very strong remortgage market.

This will partly be because of heightened activity driven by concerns around interest rate rises, and is particularly likely to be the case in the first half of the year.

Another key reason is a whole tranche of five-year fixed rate mortgages coming to the end of their tied-in period. Very many of these will be looking to remortgage over the next few months.

Financial advisers, and mortgage advisers in particular, who have been tremendously busy with house purchases over the past year, will also have more time to focus on their back book and getting in touch with existing customers.

Mortgage completion times are likely to return to pre-2020 levels. These definitely stretched during the stamp duty holiday, and the market being so busy was a significant factor.

There will be a very strong remortgage market

During 2021, ONP dealt with a record number of transactions, which included a total of more than 3,000 conveyancing completions in the month of June.

Compared with last year our workload increased dramatically, with pre-SDLT completion times rising from 100 days to 115 days in March then extending to 145 days in June. These have now dropped back to 135 days and we are striving to shorten them further.

One of the ways we achieved this was by changing our structure by creating two teams, one for complex cases and one for simple cases, with new cases being assessed for their complexity and then channeled into the appropriate team.

We also continue to improve our use of technology and we are continually investing in and developing this to make it as effective and as user-friendly as possible.

Role of conveyancing

Collaboration will be essential to the conveyancing process and the use of technology plays a pivotal role.

Instead of regarding the high level of activity during 2021 as a unique event resulting from the SDLT holiday and continuing to operate as before, the coming year should be a time for the sector to draw upon the recent experiences of this year and examine the way in which conveyancing is delivered.

This does not only involve conveyancers but everyone involved in the process of helping someone to move house.

Communication and the transfer of documents needs to be streamlined including the client, advisers, panel managers, conveyancers and lenders to stop duplication and create a better experience for the client.

The banking sector has already demonstrated the benefits of embracing technology and introducing more app-based services.