The government launched major new plans to save people time and money when they buy a home.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government announced:

• A 12-week project to identify the design and implementation of agreed rules on data for the sector, so it can easily be shared between conveyancers, lenders and other parties involved in a transaction
• 10-month pilots with several councils to identify the best approach to opening up more of their data and making it digital
• Plans to push ahead with digital identity verification services, including in the property sector.

The government wants to ‘give much-needed certainty to everyone involved in property transactions’, with one million taking place in the UK every year.

Buying and selling can be long and frustrating, partly because all parties can’t access the same information, nor can it necessarily be trusted. The buyer needs their own conveyancer and surveyor to do the necessary checks, for example, and businesses need to fulfil identity checks and anti-money laundering requirements, meaning the buyer has to give this information multiple times.

By developing the trust frameworks we need to ensure that accurate data can be moved securely, we can make more information available to everyone upfront. This makes it less likely buyers will face surprises later in the process which, in turn, will cut delays and the number of transactions collapsing.

It will become quicker and easier for millions of people to buy a home, including your clients which, by extension, helps your business.

There’s current momentum to make digital home buying a reality, partly driven by the new government, although this work has been in train for longer.

The pilots will be led by the Digital Property Market Steering Group (DPMSG) – a group of 18 industry and government organisations, representing different professions from lending to conveyancing associations. All are committed to digitising and digitalising the home buying and selling process and delivering this change.

Within the DPMSG, the Home Buying and Selling Group, Conveyancing Association and The Open Property Data Association (OPDA) have worked particularly hard to bring the industry together and drive the shift towards digitising property data.

It’s been a great example of the power of collaboration across the industry, between different sectors and with the government. Members of different organisations took a ‘leap of faith’ to create open data standards and do the work in their own systems to evidence that this shift can be successful.

Lloyds Banking Group is committed to digital transformation and works closely with a wide range of organisations to digitise property data, including being a member of, and working closely with, the OPDA.

Last year we also made a strategic investment in proptech business Coadjute, alongside Nationwide, NatWest and Rightmove.

Coadjute is bringing estate agents, conveyancers, mortgage lenders, buyers and sellers together onto a single network, where all parties are verified and data can be shared securely in a standardised way. Important information, from deeds to digital identity, can all be exchanged quickly and securely regardless of the system the party involved uses.

None of this work is possible in isolation and while the OPDA is working to digitise property data, Coadjute is ‘building the rails’ along which the data will travel. All of the organisations involved in this work are needed to reach the ultimate goal of digital homebuying.

You may be thinking that the majority of delays in the purchase process happen after the mortgage offer. And you’d be correct. While there is further to go to digitalise the app-to-completion mortgage process, huge progress has already been made and timelines substantially cut.

This new work is about speeding up other parts of the process, such as surveying and conveyancing.

But this affects brokers too.

How many times have you had worried clients on the phone faced with delays or had to call the solicitor to get an update? Reducing these delays reduces the time you waste chasing others and frees you up to advise more clients.

Fewer fall-throughs have a direct impact on your clients and therefore on your bottom line too.

At the same time, you can benefit from accessing trusted information, such as verified ID. And, by embracing technology that’s already available to speed up the mortgage process, such as APIs to enable direct submission from your sourcing system, you can save time, as we explained in Going digital.

Digital home buying has been on the horizon for years but, in 2025, we’ll move one step closer to increased certainty, fewer delays and fall-throughs, and much less administration for all of us.

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