The Conveyancing Association (CA) White Paper on ‘Modernising the Home Moving Process’ outlines how a future, more certain and transparent conveyancing process could operate.
The White Paper provides a comprehensive overview of the UK’s current home moving process, incorporating the results of the CA’s research and consultation with a variety of stakeholders across the industry, both in the UK and abroad. It reviews the solutions employed in other jurisdictions around the world in order to identify current constraints in the UK and potential solutions.
From gathering this evidence and following discussions of potential solutions, the CA is able to postulate what the future might hold in terms of its vision for a data-sharing, collaborative, digital home moving service. However, the CA is quick to point out that more fundamental actions need to be taken now to enable such a vision of the future.
The White Paper focuses particularly on the benefits to be gained from creating greater certainty far earlier in the home moving process. It suggests a number of ways in which this can be achieved including:
- Centralising the identity verification of the parties to reduce the risk of fraud and money laundering.
- Collating the Property Information and Title Information on the marketing of a property.
- Requiring a legal commitment on offer to reduce transaction failures.
- Requiring completion monies to be sent through the day before completion.
- Amending the Commonhold & Leasehold Reform Act 2002 to resolve the unreasonable cost and delay now associated with the leasehold sales process.
- Providing a reliable lending decision-in-principle based on a ‘hard’ credit report without impacting on the applicant’s credit score.
- Reviewing the CML Handbook to remove anomalies and ambiguous entries which generate post-valuation enquiries.
- Creating a secure portal through which a trusted e-community of law firms, lenders and estate agents can communicate to avoid fraud.