A new portal has been launched with a view reducing property transaction fall through rates.
The LB Property portal allows estate agents to obtain multiple conveyancing quotes for house buyers from their chosen legal partners – either before or after an offer is accepted on a property.
Once a quotation turns to instruction, estate agents and the property buyer can then track the entire conveyancing process in real time to completion through its tracking capability. It also helps all parties to identify and overcome hold ups faster.
The portal, which has been launched by Legal Bricks, which is part of Access Legal, provides a customised online property search platform and a full suite of conveyancing and anti-money laundering products.
Mike Connelly, commercial director and founder of Legal Bricks, commented: “Estate agents and conveyancers are more conscious than ever about how long a property transaction takes and want to use legal tech to reduce completion times. Whilst some things are out of an agent’s control there are points in the journey they can reduce the overall completion time. The time between having an offer accepted and instructing is the first important step to make the journey more efficient for all parties.”
Connelly hopes that LB Property will also help estate agents to further strengthen partnerships with conveyancing firms.
He added: “More estate agents partner with conveyancers because of quality of work, reputation, locality, and price. Therefore, it’s become a priority for agents to make those relationships work and our new portal provides benefits to both sides. Agents can increase referral fees while conveyancers can boost leads.”
The real issue is that the property transaction process is back to front.
A better system would be for a Report on Title to be prepared before marketing the property and for all documentation that will be required to be provided and all legal documents to be prepared before marketing the property ie, in essence, do the legal work upfront.
Searches can be obtained upon an offer being accepted.
Lenders need to review if a valuation is actually required and to improve how they release completion monies.
In this way if exchange is at the time an offer is accepted (the buyer having taken legal advice and reviewed documents before making an offer) completion could be within 4 weeks.
Increasing referral fees and potential leads won’t really solve anything.
What is required is a change in approach-and it doesn’t involve more tech.
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