SPECIAL FEATURE: how switching your property search provider can help beat the backlogs – IPSA
SPECIAL FEATURE: IPSA Chairman Andrew Prismall explains how switching your property search provider can help beat the backlogs – and be good for quality and choice.
We all know that buying a new house – or any property – can be an incredibly frustrating process.
Since 2019, the average time it takes to complete a house purchase has risen from 124 to 153 days.
That’s a significant increase and Smoove’s Home Movers Report – from which the statistic is taken – lays much of the blame on the post-pandemic property boom and the backlogs it has created.
Some of those backlogs involve property searches. Here at IPSA, we are aware of some cases where conveyancing solicitors are being told local searches could take up to three months to be completed.
That is bad for the vendor, bad for the purchaser and bad for all the professionals involved in the conveyancing process.
There is no single reason for these delays – the rush of business caused by the Stamp Duty holiday during the pandemic, cuts to local authority budgets and the consolidation of a large percentage of the property search industry into the hands of a few big providers have all played their part.
And because of the scale of the issue, it sometimes feels as if there is nothing anybody in the conveyancing business can do about it.
But that is not the case.
Let me give a real-life example to illustrate my point.
Just a couple of weeks ago we were told of a case in the North East of the country in which a conveyancing solicitor was told by their retained, large-scale search supplier that the searches they needed for a home sale would take between two to three months to complete.
The solicitor thought they had no choice but to go along with the suggested timescale and reluctantly agreed. A couple of days later they happened to mention it to a member of IPSA at a networking event and were staggered to learn that the local expert reckoned it would take just a matter of days to turn the searches around.
And not only would the local search provider be able to provide the searches in a fraction of the time, but they could also bring their expert local knowledge to it and so ensure the results were of the highest possible quality.
These two words – choice and quality – are central to the way IPSA believes local search providers can help drive down delays in the conveyancing system to the benefit of all involved and can work.
Let’s start with choice.
The Competition and Markets Authority, in a recent ruling concerning the acquisition of TM Group (UK) Limited by Dye and Durham (UK) Limited, found that fewer and fewer companies were gaining a larger and larger share of the search market.
The CMA said that small, locally-based search providers had seen their market share fall since 2018 and now accounted for less than 30 per cent of the market.
At the same time, delays in the conveyancing process have been getting longer and longer.
That’s why we think wider choice in the marketplace is good for all concerned – and were pleased when the CMA ruled that the Dye and Durham acquisition would have further reduced choice by creating a substantial lessening of competition.
It’s not just the number of companies in the market which defines choice, of course. Sometimes the sheer size and scale of the bigger operators has a chilling effect on the market, making it seem increasingly difficult for conveyancers to turn elsewhere and for smaller rivals to compete.
In fact, recent research showed that 21 per cent of solicitors believed they had no choice in search provision, despite the presence of high-quality local search experts in every corner of the country.
That could be because their office manager had tied them into a deal with a big provider, they were worried about not getting future referrals or they simply did not realise that other choices were available.
Whatever the reason, every one of those solicitors is missing out on the chance to speed up the search process, bring in brilliant local expertise and keep their clients as happy as possible. And making the switch is as simple as getting in touch with IPSA or your local search provider and seeing how they can help you.
IPSA represents more than 70 independent search businesses, bringing them together to create a national network of local expertise. These are professionals that you will know and respect, people in your networking group and who, more often than not, have their roots firmly established in the communities they serve.
All our members have completed an online exam, are fully insured and must comply with our code of conduct. They can boast encyclopaedic local knowledge, are on hand to visit sites if necessary, often have decades of experience of the property landscape and searches in their area and always have their fingers on the pulse of the latest local developments as well as up-to-date national expertise through IPSA’s CPD work.
That means you can turn to them safe in the knowledge that quality will inform every aspect of their work – and that they will do everything in their power to expedite searches in the shortest possible time with the sort of personal service you’d expect from a passionate professional.
As an association, IPSA’s expertise is valued within the industry and by Government. We liaise with other industry bodies such as the Property Codes Compliance Board (PCCB) and the Council of Property Search Organisations (CoPSO), whilst I have a seat on the HMLR External Advisory Board and HMLR Industry Panel and attend regular meetings of the Genesis Initiative at the Bank of England.
All this means that IPSA can bring you local knowledge and expertise with national reach. And that’s something we should all be searching for.
Written by Andrew Prismall, Chairman of IPSA.
Andrew Prismall, Chairman, IPSA
IPSA, the Association of Independent Personal Search Agents, is a not-for-profit network of property search experts across the UK. It provides access to local search experts to solicitors and conveyancers as part of the legal requirements for purchasing land and property.
Kindly shared by Association of Independent Personal Search Agents (IPSA)
Main photo courtesy of Pixabay
