A coalition known as the Digital Property Market Steering Group (DPMSG), including government entities, legal property professionals, surveyors, conveyancers, lenders and estate agents, has been formed to accelerate the property market’s adoption of digital technology.
The team’s aim is to increase the speed of the sector’s digital transformation, while ensuring the transformation is transparent, secure and consumer friendly.
In announcing the group, HM Land Registry noted: “If information about properties was available immediately to all concerned and everything was handled digitally, it could speed up the property market and reduce stress and the risk of failed transactions.
“It is more than 20 years since the Land Registration Act 2002 was introduced with the hope that ‘e-conveyancing’, which it enabled in law, would deliver these kinds of benefits. There has been some progress since then, but the job of modernising the process has proved more challenging than envisaged and one that no single institution can achieve on its own.”
Thus the DPMSG includes the likes of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the Conveyancing Association and the Law Society.
HM Land Registry added: “Through collaboration, innovation and a focus on emerging digital technologies we will build on existing progress across the home buying and selling system to get a better result for the customer: simpler, faster, more certain and less stressful.”
No silver bullet
Lubna Shuja, president of the Law Society of England and Wales, said: “Although there is no silver bullet, digitisation will be transformative in this work, especially in relation to ID, digital deeds, digital registration, and providing important information to consumers about both the process and the property at an early stage.”
There are four DPMSG working groups that will focus on:
- public commitment;
- removing barriers and empowering members to drive change via upfront information;
- research and development, in particular embracing the disruptor of a digital identity scheme; and
- increasing transparency by advocating for data initiatives and exploring interoperability.
The DPMSG will hold a joint Government and industry launch event with the theme Digital Property Market in London on 12 September.
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