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It’s that time of year again… The return of Philip Hammond and the red box. So what’s in store for the housing market? Fighting for position with Brexit, it was touch and go as to whether it would even make it onto the agenda – but thankfully it did.

As always, the question will be “is it enough?”. tmgroup’s Chief Financial Officer, Tony Bobath, takes a look…

Stamp duty relief is being extended for first time buyers
On Monday, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that he was planning to build on the momentum developed amongst first time buyers by extending the stamp duty relief to shared ownership properties with a value of up to £500,000, with the relief being applied retrospectively to the end of last year.

This should provide a nice boost to first time buyers using the more flexible ownership schemes now in place, particularly in regions where property is more expensive.

More money available for the Housing Infrastructure Fund
A further £500m is being made available for the Housing Infrastructure Fund, aiming to get more new homes built in the areas of greatest demand as the Chancellor is pushing to increase the supply of homes, in particular starter homes and social housing.
Anything that helps unlock land for development and gets houses being built is good news, so again this investment is to be welcomed.

Other points
The Chancellor made reference to a number of other points in his speech or immediately in the debate that followed, which have a direct impact upon the housing market. He wants to consult on stamp duty for overseas buyers, the Help to Buy Scheme will be extended out to 2023, small land medium housebuilders will be able to call on additional bank guarantees to give them greater confidence, and he is reviewing the tax relief applied to rental income where the owner is in shared occupancy with the tenant.

He also has tried to address “austerity” by making the working population feel a little bit better off, particularly in Middle England, through significant increases in personal allowances.

So there are some changes which will help the housing market. However, one budget was never going to change the fortunes of a market that is so shaped by consumer confidence; and never could this be truer than today where we are faced with the huge uncertainties presented by Brexit. Maybe we will think differently in 12 months’ time assuming we land smoothly from the divorce from our European partners and have another nice boost to the housing market and are all feeling a little bit better off with further consumer stimuli.


About tmgroup  

As a leading IT solutions provider, tmgroup are the experts in innovative solutions that enable simplification and automation across the breadth of the property transaction. tmgroup’s customers extend to conveyancing solicitors, mortgage lenders, estate agents and developers.   

Key services:   

> tmconvey : Property searches are an integral part of tmconvey, along with insurance and risk  management tools. With its simple, integrated design, it cuts the time and effort it takes to complete the conveyancing transaction.    

> tmconnect : tmconnect is a cloud based transactional hub, providing a joined up workflow for  estate agents, mortgage lenders and conveyancers to access and share transactions securely.

> tmcore : tmcore is an online property data hub for local authorities and other search providers,  linking conveyancers to local authorities for faster land data without incurring unnecessary fees or being bound by complicated systems. 

> tmconvey Premium : tmconvey Premium is a specialist service for commercial real estate  lawyers. Benefits include Premium Terms & Conditions, up to £20 million PI cover per claim, and a managed portfolio service.   

> Property Searches Scotland : Property Searches Scotland are part of the tmgroup family and from our offices in Glasgow we offer a full range of property searches for residential, commercial and remortgage  conveyancing across all of Scotland's 32 council areas.  

> mio:  mio is a sales progression and communication tool created by property experts for property experts. It speeds transactions forward, reduces fall-through rates, and helps estate agents win more business.

The company has 140 employees and is headquartered in Swindon – and has recently achieved ISO 27001 accreditation.

tmgroup have also acquired a majority share in Conveyancing Data Services (CDS) – a conveyancing search provider with over 100 years' combined experience within the property search market.

For more information, visit www.tmgroup.co.uk 

If you have any questions or would like additional information or interviews, please contact Megan Jones on megan.jones@tmgroup.co.uk

Remember the Map Search enhancements we made earlier this year? 

Well, we’ve made even more changes – and they’ll be available on tmconvey from Friday 26th October onwards. All helping you to save time, avoid mistakes and reduce duplication of effort. 

Here’s a quick peek at what to look out for…

Want to pull your existing case outline into Map Search? No problem. 

As you may have already noticed, when you go into Map Search from our services dashboard, you arrive at an empty screen. 

However, we’ve now updated our system, so that if you go into Map Search through the case dashboard and have already created a case plan and outline, you’ll be invited to bring this outline into your new Map Search session. This allows you to see titles in relation to your pre-existing case outlines. From there, you can continue with your work as normal and complete your order. 

We’ve also added some visual cues in when you are looking at your titles, such as the case reference and address showing in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, as a helpful reminder as to whether you are working from your case or Map Search. 

You can now also turn your case outline on and off – whilst keeping your red dot in position – and view any other title information as you wish, making things clearer for you and your team.  

Increased visibility across each case with an LR OC1 reorder option

We know that sometimes it’s necessary for multiple people to be working on the same case, but this can make it harder to understand who has ordered what and when. 

That’s why we’ve extended the selected titles page, so you can also see any other LR OC1 orders that have already placed against the case – and reorder them if you wish, simply by selecting a tick box. 

We’ve also made sure you can see the content of the OC1 request. For example, if a standalone Register was ordered previously, and now you just need to order the plan.  

Defined areas of interest help avoid titles being ordered in error

Occasionally, a typo in a title number can result in a title being ordered against a property in Leeds instead of Southampton. Whilst it doesn’t happen all the time, we want to give you peace of mind it never will. 

That’s why we’ve created a defined area of interest for each case, based on the red dot, so you can only order titles in the relevant area – and not accidentally order something half way across the country. 

How does it work? It’s simple. As you type in the first line of the address or title number, a drop down list will appear highlighting which addresses are and aren’t available in this Map Search view. For example, if you are working in a defined area of interest in Swindon, you will be able to view postcodes and title numbers in Swindon, but not those of the same name in Grimsby. 

(Please note, if you do want to use a title number outside of the defined area of interest, you’ll need to use Map Search through the Service Dashboard.) 

Have a question?

If you have any questions about these changes, or would like to request additional features that would help to make even more time for your team, please get in touch with your Account Manager, or our friendly Helpdesk team on 0800 840 5571 or email helpdesk@tmgroup.co.uk.

tmgroup have achieved ISO 27001 certification. The endorsement is only awarded to firms that comply with a mandated set of requirements relating to information security management.  Certified businesses must evidence an ongoing commitment to continually improving their systems. 

Information security is a critical business risk. It is attracting increasing scrutiny in the management of supply chain risk and consumers are more alert to the way their data is stored and shared.   

Joe Pepper, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at tmgroup comments:

“As a leading provider of data solutions to the property sector, tmgroup’s certification reinforces our commitment to working with legal and property professionals to help them meet lender and consumer requirements.”

Professor Richard Benham, Chairman of The National Cyber Management Centre comments:

“With the growing need for all organisations to show that they take data security and its management seriously I am delighted to have helped tmgroup achieve their ISO27001 accreditation.” 

As you may already be aware, on Monday 15th October, Groundsure launched their updated and enhanced ‘Groundsure Screening’ report, as well as their redesigned and enhanced ‘Groundsure Review’ report. 

You can find more information about these changes, alongside pricing and sample reports, below:

Redesigned and enhanced : ‘Groundsure Screening’ report

This report is for lower value less complex commercial property transactions and multi-site portfolios. This enhanced report meets Law Society compliance on contaminated land and flood risk and it covers; 

> Full flood risk assessment and Energy data

> Planning constraints

> Ground stability screening

> Property specific radon assessment

> Transportation screening including Crossrail 1 and 2, HS2 and more

Enhancements include; intelligently filtered data, results in Plain English, intuitive layout and page flow, and fewer pages.

Click here to see a sample report 

NEW Pricing

Groundsure have also made changes to the price of their Screening report;

Redesigned and enhanced : ‘Groundsure Review’ report

Gives expert, bespoke opinion required for all high value property transactions, complex industrial sites and redevelopments.  The report includes;

> Law Society compliant contaminated land and flood risk assessment

> Ground stability and Property specific radon assessment

> Manual review of high detail historical Ordnance Survey mapping in all cases

> Operational environmental risk assessment from Groundsure’s in-house team of environmental experts

> Full Energy & Transportation data (including Crossrail 1 & 2, HS2 and more)

> Planning constraints

Enhancements include; intelligently filtered data with fewer pages - displaying only relevant results, manual assessments in plain English, operational environmental risk assessment, complete HS2 data, Crossrail 2 route and safeguarding, optional planning applications, and intuitive layout and page flow. Each report will now also provide the Consultant's name and contact details for any queries or advice

Click here to see a sample report

NEW Pricing

Groundsure have also made changes to the price of their Review report;   

If you have any questions, please get in touch with your account manager, or get in touch with our friendly helpdesk team on 0800 840 5571, or email helpdesk@tmgroup.co.uk.

HM Land Registry have confirmed that international law firm Bird & Bird LLP were the first law firm to receive a City of London LLC1 result through their new digital Local Land Charges Register. tmgroup are delighted to say that this order was placed via their tmconvey platform – and the result was returned within seconds at precisely 10:14am on Monday 8th October. 

Russell Dellar, partner at international law firm Bird & Bird comments:

“We are delighted to be the first tmconvey customer to receive an LLC1 result from City of London via HM Land Registry’s new digital Local Land Charges Register. At Bird & Bird, we are focused on helping organisations being changed by technology and the digital world. This new innovative platform is certainly something we are keen to promote as well as tmgroup services who we have had a relationship with for many years. The team have never let us down and we look forward to continuing our relationship.”

Paul Albone, Chief Operating Officer at tmgroup comments:

“It’s fantastic to be a part of HM Land Registry’s continuing success with their new digital Local Land Charges register, and we’re pleased to be supporting this new service on tmconvey. tm has a track record of working closely with HMLR on integrated solutions, and we look forward to continuing to work together to deliver further improvements in the future which will help to streamline the conveyancing process even more.”

City of London is the third Local Authority to have their Local Land Charges data digitised, closely following Warwick District Council (11th July) and Liverpool City Council (3rd September), and tmgroup will continue working closely with HM Land Registry throughout the rollout of their new digital Local Land Charges Register.

A further 16 Local Authorities are expected to have their Local Land Charges data digitised across 2018 and 2019, including Stevenage Borough Council, Carlisle City Council, and Peterborough City Council – although exact dates have yet to be announced. 

You can see the full list here.

Terrafirma new reports! Available now on tmconvey, here’s a handy round-up of their new Ground Report and CON29M…

NEW: Ground Report from Terrafirma

The Terrafirma Ground Report has arrived TODAY on tmconvey, featuring expert risk assessment and analysis on all ground risks and liabilities.

Click here to see a sample report

The Terrafirma Ground Report translates the risk from mining activity, subsidence, sinkholes, radon, fracking, mineral planning activity and more. It also includes Terrafirma’s official CON29M report, as well as never-seen before data and technology driven solutions to analyse the potential impact of man-made and natural ground perils on property transactions.

Key features 

> Pass rate over 97%

> £10 million Professional Indemnity

> 100% of the risk of reporting on mining and natural ground perils is transferred to Terrafirma

> Professional opinion with dynamic and colour coded next steps

> NEW User Key : Highlighting key actions for conveyancers, lenders and purchasers

> Integrated Con29M : Satisfying The Law Society CON29M (2018) guidance report

> SinkholeALERT

> Accepted by all lenders

Pricing 

NOW AVAILABLE: Terrafirma’s CON29M

The Terrafirma CON29M Report is the new official alternative to the Coal Authority CON29M.

Click here to see a sample report

Key features

> Official data licensed from the Coal Authority

> Expert interpreted answers to all 11 questions (14 for commercial)

> Liability for professional opinion passing to Terrafirma

> £10 million Professional Indemnity

> Satisfies the Law Society CON29M (2018) guidance report

Pricing 

Will I still be able to order the Coal Authority’s CON29M? 

Yes, of course. The Coal Authority’s CON29M will continue to be available to order on tmconvey. You’ll now just have a choice of two products, instead of one.

If you have any questions, please get in touch with your Account Manager, or our Helpdesk team on 0800 840 5571, or email helpdesk@tmgroup.co.uk.

Thinking about automating your IT processes to boost efficiency in your firm?

Don’t get off to a false start. Here, tmgroup’s Infrastructure Lead, James Canfer, shares his experience of automating key IT processes in the business and saving time.

Working in IT Operations, one challenge my team constantly faces is how to do more and how to know more, with the same resources.  A real focus for us over the past couple of years has been the increased automation of our operations and the experience has drawn some interesting conclusions.

Benefits of Automation

As a team we’re always striving to deliver a better service to our customers, to reduce the burden of mind numbing tasks on the staff and to operate as efficient an operation as we can.  Automation ticks all of those boxes, but in particular, it can free staff up to focus on projects that deliver business value and reduce the number of interruptions when focusing on complex work.

The useful working time lost in a member of staff switching focus from complex work, to deal with a “quick” problem should not be underestimated.

Where to start?

The temptation for us was to buy in tooling to automate the work for us.  Big mistake!  Almost every tool we demoed require specialist skills and experience just to gain some modest benefit.  In addition, you are spending money upfront before understanding the problem you’re trying to solve. 

Back to Basics

So we started with analysis – sorry, it’s nothing more exciting!  What tasks were the team doing on a repetitive basis, once a week, once a day or several times a day?  These could be anything from reactive tasks to planned BAU tasks.

Next we looked at the time each task was taking, what the main steps involved were and estimating the effort involved in automating the task.  In some cases the estimate was a great big question mark, because of the complexity involved.

Prioritise

When it came to prioritising which tasks to tackle, the simplest tasks that were the quickest to automate went to the top of the list.  Followed by those that occurred most frequently.  Everything else went on the backlog.

...And Buy Some Tools?

Actually, no!  You may or may not have heard of a scripting language called PowerShell, which is a component part of Microsoft Windows.

Believe it or not, my team has been able to leverage PowerShell to automate months of previously manual work without spending any money on tooling.  Instead, as a team we’ve invested time in learning how best to leverage PowerShell and in building our own tools.  

The challenge and the experience of learning a new skill together as a team and the near immediate benefits have all been huge morale boosters.  Surprisingly in a very short space of time, we found ourselves automating tasks that are far more complex.  Armed with this new skill, tasks that are more complex are approached as a challenge and as an opportunity to enhance our skills further.

Unexpected Benefits and No Catches

By leveraging PowerShell, we have realised all of the benefits mentioned earlier in this article, but also some really useful and unexpected ones too.  These include requiring much simpler documentation, or in some cases none at all; greater configuration control and built in roll back plans because we’re codifying more and more of our operations; and we’ve found ourselves adopting more and more DevOps principles almost as a by-product of moving to this way of working.

And the catches?  Like anything in IT, automation requires maintenance.  To be fair this is a very light burden to shoulder.  Beyond that automating with PowerShell has been entirely positive!

We’re very proud and excited to announce that mio – our new sales progression and communication tool – has made the Shortlist of The Negotiator Awards 2018 for ‘Supplier of the Year (Technology) – Apps’. 

Organised by the residential property industry trade magazine, The Negotiator, the Awards programme has led the field in the celebration of excellence in the residential property agency sector for 12 years and, with 16 highly experienced judges, only the best agencies and suppliers are announced as the winners. 

The ‘Supplier of the Year (Technology) – Apps’ category recognises companies using innovative technologies to improve Estate Agents’ processes – and we’re delighted to see that mio has earnt a well-deserved place on the list.

Early adopters are already embracing a smarter way to manage home buying 

mio offers Estate Agents a smarter way to manage the home buying process, and empowers them to improve their customer experience by giving homemovers convenient, 24/7 access to updates.

Early adopters – including Allen & Harris, Connells, Brown and Merry, Peter Alan, and Taylors Estate Agents – are already embracing the benefits of mio; including speeding up transactions, reducing fall-through rates, and helping them win more business. 

Don’t just take our word for it…

• Adam Fray, Senior Branch Manager at Taylors Estate Agents in Bradley Stoke: “mio is a really good tool, easy to update, and the reporting and reminders features are particularly useful.”

• Jamie Brown, Branch Manager at Brown and Merry: “It’s great that mio now enables everyone in the team to see how a transaction is progressing – with clear, typed notes and visible milestones.”

• Nicola Brown, New Homes & Area Co-ordinator, Allen & Harris: “I have found it very easy to move over to mio – and find it a lot quicker to bring up reports, and determine which branches I need to be having conversations with that day to help keep things moving forward.”

Jon Horton, Product Director – mio, comments: 

“It’s fantastic to see mio in the running for such a prestigious industry award. It’s a testament to the time and effort our dedicated team have put into creating a sales progression and communication tool that takes sales progression in to the digital age and improves the home buying process.”

Join us at the awards ceremony on 30th November 2018…

The three finalists and winners of each category will be revealed at a grand gala dinner at the sumptuous Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, London on 30th November 2018, where the champagne will certainly be flowing!

Tickets are available here. 

If you have any questions, please get in touch with our friendly mio team, or speak directly to your mio Account Manager.

This week marks the continuing success of HM Land Registry’s new digital Local Land Charges Register, with the digitisation of Liverpool City Council’s LLC data – and tmgroup are pleased to announce that, within minutes of it going live on Monday morning, they had already processed their first orders through tmconvey. 

Since integrating with the new service when it launched back in July, the tm team were primed to support the second phase rollout of Liverpool City Council’s data – and are delighted to announce that 3 orders were processed successfully through tmconvey before 9am on Monday 3rd September, with one of the first orders being placed at 8.22am by Devonshires. 

Sara Snook, Solicitor at Devonshires comments:

“We are delighted to be the first firm to receive an LLC1 search result from Liverpool City Council via the HM Land Registry’s new digital Local Land Charges Register. The result was received in an impressive 38 seconds. This is an exciting new development with the potential to make the process of receiving LLC1 searches practically instantaneous, more consistent and a better experience all round.”

Paul Albone, Chief Operating Officer at tmgroup comments:

“Having supported the initial Local Authority a couple of months ago, I was in no doubt that this would be a seamless transition for tm customers.  As we migrate away from the direct dealings with Liverpool City Council to using the LR Business Gateway, we are able to deliver the LLC search result in a number of seconds from our customers pressing the send button.  We look forward to working with Land Registry over the coming months as they go live with more Local Authorities and also look to extend the value added services through their Business Gateway connection.”

tmgroup will continue to support the rollout of the new digital register 

Liverpool City Council closely follows the digitisation of Warwick District Council’s Local Land Charges data. Liverpool and Warwick are two of around 350 Local Authorities who will have their Local Land Charges (LLC) data digitised across 2018 and beyond. 

tmgroup will continue working closely with HM Land Registry throughout the rollout of their new digital Local Land Charges Register. 

Click here to find out more about how tmgroup are supporting the new digital Local Land Charges Register – and stay tuned for further updates.

Calling all practicing conveyancers, Heads of Residential, Heads of Commercial, and Professional Support Lawyers… The tmpropertyhub Autumn series is just days away, bringing together local property professionals to discuss whether the Government is doing enough to address the Housing Crisis.  

With limited places remaining, please book now to avoid disappointment. 

• Solihull: 11th September: Click here to register 

• Harrow: 11th September: Click here to register 

• Manchester: 12th September: Click here to register 

• Kingston-Upon-Thames: 12th September: Click here to register 

• Nottingham: 13th September: Click here to register 

Facilitated by tmgroup, tmpropertyhub roundtable events are bite-sized, 2-hour sessions that bring representatives from all parties involved in the property transaction together for roundtable table discussions about their local property market – without compromising their busy schedule.

Can’t see a location near you?

A further 6 roundtable discussions will be taking place from 9th October onwards.

Take a look:  

• Leeds : 9th October : Click here to register

• Bristol : 9th October : Click here to register

• Liverpool : 10th October : Click here to register

• Southampton : 10th October : Click here to register

• Northampton : 11th October : Click here to register

• Cardiff : 11th October : Click here to register

For more information and to register, click here.

If you have any questions, please contact Hannah Dukes on Hannah.Dukes@tmgroup.co.uk or call 0800 840 5571