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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!

Just to make you aware, CLS insurance are making a number of changes to their policies on 15th October.  

Please take a moment to familiarise yourself with these changes, particularly if you currently have any CLS insurance documents saved in draft on tmconvey – as on 15th October, new policies will be available, and your drafts will be removed and will need to be reordered.

“Insurance Product Information Document” to replace “Policy Summary”

In preparation for the Insurance Distribution Directive taking effect in October, CLS insurance have incorporated an “Insurance Product Information Document” within their insurance policies. 

Following the consultation on the sale of insurance in the EU, this will replace the policy summary – and clearly displays, in a universal format, important information such as what the policy covers, and what is and isn’t insured.  

Legal Indemnity policies will be issued under CLS Property Insight Limited

Legal Indemnity policies will be issued under CLS Property Insight Limited, who will continue to review, accept and offer suitable coverage at the most competitive terms.

More products will also be available on their online system 

CLS will also be offering more policies via their online system – which were previously available only on a bespoke basis. 

You can see the full list of new additions below: 

• Forfeiture of Lease (Breach of Covenant) (Purchaser) 

• Forfeiture of Lease (Housing Act Repossession) (Lender)

• Lack of Party Wall Agreement 

• Lack of Permission to Construct a Vehicle Crossing or Dropped Kerb

• Lack of Listed Building Consent

• Lack of Conservation Area Consent

• Limited Title Guarantee

• Manorial Rights

• Right to Park (Leasehold) (Lender)

CLS will also be removing their ConveySure® brand.

Draft policies will be removed on 15th October and will need to be reordered

Please note, in reflection of the above changes, on 15th October 2018 any draft policies ordered prior to this date will be removed from the online platform and will need to be reordered.

If you do have any drafts currently saved on tmconvey, please either submit them before midnight on Friday 12th October, or make a note of the details so you can easily reorder the policies on or after 15th October. 

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

Terrafirma have advised us that they will be making some changes to their pricing on 1st September 2018. 

This includes price increases for a select number of site size bandings on their Coal Extra reports, as well as the introduction of a new site size banding for their Assess reports. 

These changes will be applied automatically to any orders made on tmconvey on or after 1st September.

You can find the full details in the table below: 

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

The Law Society is making some important new changes with respect to Mining and Natural Ground Perils which will be covered in the soon to be released 25th Edition of its Conveyancing Handbook. 

Mining and ground report specialist, Terrafirma, is launching a three-part coffee-break webinar series to ensure that you have all of the relevant information at your fingertips. 

Starting on Tuesday 11th September and led by Terrafirma CEO, Tom Backhouse, they will be no more than 15 minutes in length and are designed to give you all of the necessary information including what the changes are, how they impact you and what the benefits are to you and your clients.  

Please register your interest and attendance for each webinar via the following links. A download of the webinar will be made available to pre-registered attendees following each event.

Part 1 : Important Changes to The Law Society Conveyancing Law Handbook

Time : 11am (BST) 

Date : Tuesday 11th September 2018

Click here to register

2. Introducing the Ground Report 

Time : 11am (BST)

Date : Thursday 13th September 2018

Click here to register

3. The Ground Report, a Step-by-Step Overview 

Time : 11am BST

Date : Tuesday 18 September 2018

Click here to register

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Please note you can also include this webinar attendance in your Annual Compliance Declaration to the SRA.

Here are the latest updated prices for Thames Water Drainage & Water products

From Thursday 2nd August, Future Climate Info’s Essential, Standard and Premium Residential reports, as well as their Standard and Premium Commercial reports will be available to order on tmconvey.

You’ll also be able to order their Flood and Energy reports - for Residential and Commercial. 

You can see a summary of the new product suite, along with sample reports here: 

Flood:

> Flood Residential - less than 25 Ha : Click here to see a sample report

> Flood Commercial less than 25 Ha : Click here to see a sample report

Energy:

> Energy Commercial - less than 30Ha : Click here to see a sample report

> Energy Residential - less than 10Ha : Click here to see a sample report

Residential:

> Essential Residential Report 

Meets the minimum requirements of the Law Society’s guidance on flooding and Contaminated Land.

> Environmental

> Flooding 

> Standard Residential Report 

 Contains all of the information from the Essential report and includes Ground Stability data.

> Environmental

> Flooding

> Ground Stability  

> Premium Residential Report 

You can see a sample report here

Contains all of the information from the Standard report and includes data on Energy & Infrastructure such as wind farms, shale gas exploration, and HS2.

> Environmental

> Flooding

> Ground Stability  

> Energy + Infrastructure

Commercial:

> Standard Commercial Report

Contains information on:

> Environmental

> Ground Stability

> Flooding

> Premium Commercial Report

Click here to see a sample report

Contains all of the information from the Standard report and includes data on Energy & Infrastructure such as wind farms, shale gas exploration, and HS2

> Environmental

> Ground Stability

> Flooding

> Energy + Infrastructure

For more information, please speak to your Account Manager, or get in touch with Helpdesk on 0800 840 5571  or helpdesk@tmgroup.co.uk

Groundsure are pleased to announce that they have updated their Groundsure Avista report with a new Transportation section – including the proposed Crossrail2 route. 

Groundsure offer the only environmental reports in the searches market to feature this data – and this report will be available to order on tmconvey from Thursday 5th July. 

Highlights of the new Transportation section include:

• HS2 Noise and visual impact*

• Proposed Crossrail2 route, stations/headhouses, worksites, safeguarding areas*

• HS2 safeguarding, rural support and homeowner payment zones*

• Historical railways and tunnels

• London Underground and DLR* (also including Tyne and Wear Metro and Glasgow Subway)

* Groundsure offer the only environmental reports in the searches market to feature this data. Data available for Phase 1 of HS2 only.

Groundsure Avista is a a clear and comprehensive risk report 

This latest addition to Groundsure Avista builds on a number of key features, which launched as part of the clear and concise environmental report back in June 2017:

• Improved accuracy and pass rates: Avista reports are based on Land Registry polygon data as standard for the highest level of accuracy, with 106 million data points being analysed to significantly improve pass rates. 

• Clear and concise recommendations: Clearly signposted data with unambiguous recommendations leaves customers better informed, without being overwhelmed by confusing jargon. 

• The average report is less than 20 pages long: The average Avista report is less than 20 pages long, making it simple for conveyancers to hone in on what’s important. 

• Review next steps with a quick glance: The Avista Action Alert saves transaction time and trouble by providing a simple visual guide to the complexity of the environmental factors associated with a property. 

The new and updated Groundsure Avista report is available to order now on tmconvey. Click here to see a sample report.

As anyone involved in the home buying and selling process knows, a lot can go wrong as the chain progresses towards completion – and the picture only gets worse, the longer the chain gets. 

When some chains inevitably do collapse, visibility and lack of communication are often blamed. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. The majority of movers enter the home buying and selling process with high expectations of a quick turnaround – often with the hope of getting into their new home before Christmas, or before the new term starts at school. 

Whatever the reason, there normally is one, and homemovers can quickly get “cold feet” when things don’t look like they are progressing. Or suddenly find out they are part of a chain of eight, instead of a chain of three. Even not hearing from their solicitor or estate agent for several days can be enough to push a homemover “over the edge”. 

As if that wasn’t enough to contend with, most buyers typically register with several agents, so even once a sale is agreed, they are still being enticed by other agents with new listings. The longer the transaction takes, the more risk there is of the buyer finding another “dream home” and jeopardising their original decision.

But what if homemovers could see what was happening across the chain? Knew what was supposed to be happening next? Or could see the latest progress without having to pester their estate agent? What if transactions were completed faster, so there was simply less opportunity for people to change their minds? 

How different could everything be?

By harnessing the power of technology to improve visibility and communication across the length of the property chain, homemovers could be empowered with a better understanding of the process – significantly reducing the risk of them “getting cold feet” and triggering the collapse of the chain. 

Prop tech company tmgroup are already working on making this a reality with mio - a new sales progression and communication tool that helps Estate Agents speed transactions forward, reduce fall-through rates, and help win more business.

Created by property experts for property experts, mio brings convenience to the buying and selling process, including chat messaging and milestone reminders that result in fewer calls for all parties involved – without compromising on information. 

With improved visibility, alongside free educational content about the home buying and selling process, mio can also help to better manage homemovers’ expectations – and reduce confusion and create clarity about roles and responsibilities in completing the transaction.

Jon Horton, Product Director - mio comments:

“Our consumer research reported that 49% of homebuyers would like to receive a daily update on their transaction. Communication and transparency are key, and complaints around this area are the most common type escalated to The Property Ombudsman. 

We recognise that there will always be uncontrollable variables in a property chain, such as a buyer withdrawing from a transaction because their situation changes and they are no longer able to raise the finance. Yet the majority of homemovers connected in the property chain are willing and financially able to move. 

By harnessing the power of PropTech, estate agents and conveyancers can increase visibility across the property chain and proactively manage the more controllable risks associated with the home buying and selling process – and significantly reduce the chance of people pulling out and collapsing the chain.”

For more information about mio, visit www.mio.co.uk 

The first round of Property Hubs took place in Liverpool, Leeds and Nottingham across May 2018, bringing property professionals together to discuss hot topics – including the impact of ‘The Bank of Mum and Dad’.  

Conveyancers are seeing gifted deposits “more often than not” 

Conversations kicked off at 8am sharp, with attendees in all locations jumping straight into heated debates about how ‘The Bank of Mum and Dad’ is skewing the property market in favour of more privileged First-Time Buyers. 

While not a new concept, it has become an increasingly common way for First-Time Buyers to get onto the property ladder, as one conveyancer working in Nottingham claimed: “We see gifted deposits more often than not when managing transactions for First-Time Buyers”. 

From re-mortgaging the family home, to taking a lump sum out of their pension, parents are rising to the challenge of finding funds to support their children onto the property ladder. Even grandparents are getting involved. Property professionals across the country have also noticed financial providers “jumping on the bandwagon”, by developing new products to help make equity release options quick and simple. 

Yet it quickly became apparent that the situation isn’t fool-proof, as attendees swapped cautionary tales about parents gifting deposits to young couples – only to lose their investment a few years down the line if the couple separates. 

Parents are trying to help their children beat the rise in property prices

Yet for many it is worth the risk. Whilst avoiding inheritance tax is certainly a motivation for some parents, the continuing rise in house prices is also prompting many to help their children out sooner rather than later. This is especially true in areas such as Nottingham, where improved transport links are expected to drive house prices up by around 7% per year.

‘Buy to Let’ investors are also compounding the issue, by directly competing with First-Time Buyers for the more affordable flats and 2-bedroom “starter” homes in the area.

This problem isn’t going away any time soon

With property prices in many areas of the country expected to rise over the coming years, along with pressure on the private rental market, it seems unlikely that ‘Buy to Let’ investment opportunities will lose their appeal any time soon. 

Even a sharp increase in affordable New Builds properties is unlikely to alleviate the pressure, as the next generation of First-Time Buyers come of age with ‘The Bank of Mum and Dad’ in tow. 

And what about those without generous, well-off parents? The latest headlines predict it could take them up to 22 years to save enough for a deposit… 

Want to join the conversation? 

Our Property Hubs are returning to Leeds and Liverpool this July. They will also be making their debut in Northampton, Cardiff, Southampton and Bristol. 

• Liverpool – Tuesday 10th July

7:30am until 9:30am @ Radisson Blu Hotel 

Click here for more information

• Cardiff – Tuesday 10th July 

3:00pm until 5:00pm @ Radisson Blu Hotel 

Click here for more information

• Leeds – Wednesday 11th July

 7:30am until 9:30am @ Radisson Blu Hotel

Click here for more information

• Bristol – Wednesday 11th July

3:00pm until 5:00pm @ Radisson Blu Hotel

Click here for more information

• Northampton – Thursday 12th July 

7:30am until 9:30am @ Marriott 

Click here for more information

• Southampton – Thursday 12th July

3:00pm until 5:00pm @ Grand Harbour Hotel

Click here for more information