tm blog

From early June, you’ll be able to order the following Legalinx reports on tmconvey - in addition to the CourtChex (winding Up Search), which is already available.

The following reports will be available to order via the tmconvey platform:

• Comprehensive Bankruptcy Search (Search of Land Registry and Bankruptcy Court)

Checks are carried out at the Insolvency Service England and Wales which identifies any current bankruptcy orders. An additional check is then carried out at the Land Registry which identifies any pending bankruptcy orders.

• Gazette Report

This report will provide details of any insolvency notices published in the London, Edinburgh or Belfast Gazettes.

• Individual Pending Bankruptcy Searches

Our Individual Bankruptcy Searches offer compliance and minimise risk through ascertaining whether there are any pending bankruptcy petitions lodged against an individual within the jurisdiction of the RCJ. Legalinx physically visit, and search, at the Royal Courts of Justice and Central London County Court to determine whether any previous bankruptcy petitions have been issued in the last 5 years against a debtor.

The following additional reports will be available on request, by contacting our Helpdesk team on 0800 840 5571 or email helpdesk@tmgroup.co.uk 

• Foreign Insolvency Plus Report

• Insolvency Plus

• Northern Ireland Court of Justice & EJO Check

FCI have joined forces with Terrafirma to deliver a new search report, combining the current Premium Residential Environmental Report with Terrafirma’s official CON29M coal mining search. 

• Cost: £80.00 + VAT

• Location on tmconvey: Under the Environmental section

• Sample report: Click here to see a sample report

Available on tmconvey from early June, this search report combines the Environmental, Flood, Ground Stability, Energy and Infrastructure of the FCI Premium Residential Search, with a Terrafirma CON29M, which automatically includes nearby subsidence claims data (previously only available at additional cost from The Coal Authority). 

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

Groundsure’s Preliminary Unexploded Ordnance Risk Assessment will be available to order on tmconvey from early June – identifying the potential risks from unexploded ordnance (UXO) that could affect your client’s construction projects. 

• Cost: £195 + VAT

• Location on tmconvey: Under the Environmental section

• Sample report: Click here to see a sample report

About the report

Based on a 10km radius from the red dot marking the property, the report covers:

• Analysis of over 5,000 projects to mitigate bomb risks on  development sites since 1991

• Accurate bomb density mapping based from Ordnance Survey  maps 1941 -1944 

• Extensive archive of previous bomb excavation works and  threat assessment Bomb, V1 and V2 strike locations from original war records and area damage assessments (where available) 

• UXO risk assessment – contour maps applied around potential source of strike locations 

• The cost of the Preliminary report is discounted from the Stage 2 Detailed Risk Assessment

This report covers the possible health and safety risks for contractors under CDM 2015. Groundsure have also partnered with industry specialists Dynasafe BACTEC to provide a comprehensive view on the risks, so they can be factored into a site assessment.

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

Terrafirma have made a couple of changes to their reports, including adding a mine entry interpretive report to their CON29M and Ground report, as well as including a purchased Cheshire Salts Search in the Ground report. 

Mine Entry Interpretive Report added to CON29M and Ground report

Terrafirma have now included, as standard, a mine entry interpretive report for sites located within 20 metres of a coal mine entry. 

This is available within their official CON29M and Terrafirma Ground report – at no additional cost. 

The Ground report now includes the purchased Cheshire Salts Search 

The Ground report now includes the purchased Cheshire Salts Search as an appendix. This is to provide clarity to their brine mining risk assessment (including such assessment of brine mining hazards outside the Cheshire Brine Compensation District) and that of claims information obtained from a purchased Cheshire Salts Search. 

Please be aware that where such information is obtained, the terms and conditions of the Cheshire Salts Search and supplier may also apply.

REMINDER: Further Action Reports

Just a reminder that, even though the effective pass rate for the CON29M and Ground reports is now 99%, Terrafirma’s ‘Action’ reports remain in place and available if recommended. 

If you need to order such a report, please get in touch with your Account Manager or Helpdesk in the first instance. 

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

Crossrail data will soon be available on tmconvey, marking the latest in a series of new data layers added across 2019. 

Once enabled, you’ll be able to select ‘Crossrail’ from your mapping data layers and see the proposed Crossrail stations, as well as the route – clearly displayed in pink (where the track runs through a tunnel) and blue (where the track runs over the surface). 

You can also click on a station or section of the line to create a pop-up box – including location information and type (e.g. tunnel). Please note, where there is more than one section of the line in a specific area, you’ll see 2 pop-up information boxes.

You’ll also notice a link to the Crossrail site, which opens up a new tab showing you an engineering drawing of that section of the line, so you can see it in relation to the other buildings around it. 

How do I turn on this new data layer?

If you would like to turn on this new data layer, your TM administrator will need to update your company preference by following the below steps:

1. Go to ‘System settings’ on the tmconvey Services Dashboard

2. Select ‘System defaults’

3. Select ‘View’

4. Select ‘Mapping defaults’ 

5. If you scroll down, you will see a new section called ‘Map Data Layers’ – and various options to choose from including the new ‘Crossrail route’.  

6. Once you have settled on your choice, click ‘Save’

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

With nearly 2 decades of experience in the search industry, Chief Operating Officer (COO) at tmgroup, Paul Albone, looks back at some of the key events and challenges that have shaped the search industry. 

2004

IT challenges were a common barrier to helping property professionals make the most of the technological advancements available 

For those of us “of a certain age”, we remember a time before the internet (and certainly the bandwidth of ADSL) and when a phone was just that – a phone! I have colleagues who used to visit client offices to perform user training and were met with a shared 56k dial up modem and the characteristic boing-boing when a connection to the internet had been established.

I say that to set some context as to the IT challenges that were faced when trying to deliver content rich mapping to conveyancers using the ‘new’ OS MasterMap™, which tmgroup launched back in 2004. This was some 6 months before Google Maps existed and 8 years before Apple launched their mapping product.  

Back then, tmgroup was operating as one of three NLIS channels, which, via the NLIS Hub, was trying to connect the 350+ Local Authorities and other data providers as the first steps towards e-Conveyancing. 

It wasn’t an easy ride. I particularly remember having to manage an increase in order rejection rates after launching our mapping, as Local Authorities complained that they were using up too much coloured ink on their printers when trying to process the orders – eventually resulting in us having to revert back to a black and white map with a ‘red line’ property boundary.

2005

Bowing only to mandated change led to relatively slow levels of progress in the property search space – and prompted the creation of OSCRE

With 30 years of IT and Development experience behind me, I have been surprised by the relatively slow levels of progress in the property search space, which does rise to the challenges of mandated change – but otherwise accepts a status quo. 

Back in 2005, I got involved in the PISCES (now OSCRE) organisation, which was addressing the need to create standards so that property-related information could be exchanged between businesses. 

I was lucky enough to chair the working group, which was looking at property searches, and together we managed to create some standards for the messages needed to order, deliver, query and chase property searches. These are still in use today by many conveyancing and property search data providers.  

2007-2010

The advent of HIPS acted as a catalyst for change and created high levels of operational efficiency with integrated ordering

Forced change can often act as a catalyst for achieving IT projects quickly, and this was certainly the case with the advent of HIPS. Through a 48-hour session, a new standard was adopted by all the major organisations, which allowed the ‘new’ HIP providers to order bundles of searches via B2B integration and XML data.  

Of course, this created high levels of operational efficiency, but also had its own challenges. I remember one tmgroup client who performed a software release only for me to get a call the following morning.  The code they had released was not ‘listening’ to the return message correctly and so had got stuck in a loop and they had ordered over 3,000 LR OC1 orders in the space of 15 minutes. By the time they called me, these had all been ordered and returned at a cost of £3 per order! 

2011

The cost of mortgage fraud was estimated at £1 billion – and many lenders reviewed their criteria for securing charges on a title  

In January 2011, the National Fraud Authority published its second annual fraud indicator, which estimated the cost of mortgage fraud in the UK to be £1 billion. A third of this was estimated to be conveyancer-led fraud! 

These facts led most lenders to review the criteria with which conveyancers could act for the lender on securing the charge on the title. During this time, tmgroup worked with lenders to understand their decision criteria and how this could be monitored and alerts created when criteria changed. We called this platform ‘TM Secure’. Not only did it look at the risk profiling of the law firm through datasets provided by people like Experian, but also looked to control the delivery of the mortgage offer and other steps of the process in a secure and robust fashion.

2015

Breaking down silos and introducing collaboration saw the birth of the digital customer journey

Integrated ordering continues to be a focus within the search industry and is enabling the change from paper documents to PDF versions and now more recently to ‘data’ payloads. By providing the data, it is possible to develop systems that can make decisions on the search results and create alerts to users where investigation and follow up actions are needed.

Since 2015, there has been an increased focus on collaboration and the digital journey of the consumer. We are seeing the emergence of portals, which provide a window into the transaction for the homemover and aim to create higher levels of transparency. Our tmconnect platform does exactly that in order to join up the estate agent, conveyancer and consumer with a single view of the case.  

Add to that the ability to ‘message’ the professionals involved with a home purchase and fill in documents online, and we are finally beginning to break down the silos and increase the collaborative feel of the transaction.

2017

Improving the home buying and selling process has been high on the industry’s agenda throughout my career 

There have been several attempts at home buying reform since the early 2000s, initially led by the Land Registry and their e-conveyancing programme.  This was followed by an industry-led group badged as the eHomebuyingForum, and then the Law Society-led Veyo project. Bringing us up to the present day, where we are currently in the grips of a Government-led programme to ‘Improve the home buying and selling process’.  

The quantity of attempts demonstrates that there is a reasonable understanding that the home moving experience in England and Wales is not what it might be. Yet it has not been possible to deliver on many of the goals of making the process, quicker, cheaper and more transparent – in other words, delivering high levels of efficiency leading to increased levels of certainty.

All too often, the failed attempts at achieving these lofty goals have been due to a siloed approach to single stakeholders and a lack of traction within their core market. However, change is beginning to happen – led by an increased appetite to invest in and adopt technology from multiple stakeholders across a transaction.

2019

Estate agents and conveyancers are beginning to put the homemover at the heart of their digital customer journeys

We are beginning to see an almost joined up approach between estate agents and conveyancers, who are both putting the homemover at the heart of their own customer journeys – and digital ones at that. 

Upfront information (no, not HIPs) appears to be a focus for many estate agency groups too. This is very promising, because if we can break down some of the trust barriers between the estate agents and the conveyancers, then the sharing of this information is eminently achievable.

As we head towards 2020 and beyond, I am encouraged by the industry’s openness for change. In the property search space, this is leading to the delivery of property ‘data’ and refined data leading to decision informing actions. If we couple this ability and appetite with the innovative solutions being created, I really do feel we are finally in the advent of change.

We are no longer in the world of shared dial up modems, and we all embrace technology in our everyday lives. As a technologist at heart, and a software developer of the past, I am finally encouraged that change is happening and the last 20 years have not gone to waste!

tmgroup talk to Jamie Winch, Policy and Stakeholder Engagement Manager, Local Land Charges Programme, HM Land Registry about improving property search ordering through digitisation.

What are the benefits of a national digital Local Land Charges Register?

HM Land Registry (HMLR)’s national Local Land Charges (LLC) Register forms part of our transformational plans to become a more digital and data-driven registration business. This supports the government’s ambition for HMLR to become the world’s leading land registry for speed, simplicity and an open approach to data.

The LLC Register was launched in July 2018 with data from Warwick District Council and fulfils our objective to work with stakeholders in the property market to find ways to improve conveyancing. The new register helps provide a faster and simpler way to complete local land charge searches, improving the customer experience and reducing costs.

We are migrating the local land charges registers for up to 26 local authorities onto the new HMLR LLC Register in Phase 1. This will bring approximately eight percent of the national market into the central register and significantly reduce the average cost of a search for over 125,000 property buyers. 

The five local authorities currently on the LLC Register are:

• Warwick District Council

• Liverpool City Council

• Blackpool Council

• City of London Corporation

• Council of the Isles of Scilly

Benefits reported by these local authorities include:

• Reduced CON29 processing times 

• Increased capacity to undertake other activities in the time saved

• Devolution of registering charges to originating departments, increasing team capacity

• Fuller records, for example, a full spatial walkway of City of London has been created 

• Better quality records, for example, some listed building records which had been delisted have been rectified 

• Physical space saving: paper records have been digitised

• Capacity to review the CON29 process to streamline and automate

What’s coming next?

The following eleven local authorities are next in line to migrate to the LLC register:

• Lambeth Council

• Norwich City Council

• Carlisle City Council

• Milton Keynes Council

• Peterborough City Council

• North West Leicestershire District Council

• Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council

• St Helens Council

• Watford Borough Council

• East Lindsey District Council

Our structured delivery approach provides flexibility for local authorities depending on their circumstances. This includes appointing an operational lead from HMLR to support local authorities with the activities needed for migration. We use the learning from each authority’s migration to inform decisions about future migrations and make improvements to the process. In total there are around 26 million charges to migrate so we have already created a number of intuitive and automated processes to speed this up.

How do you expect digitisation to shape things in the future?

The LLC Register is a governmental register which has spatial data at its core. To each spatial extent we create, we add the particulars of registration to make a local land charge.  

The register itself provides important statutory property information that informs the homebuyer during conveyancing. Once completed the LLC Register will deliver digital national data sets for specific charge types including:

• Listed buildings

• Tree preservation orders

• Conservation areas

What will search ordering look like in 2040?

We can’t speculate what search ordering may look like in 2040 but our Digital Street research programme is investigating how conveyancing might look in a future digital world.

Our Geovation project (in collaboration with Ordnance Survey) is supporting a range of PropTech companies ensuring the UK is the best place to launch and grow a start-up that uses location or property data.

Read HM Land Registry’s guest blog by Tom Ansell of Bretherton’s Solicitors to find out more about the benefits of the digital LLC Register.

Ordering searches is business as usual for property teams as they perform their due diligence and progress transactions to completion, yet the data their reports draw upon can tell us so much more. 

Here Groundsure take an in-depth look at available search data and reveal 20 facts you probably didn’t already know about the UK property market – including just how many properties are within 1km of the HS2 development.  

1. There are 560,677 dwellings within the UK that have a ‘Medium’ or ‘High' level of flooding from rivers and seas – and 10.25% of these may experience difficulties obtaining flood insurance for their property.  

2. Landowner permission is no longer required if oil and gas drilling takes place below 300m.

3. Towns ending in “wych” or “wich” tend to be associated with salt: Droitwich in Worcestershire, as well as Middlewich, Nantwich, Northwich and Leftwich in Cheshire are all known for their salt production.

4. Only approximately 259 postcodes in England fall within both the CON29M Coal Reporting Area and the Cheshire Brine Compensation Area.

5. 2,433,869 properties are within 1km of the HS2 development and every mile of track costs £403m!

6. The average insurance claim for a flood event is £28,000 yet only 6% of homeowners take steps to protect their property. By comparison, the average fire claim is £7,300 and 80% of homeowners protect against it, whilst the average claim for burglary is £1,000 and 54% of homeowners take precautionary steps. 

7. A Facebook photo once rumbled a false claim on a TA6 Property Information Form!

In 2012, the garden of a property in Newcastle flooded. In 2014, a couple purchased the property for £750,000. When they received the TA6 Property Information Form, which is completed by the seller, question 7 “Has any part of the property (whether buildings or surrounding garden or land) ever been flooded?” the sellers had answered “No”. The purchase successfully completed and the new owners moved into the property. In 2015, the garden then flooded twice, as did the basement of the property. The new owners then pursued legal against their vendors for “rescission on the sale contract” and to support their claim, discovered a photograph on their vendors Facebook page from July 2012 showing the back garden flooded. Whilst it is extremely rare to use the TA6 form as evidence, this goes to show that if a dedicated flood or environmental search had been purchased, the purchasers would have been fully aware that their property was at an incredibly localised flood risk. 

8. The average cost of cleaning up contaminated land is £250,000 per acre, meaning the average contaminated household plot would cost £15,000.

9. It wasn’t until 2000 that a CON29M report became a mandatory search undertaken by solicitors when acting for clients purchasing properties in former coal mining areas. 

10. 600 datasets amassing over 16 terabytes (yes, terabytes!) of data power the full suite of Groundsure reports and help conveyancers better inform their clients about environmental risks – including data on contaminated land, flooding, ground stability, current and historical land use, and transportation.

11. It wasn’t until 2000 when the introduction of Part 2A legislation came into effect, followed quickly by the 2001 Warning Cards, that it was recommended that conveyancers screen against contaminated land risk in order to perform their due diligence. The Flood Practice Note of 2013 and the Contaminated Land Practice Note of 2014 further cemented the need for environmental searches in land and property transactions.

12. In 2018, there was a 400% increase (versus 2017) in insurance claims due to natural ground subsidence. This is thought to be mainly due to the long hot and very dry summer – and not because of several million people jumping up and down when England finally won a penalty shootout.

13. 11% of the UK is either licensed or offered for oil and gas exploration.

14. Around 619,000 hectares of land in England and Wales were formerly covered by a wide range of industrial uses. 

15. Around 1.2 billion journeys are made on the London Underground each year and 55% of the network is above ground.

16. The biggest cause of natural ground subsidence insurance claims is due to shrink-swell clay soils as they expand and contract due to moisture changes.

17. 11% of the UK is occupied by the coalfield – with over 7 million properties within this area.

18. Groundsure holds a collection of over 3 million Historical Land Use records derived from OS Mapping, dating from as early as the 1840s. 

19. There are 7,781 onshore turbines in 1,991 projects in the UK.

20. An average fracking site is around 2ha in size, compared to 1,450ha for a wind farm, and 924ha for a solar farm.

As consumer expectations and the evolving home buying and selling process demand ever more from the search industry, we spoke to property experts – including representatives from the Conveyancing Association, CoPSO and Shakespeare Martineau – to find out where they think the search industry is heading. Here’s what they said… 

1. Available search information will continue to evolve – maybe even to assessing flight paths for drone deliveries 

We all want different things from our homes and the areas we find them in – and how we live will inevitably change in the future.  Today, we are considering how to install electric car charging points or where to store wheelie bins. In 20 years, will we want to know where we can park our flying car?  

Property professionals are practical and searches will continue to adapt to our needs. Will searches involve flight paths for deliveries by drone? Or will all that be old hat? I’m looking forward to finding out!

2. Greater online connectivity will streamline the delivery of information

Technology will continue to drive massive changes in how we access information. In 20 years, it will be easier to find all relevant property information through greater digitisation and more interactive ways to view it. Greater online connectivity could also streamline the ordering and delivery of the information a buyer needs.  

3. Each property could be given a stamp of approval to reassure the buyer

As increased speed requires greater certainty about who pays for what, liability is an issue that will cause concern.

Will we see the trend towards professional opinions in search reports extend to multiple search reports, for example, an (insurance-backed?) stamp saying that the search results reveal nothing that need concern a buyer? This would of course have lots of small print and limitations, but may help. Could this also be available at the marketing stage like an EPC and mean the seller would order searches, and buyers could rely on them?

Megan Jenkins, Professional Support Lawyer at Shakespeare Martineau 

4. All search data feeds will be provided in real-time and refreshed to keep the homemover up to date

Upfront information is the key to improving the home mover experience and we are pushing the agenda to improve the customer journey – both from the seller’s perspective in completing information necessary for the sale of the property, and the buyer’s ability to digest that information in an accessible way.

How much better would it be if the seller’s information form is a combination of the CPR disclosure and conveyancing information and is pre-populated using the authority data, so that the seller is prompted to explain any anomalies between the physical and legal position – at the point of marketing?

The conveyancer could then advise the buyer on the true position and what it means for the buyer’s intended use and enjoyment. Whilst the seller’s conveyancer could advise on any resolution of breach of the law, contract or lender requirement, which will be necessary to satisfy the lender or enable the buyer to utilise the property as they wish and to be able to sell it for full value on the open market when they wish to move on.

All of the search data feeds could also be provided in real-time and refreshed, so that owners could continue to monitor what would impact their planned use or alteration of the property during their ownership, when they remortgage and when they come to sell.

Beth Rudolf, Director of Delivery at the Conveyancing Association

5. Estate agents will want access to searches information at the time the property is being listed for sale

There is currently a lot of discussion in Government and across the wider property market about bringing information provision to the beginning of the home buying and selling process. 

This implies that estate agents may increasingly want access to relevant information about a property at the time they are listing it for sale. Some conveyancers are already offering ‘exchange ready’ packs, which have demonstrably helped to speed up the process, reduce attrition and ultimately saved redundant cost.

6. The possibility of using insurance as a proxy for information will focus the search industry on speed, quality and sophistication

Search providers increasingly see themselves as PropTech companies moving beyond the traditional boundaries of the search industry and becoming broader information, process and technology businesses.

All this against a move in some quarters to use insurance as a proxy for information as an expediency for speeding up the home buying process – although research with homebuyers has always found overwhelmingly that they want information and not insurance. 

The potential use of insurance however acts as a further spur for the search industry to focus on speed, quality and sophistication in property information provision.

7. Steps will be taken to digitise the CON29 – following on from the digitisation of the LLC1

The centralisation of local land charges at the Land Registry will throw focus on the CON29, as it makes little sense to create a streamlined and efficient online service for half of the local authority search offering. 

Whilst the conclusions of a recent report on the future of the CON29 have not yet been made public, they are unlikely to recommend the status quo. That the report was commissioned by Government, and undertaken by an official from the Land Registry, suggests that there is an understanding that centralising local land charges in isolation will not deliver any benefits to homebuyers and sellers.

8. Lawyers will increasingly expect searches information to be served up electronically

With a number of conveyancers starting to ask for much more sophistication in how search information is served up to them, there is likely to be a sea change in how search companies operate. 

Lawyers simply want to know what issues may affect their client’s decision to buy any particular property and not to have to wade through pages and pages of search products. They want the information to be served up to them electronically and to be able to rely on it with recourse back to the provider.

James Sherwood-Rogers, Chairman of CoPSO

9. Clients will continue to behave cautiously and be ever-hungry for data

The complex home buying and selling process looks ugly from the outside but its Darwinian evolution is beautifully aligned to balance the rules, relationships and constraints that have shaped it – and which continue to shape it. Without changes to these levers, the equilibrium won't change radically. 

The principal, immutable lever is the importance of the transaction to the client. Buying or selling property will remain up there amongst the most important transactions we as individuals ever make. 

These high stakes coupled with clients' typical lack of expertise and their natural self-serving motivations mean clients will behave cautiously and tactically. They will be ever-hungry for data that better informs or gives them a competitive advantage. 

10. Savvy clients could become search providers’ new customers – instead of conveyancers

One major change we might see is a move away from the clients of search companies being conveyancers. Increasingly, savvy clients researching properties may self-serve; the portal community might see competitive advantage in enhancing listings data; lenders might front-load their lending due diligence, and new property log book style businesses may begin to 'pre pack' properties for sellers. 

The future is certainly more data and certainly supplied smarter, but probably to a range of new types of client.

11. The search industry will continue to morph into an integral risk management component of the conveyancing process

Looking back in order to look forward, the search world's recent evolution has seen ever more data sources becoming available and ever smarter ways being devised to serve them up to the conveyancer. 

The search industry feels as if it's morphing into an integral risk management component of the conveyancing process, with case management integration on the one hand and interpretative layers added to the data on the other. 

All of this is helping to manage the risks presented by both the people and the properties involved in a transaction.

Richard Hinton, Pitsford Consulting Limited

12. We’ll see intelligent and personalised scorecard output for every transaction – returned in seconds

Predicting 20 years hence with any degree of certainty is always hazardous when you consider that in 1999 email was only really starting to emerge as a reasonably common method of communication and the internet was only just starting to be used commercially.  

There are some predictions I would be very confident in making, although I don’t think we will need to wait 20 years for them to come about. Within that time, all property search information will be returned as data in seconds, and that data will be directly inputted into client systems and interpreted by a set of business rules governed by either the client or an insured third party.  

This will create an intelligent and personalised scorecard output for every transaction, which all parties can see and ultimately rely upon in their decision-making. Much of the data already exists in a consumable format, and there are already examples of similar delivery systems, intelligent automated workflow and business rule engines being used within the lender community.

13. All data and documentation relating to transactions will be hosted in secure virtual data rooms

All data and documentation relating to transactions will be hosted in secure virtual data rooms, with access provided to each of the authorised parties involved in a transaction – including conveyancers, lenders, brokers, surveyors and estate agents, as well as the end consumer. 

This change will radically alter the way in which communication and process in the property transaction world is managed, and is the most exciting opportunity for the industry in the coming years – as a transaction could be completed in hours or even minutes.

These convictions are borne out from the work that is already going on within the industry, including the work we are doing today at tmgroup with products such as tmconnect and mio. I would anticipate much of this happening within the next 5 years, especially as we see the continued drive to digitisation within HM Land Registry and the Government in general.

Joe Pepper, CEO at tmgroup

14. Consumers will demand more data as well as a more efficient home buying and selling process

In the 1970s Roy Amara said, ‘We tend to overestimate the effect of technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run’.  

That was before the advent of proper computing power and big data. At some point, it would seem sensible to assume that all property data will be available instantly and the price of that data will fall.  

Consumers will also seek more data, and they will demand it faster and cheaper to facilitate quicker, more efficient home sales and purchases. 

Chris Harris, Managing Director of Lawyer Checker and The Practical Vision Network

15. “Property passports” will save the need to repeat the same searches over and over again

The Government has already considered the possibility of introducing “Property Passports” whereby searches (amongst other documents) would be logged with the property. 

If implemented, this would save the need to repeat the same searches over and over again and could mean the conveyancer’s role will be solely advisory – reporting on searches without having to manually source them. This will also have the added benefit of saving costs. 

16. Artificial Intelligence will extract key information automatically and save conveyancers from having to read full search reports

The introduction of Artificial Intelligence could be another key advancement. At present, conveyancers are not only having to manually request searches, but then read through the various pages to select the issues worth highlighting and reporting on. 

In the future, Artificial Intelligence will provide the opportunity for the key information to be extracted automatically, hence saving valuable time and arguably, improving accuracy. 

17. Technological advancements will free conveyancers of admin and shift them purely into an advisory role

As we move towards the world of 2040, further technological advancements will be key. For example, technology could be used to reduce the preparatory work involved in ordering searches, such as selecting plans and specific searches. 

Consequently, we’ll see the conveyancer’s role move away from a mix between administrative and advisory, and instead towards purely advisory. This will inevitably help to speed up the process. 

18. The lack of standardisation will be addressed to make the home buying and selling process quicker, cheaper and less stressful

There is no doubt that there have already been changes with how property searches are obtained and responded to. This is especially apparent with Local Authority searches. 

Although we are already seeing time frames decrease and the digitisation of results occur, this still differs across the board. There is a lack of standardisation and it remains the case that whilst some authorities may respond in days, others may take weeks. 

This clearly needs addressing and indeed, the Government has recognised the need to "make the home buying and selling process quicker, cheaper and less stressful” (Improving the home buying and selling process, April 2018).  

Chloe Banks, Trainee Solicitor at Weightmans LLP

19. We may see a shift away from searches and due diligence – and instead towards transaction insurance

The big change, and I’m not saying it will be a smooth change, will be the way we use and trust data. It would be a big leap to trust the ‘single version of the truth’ that use of Blockchain in property transactions would require. 

However, it seems more likely that the other potentially transformative jump will be to doing less due diligence, and demanding fewer assurances, but covering the whole transaction using insurance. 

The ‘prop-tech’ pilot completed by law firm Mishcon de Reya and the Land Registry shows how some immediate changes can work – and this area is definitely worth watching. 

Eduardo Reyes, Commissioning and Features Editor at The Law Society Gazette

20. All property data will be held in one place – and it will become quicker and cheaper to obtain property information

20 years ago, I started at my firm as a newly qualified solicitor. At that time, most solicitors did not have computers on their desks and ordering searches involved completing numerous forms, hard copy and in duplicate. You had to check search fees using a directory and send cheques for each one. Let’s just say it was rather time-consuming! Fast forward 20 years… and we are now used to having a single search platform to order all searches in a few clicks.  

So what will we see in the next 20 years? 

There is always a drive to make the buying and selling process quicker and more straightforward. We are currently seeing the phased introduction of Council records – the Local Land Charges data – being transferred to the Land Registry. This will take a number of years to implement across the country, but could eventually lead to all property data being held in one place. This would make it quicker (and presumably cheaper) to obtain the sort of information that is required for a property sale and purchase.

Rebecca Swain, Partner, Thomson Snell & Passmore LLP, Residential Conveyancing

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On 8th May 2019, Future Climate Info (FCI) are making some changes to their commercial reports to help speed up transactions - particularly those with a Retail purpose.

‘FCI Standard Commercial’ and ‘FCI Premium Commercial’ are being withdrawn – and are being replaced with the following new reports: ‘FCI Retail’ and ‘FCI Commercial’.

You can find more information about these new reports below:

NEW FCI Retail report 

Price: £75 + VAT 

The FCI Retail Report is available for smaller retail properties - up to 0.25 hectares.

It includes remediation warranty and is also supported by £5 million professional indemnity cover.

It interrogates flood, environmental and ground stability datasets. 

• Flood

Analyses the impacts from key risks listed by The Law Society including Flooding from Rivers, The Sea, and Surface Water Flooding, Groundwater Flooding Susceptibility, Historic Flooding,  Flood Insurability, Flood Storage Areas, and nearby Surface  Water Features.

• Environmental

Analyses the impacts from key risks including Artificial Ground, Contaminated Land Insurability, Contaminated Land Register Entries  and Notices, Current Industrial Land Uses, Environmental Permits,  Petrol Stations, Landfill Sites Past and Present, Telecommunications  Transmitters, Potentially Contaminated Land from Past Industrial Land  Uses, Pollution Incidents, Air Quality, Potentially In-Filled Land, Pylons and Electricity  Lines, Radon Gas, Regulated Environmental Processes, and Surface  Dangers or Hazards.

• Ground Stability

Analyses the impacts from key risks including Subsidence, nearby  Ball Clay Mining Areas, Brine Compensation Areas, China Clay Mining  Areas,Coal Mining Areas, Geohazards such as Clay Shrinkage,  Landslips, Landslides and Sink Holes, Limestone Mining Areas, Past  Mining Hazards in Minerals other than coal, Modified Ground, Natural  Cavities, Potentially In-filled Land and Tin Mining Areas.

Click here to see a sample report

NEW FCI Commercial report

Price: From £100 + VAT

The FCI Commercial Report is aimed at other commercial and industrial units. Available in size brackets ranging from 0-15, 15-50 and 50-150 hectares. 

It is backed by £10 million professional indemnity cover and comes with expert support from FCI’s Risk Team.

It contains all of the information from the Retail report and also includes data on Energy & infrastructure such as wind farms, shale gas exploration, and HS2.

• Energy & Infrastructure

Analyses the impacts from key risks including Carbon Capture and Storage, Coal Bed Methane Extraction, Crossrail, Current and Future Hydropower Installations, Gas Recovery from Mines, HS2, Licensed Oil, Gas, and Shale Gas Exploration and Extraction, Major Energy, Environmental, and Transport Infrastructure, Power Stations, Solar Farms,Underground Coal Gasification and Wind Farms.

Click here to see a sample report

If you have any questions, please contact our Helpdesk on 0800 840 5571 or email helpdesk@tmgroup.co.uk