25th April 2025
New data from The Home Owner’s Passport has revealed that in the 15 months since the Trading Standards material information guidelines have gone live, that over a quarter of properties would benefit from earlier lawyer instruction.
The HOP system triages properties against the most common conveyancing issues which are surfaced by the Material Information data, such as a short lease, restrictions or a deed of variation requirement and provides this information in a report format for agents.
The report means agents have visibility of potential conveyancing bottlenecks, from the very outset of the transaction and puts them in the driving seat to be able to take steps to mitigate the risk of delay further down the line by advising vendors if a conveyancing document review or title fix service would be advantageous.
HOPs ‘Invite Lawyer’ functionality allows agent to take this step pre-offer, potentially shaving weeks or months off the conveyancing transaction timescales and substantially mitigating the risk of the transaction derailing further down the line.
Sally Holdway, director at HOP says,
‘We are delighted to be able to support closer and earlier collaboration between agents and lawyers. HOP has been designed to work with ‘conveyancing grade’ data, meaning the information gathered by agents at the point of marketing can flow through to lawyers for their due diligence title checks, and by using the HOP technology to triage conveyancing complexity from day one, it means we can help to facilitate lawyers to add significant value in transactions much earlier in the process.’
Whilst Material Information data insights highlight more complex properties, this level of visibility also provides agents with tools to speed up all transactions. Whilst 25% of properties can be tricky cases, the good news is that 75% have less title issues to grapple with and other transaction management strategies can be employed on these matters.
In these instances HOP provides Contract Ready and Exchange Ready tools meaning that sellers can choose to self-serve to complete the conveyancing forms pre-offer and searches can be ordered and are ready to go at the point an offer is accepted, both of which will help to reduce the time it takes to complete these steps in the traditional post-offer process.
Sally goes on to say
‘We are starting to see a step change in our agent clients’ perception of Material Information from a compliance burden, to a tool to win more business and deliver better transaction outcomes. The power of the data they have at their fingertips with material information is changing the game with regards to how deals are managed.
However as compliance becomes higher up the agenda as the CMA begin to flex their new enforcement powers, the HOP MI data reports can also demonstrate compliance for agent at the click of a button across all their listings.’
