The latest findings from Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) do not exactly show a market brimming with activity at the moment, although I suspect you might have guessed that already.
The UK Residential Survey reveals new buyer demand, agreed sales, listings and prices remain on a downward trend, with the hangover created by the mini Budget still having a considerable impact.
The UK’s property surveyors do not seem particularly upbeat about the future prospects for the market either, although the sales forecast has improved, with an expectation that dampened demand will continue to feed through as prices continue to fall.
That said, the first few weeks of January is perhaps not a benchmark to set in terms of the rest of 2023, and the anecdotal evidence I’m starting to see, suggests there has been a pick-up in the last few weeks.
Optimism ahead
Indeed, at our recent annual conference, we heard from our headline sponsors, LMS, and while there was a belief that quarter one this year would be relatively quiet, there were also figures to suggest a greater degree of activity was seeping back into the market.
LMS talked about house appraisals and new instructions for sale increasing recently, compared to their corresponding 2021/2022 figures, and that this was likely to signal an overall upturn after what has undoubtedly been a challenging few months.
One of the key focuses of the conference was on speeding up the house purchase and remortgage transaction and what that might mean for firms in terms of faster pipeline turns, reducing the resource required to move cases through, and the ability to service greater numbers of clients as a result.
Looking up down under
We heard from James Bawa, CEO of Pexa in the UK. As you may know, there has been something of a revolution in Australia – in no small part due to Pexa – and we heard about some of the efficiency gains this has resulted in.
For example, it now takes 15 days to complete a remortgage in Australia, which has come down from an average of 49 days, and there is genuine talk about whether a remortgage can be signed, sealed and delivered within a day
You’ll be unsurprised to learn this is all built around the use of a digital platform, meaning quicker transfer of funds, quicker registration of title and minimised paper usage.
This is not an advert for Pex,a I should add – as there are other businesses working in the same space here – and James freely admits the UK is a bigger and more complex marketplace than Australia. But as you will have noted, there is a growing industry around this concept, integrate it into the UK housing and mortgage market and hopefully, we are not too far away from it delivering the same kind of benefits.
Speedy remortgages
We know that certain lenders are very keen on this type of system, and while a ‘remortgage in a day’ might seem like pie in the sky at this very moment, bringing down the average time of completion is not beyond us.
Plus, that should give you back a considerable amount of time in order to work on advising clients rather than chasing up paperwork or other stakeholders and constantly having to communicate where they are in the process.
James talked of advisers not even starting the remortgage process with a client until two weeks before maturity in the future, which again might seem like something of a stretch at the moment but again is something to work towards in a market where it currently needs to be started months in advance.
Overall, having a pipeline of business that can complete in a far quicker period of time is going to be beneficial in so many ways – not just in terms of resource but in terms of payment, putting that money into your business bank accounts much more quickly, and allowing you to get on with the next client.
The good news is we are moving towards this, and we have a mortgage market which is increasingly engaged with achieving this as well as the Bank of England updating their payment system to facilitate swifter, and more certain, payments. While it won’t be here overnight, the message is, it will be here sooner than you might imagine.
