Within the property industry in England & Wales, it has long been accepted that there are inherent problems with the current house buying and selling process. You don’t have to look too far to find historically high fall through levels (currently 28% Nationally and 35% in London) to know that something is awry.
During Sajid Javid’s recent call for a consultation, I and other property professionals attended various round-table events to offer our opinions. In particular, one part of the consultation excited us at Sprift, a nod to “examining digital solutions, involving putting more data online to speed up the home-buying process.” It is this idea of having readily available data at the first enquiry to make the home buying process more transparent, that drives us.
Many estate agents and industry commentators suggest that the real blame for an aborted transaction can be laid at the information’s door. Information that was either misleading, unexplained, taking too long to produce or just plain simply missing. The effects of this on buyers is that as time elapses whilst data is collated their initial buying decision can cool or be bought into doubt. Such issues typically occur when the matter is in the hands of a conveyancer and the agents negotiating powers have lessened. An additional consequence of the late delivery of key facts is that purchasers have now outlaid financially on surveys, search and could stand to be ‘out-ot-pocket’ through no fault of their own. We have consulted with hundreds of agents who all report that the tide has changed from a time when financially committed buyers would most likely still proceed after discovering some areas of concern.
Nowadays they are not only more likely to walk away but also turn to the online communities to broadcast how they feel they have been poorly treated and/or misled. The same is even more true of investment buyers, who have made up an increasingly greater share of the market. They attach less emotion to the property, whilst focusing harder on the quality of the asset. So, it follows that they are even more discerning buyers and will object to the time lost by an aborted transaction. Fortunately in this age of transparency and technology, things are finally transpiring to assist the home-buying process, by allowing purchasers and investors access to the key facts they really need at the first enquiry. The Sprift property platform is just one such system that effortlessly presents information upfront that could otherwise thwart a sale when disclosed at a later date.
Sprift helps to lower the stress of buying and selling properties, reducing the amount of money and time lost when sales fall through and speeding up average transaction times. In addition, Sprift also harvests invaluable information that is rarely transferred from homeowner to buyer, to compiling a full-service history for each property.
Sprift is already partnering with many Estate Agents and Solicitors who seek to offer high standards of customer service and transparency, it is also the perfect platform for landlords and developers to research and manage their projects and portfolios. With more technology like this being introduced, it would be interesting to see just how far proptech can take us in the future. To find out more about Sprift, see here.
