Housing market pledge

This week we saw the introduction of the Home buying and selling industry pledge. Government, agents, brokers, solicitors, developers, buyers, and sellers, we all want the same result, a faster, frictionless, and fairer purchase and sale process.

After several consultations and industry discussion groups, the Home Buying & Selling Group has drawn up recommendations requesting the industry to pledge to play their individual part in changing practices and processes to align with these guidelines.

We wouldn’t say the report is necessarily ground-breaking, but that doesn’t make it any less crucial that we take the report seriously and do what we can. We know that the longer a sale is proceeding, the more chance it has of aborting for a plethora of reasons. Anything we can do to help this process should be done.

Clear actionable instructions for buyers such as securing an agreement in principle prior to viewing and for sellers, completing all necessary solicitor paperwork at the point of coming to market will simply take weeks off the full transaction timescale once a sale is agreed.

The Government will be producing a guide called ‘How to Sell’ and ‘How to Buy’ similar to the guide that is a mandatory document when letting a property surprisingly called ‘How to Rent’.

It is encouraging to read the Government commentary in the full report. The fact they want to work with Proptech firms to create property passports and other digital processes are all a step in the right direction.

We pledge to play our part.

You can download the full report below:

Download full report