We’ve taken another major step forward toward the digital foundations that the homebuying process needs 🎉
OPDA and the Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) have secured Department for Science, Innovation and Technology funding of £742,700 through the Regulators’ Pioneer Fund to deliver the UK’s first Smart Property Data Trust Framework sandbox.
What will the project deliver?
The sandbox will be used to:
✅ Define the cross-industry principles and policy changes required for a trusted smart property data framework
✅ Build a Raidiam-powered sandbox to test how Open Banking-style trust models translate to property and homebuying transactions
✅ Create the governance, security, accreditation and interoperability standards that the sector is currently missing
✅ Tackle long-standing challenges around consent, data sharing, identity, liability and customer protection
The project participants
CLC, the Specialist Property Law Regulator, is committed to the responsible, ethical use of technology and innovation for consumers and conveyancers and is working with HBSC and the Digital Property Market Steering Group to transform home buying and selling.
In partnership with Open Property Data Association (the UK’s first open-source property data standard), and Raidiam (founding pioneers of UK’s Open Banking), this project will establish the principles of Trust Frameworks for property data.
The Industrial Strategy, published by Department for Business & Trade, sets out a vision to ease the homebuying process, identifying the property market as a sector which would benefit most from smart data within its goals to increase business investment and foster economic growth. This includes streamlining planning, reducing development costs, and improving property sector data sharing.
The sandbox will start the process of delivering the data, technical trust, and governance standards to deliver this vision.
What to expect
Our project creates a Smart Property Data Trust Framework sandbox, testing the technical infrastructure needed to underpin the regulatory, security, and governance standards for firms who need to access and share property data. By establishing technical, security, and governance standards, the project determines the groundwork for digitally verifiable trust and interoperability in smart property data collaboration, supporting the government’s vision of an effective and efficient property ecosystem.
The Framework is a vital element for delivering the future property buying and selling ecosystem, planned by industry collaborating through the Digital Property Market Steering Group and the Home Buying Selling Council.
The resulting ecosystem promises to create a transparent, seamless, efficient homebuying journey benefiting all stakeholders and serving as a scalable model for digital transformation in the property market.
The project steering group, co-chaired by Maria Harris (OPDA) and Tom Treadwell (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government), brings together Digital Property Market Steering Group (DPMSG) members and key stakeholders including DSIT, DBT, the FCA, Which?, Open Banking and others.
OPDA members are already leading on technical standards and testing how this framework will work in real customer journeys.
Maria Harris, Chair of OPDA
