As we step into 2026, the property market stands at a defining moment. For decades, buying and selling a home has been one of the most important financial decisions people make—yet the process itself has remained fragmented, paper-heavy, opaque, and frustratingly slow. Consumers have adapted to digital-first experiences in almost every other part of their lives, from banking to retail to entertainment and healthcare, but digitisation in the property market has not kept pace. That is now changing.
The Open Property Data Association (OPDA), under the stewardship of its chair, Maria Harris, is leading a fundamental transformation of how property data is created, accessed, shared, and trusted across the UK housing market. Working in close collaboration with government departments, regulators, industry professionals, and technology partners, OPDA is building a connected, open, and secure property data ecosystem—one that delivers better outcomes for consumers, greater efficiency for professionals, and a more resilient market overall.
This is not change for change’s sake. It is reform driven by evidence and research, shaped by consumer insight, and proven through real-world pilots. It is about re-engineering the foundations of the property market so that trust, transparency, and interoperability are embedded by design—not bolted on as an afterthought.
This blog sets out OPDA’s 2026 vision: why change is essential, how collaboration across sectors is making it possible, and how OPDA and its chair are turning a long-standing ambition into practical reality.
A Market Ready for Change: Consumer Insight as the Catalyst
Transformation starts with understanding the lived experience of buyers and sellers. In 2025, OPDA conducted one of the most comprehensive consumer surveys undertaken in the property sector, seeking to quantify what many already suspected: that the system is not working as well as it should.
The findings from more than 5,300 respondents were striking—and impossible to ignore.
Communication and Complexity: Over 41% of respondents identified poor communication as the single biggest challenge in their property transaction. Buyers and sellers repeatedly described being “left in the dark,” unsure of progress, waiting weeks for updates, and acting as the chaser between professionals who were unable to share information effectively.
This lack of visibility is not merely inconvenient. It erodes trust in the system and amplifies stress during what is already a high-stakes process.
Repetition and Inefficiency: Perhaps most tellingly, 62% of consumers reported being asked for the same information and documents multiple times. Identity checks, proof of funds, property details, and key information points are repeatedly recreated, revalidated, and resent—often in different formats—because systems cannot easily talk to one another.
This repetition is not a compliance requirement; it is a symptom of disconnected infrastructure.
Delays That Damage Confidence: Nearly half of respondents experienced contract exchanges taking between three and six months, far longer than they expected or felt was reasonable. These delays increase the likelihood of fall-throughs, inflate costs, and place enormous emotional strain on households trying to plan their lives.
Yet consumers also sent a powerful message of optimism.
Digital Readiness and Trust: An overwhelming 82% supported the idea of a Digital Property Pack, while 77% said they would willingly use secure technology to share documents and data—provided it was trustworthy. Crucially, data security emerged as the top priority, reinforcing the need for frameworks that combine openness with robust governance.
The conclusion was clear: consumers are not resistant to digital change. They are actively asking for it.
From Insight to Impact: What OPDA Members Pilots Proved
Under Maria Harris’s chairmanship, OPDA has always been committed to customer-centric and evidence-based reform. Rather than relying on theory alone, the association has worked with partners across the ecosystem to test what happens when property data is structured, authenticated, and shared through open standards.
The results from OPDA’s 2025 pilot programmes were transformational.
Speed Without Compromise
By replacing fragmented, document-based workflows with consent-driven data sharing, some transactions achieved contract exchange in as little as 15 days. This was not achieved by cutting corners, but by removing duplication and enabling professionals to access verified information at the right time.
Eliminating Fall-Throughs and Fraud
Structured data, combined with digital identity and auditability, resulted in a 43% reduction in fall-throughs and zero fraud incidents within the pilots. This is a powerful demonstration that better data is not just about efficiency—it is about resilience, consumer and industry protection.
Efficiency for Professionals
Estate agents, conveyancers, and mortgage professionals reported saving hundreds of hours by removing manual checks, document chasing, and automation of identifying and reconciling inconsistencies. These efficiency gains free professionals up to focus on advice, service quality, and risk management rather than administration.
For OPDA, these pilots confirmed what the association has long advocated: many of the tools to fix the system already exist. What has been missing is collaboration, standards, and delivery.
OPDA’s Leadership Role: Setting the Direction for the Market
Since its inception, the association has had a clear purpose: to enable the safe, secure and trusted use of property data for the benefit of the whole market. Through OPDA’s influence, collaboration and leadership, that purpose has been translated into practical implementation, strong alliances, legislation and policy change.
Chairing Change
Maria Harris brings a unique combination of strategic vision, deep banking and mortgage sector understanding, and credibility across government and industry. As founder and chair of OPDA, she has consistently articulated a simple but powerful message: the property market cannot modernise without fixing its data foundations.
Her leadership has been instrumental in positioning OPDA—not as a technology vendor or lobbying body, but as a neutral convener—bringing together stakeholders, data custodians, and organisations who historically operated in silos and aligning them around a shared future.
Creating Open Standards
OPDA has developed and stewarded critical building blocks for reform, including:
- The open property data schema, providing a common structure for property information that can be reused across transactions and stakeholders.
- The Smart Property Data Trust Framework, which defines how data can be shared securely, compliantly, and with consumer consent.
These standards are open by design, ensuring that innovation is not locked behind proprietary barriers or paywalls and that organisations of all sizes can participate.
Building Cross-Sector Alignment
OPDA has forged strategic relationships with major entities and consortium across the smart data ecosystem. As members of the Smart Data Council, Digital Property Market Steering Group, and leading the work on Trust and Interoperability for smart property data, these collaborations demonstrate that transformation is not hypothetical—it is already underway.
Members of OPDA range from high street property brands, banks and mortgage professionals, innovators and technology providers, data specialists, and front-line practitioners: ensuring it represents the end-to-end property transaction industry and carries a strong commitment to transformation for industry and consumers.
By aligning established providers and innovators around shared standards, OPDA is reducing fragmentation and accelerating adoption at scale.
Influencing Policy and Regulation
Through sustained engagement and tangible evidence of delivery with policymakers and regulators, OPDA has been a powerful advocate for full digitisation of the homebuying process and the advancement of smart data. This includes embedding trust frameworks, mandating interoperable data standards, and recognising digital identity of property as core infrastructure.
OPDA’s influence reflects a growing consensus: incremental change is no longer enough. Legislation has been delivered and policy published to enable meaningful and sustainable transformation of the homebuying process.
Government as an Enabler: Infrastructure, Policy, and Trust
While industry innovation is essential, systemic reform cannot happen without government support and commitment to action. OPDA has worked closely with public sector partners to ensure that policy, strategy, initiatives, and funding align with the goal of a connected property data ecosystem.
Ensuring central and local government are digitising property data at source, implementing common standards for authentication and verification, and endorsing the highest levels of governance are key components in building industry trust, confidence and transparency.
Funding Innovation
Government backing has been tangible as well as strategic. The award of £742,700 from the Regulators’ Pioneer Fund to OPDA and its partners is enabling real-world testing of the Smart Property Data Trust Framework sandbox. Repurposing existing and proven functionality, testing new approaches, and bridging the gap between policy ambition and practical delivery.
A Shared Responsibility
Government, regulators, and industry bodies are uniquely positioned to capitalise on this opportunity and create the conditions for trust—through legislation, standards, and oversight. OPDA’s work demonstrates how public and private sectors can collaborate without compromising accountability or consumer protection.
Industry Professionals: From Participants to Partners in Reform
Transformation is critical for the market; it must be adopted by those who operate within it every day. Estate agents, brokers, conveyancers, lenders, surveyors, and system providers all have a vital role to play.
OPDA’s vision does not diminish professional expertise—it amplifies it.
What Change Looks Like in Practice
For industry professionals, the shift to a connected smart data ecosystem involves:
- Adopting FAIR principles, making property data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable so everyone has the right data at the right time in real-time.
- Implementing open standards, ensuring systems can easily share data and interoperate rather than compete in isolation.
- Moving from PDFs to APIs, enabling secure, consent-based data exchange where information can be trusted and relied upon.
- Embedding digital identifiers and credentials, keeping the ecosystem safe and reducing fraud and repeated verification.
- Educating consumers, helping homebuyers, sellers, and the professionals who represent them to understand and trust digital processes.
Those who embrace these changes early are already seeing and feeling the benefits: faster transactions, lower risk, better outcomes, and improved customer experience.
Collaboration at the Core: Standards, Technology, and Outcomes
At the heart of OPDA’s approach is the belief that collaboration—not competition—is the key to unlocking market-wide benefits.
A Shared Language for Property Data: OPDA’s common data schema provides a universal language for property information, reducing ambiguity and misinterpretation. When everyone works from the same data model, errors decrease and confidence increases.
Consent-Driven, Secure Sharing: APIs governed by trust frameworks ensure that data flows only with explicit authorisation. This puts consumers back in control of their information while enabling professionals to work more efficiently.
Joined-Up Systems: Integrating data across Land Registry, data custodians, local authorities, agents, lenders, and conveyancers removes friction at every stage of the transaction. The result is a smoother, more predictable journey.
Reusable Digital Data: Once verified, data can be safely and securely reused across the transaction, eliminating repeated checks and reducing fraud risk.
For buyers and sellers, the benefits of a connected property data ecosystem are profound:
- Faster transactions, measured in days and weeks rather than months.
- Less stress, with control, transparency, and fewer requests for information.
- Lower costs, as efficiency savings are realised and passed on.
- Greater confidence, knowing that data is secure, accessible, and consented.
This is what a consumer-centric property market looks like in practice.
The Road to 2026: From Momentum to Mandate
OPDA’s roadmap to 2026 is ambitious—but achievable.
Key Priorities
- Scaling successful pilots across regions and transaction types.
- Embedding Digital Property Packs as standard practice.
- Implementing the property data trust framework universally, including mandatory consent-based APIs.
- Educating the industry, through working groups, guidance, and collaboration.
The Vision
A fully digitised consumer and industry transaction rooted in consent and governance:
- Standardised Digital Property Packs used across the market.
- Mandatory API-driven data sharing.
- End-to-end digital processes for buyers and sellers.
- A property market built on trust, transparency, and interoperability.
In Closing
The UK property market has talked about reform for years. What is different now is that the foundations have finally been laid.
Under Maria Harris’s leadership, and commitment from members, the Open Property Data Association has moved the conversation from aspiration to action—demonstrating that a faster, fairer, and more efficient system is not only possible, but is already emerging.
The connected future for property data is within reach. Together, we can make homebuying fit for the digital age and restore trust in one of life’s most important transactions.
