How digital innovation will improve and speed up buying a home

David Byers from The Times has included our consumer research in his article on how digital innovation will improve the home buying process 🙌🏾

Analysis by the Open Property Data Association (OPDA), an industry body committed to speeding up the buying process, says less than 1 per cent of data relevant to purchases is accessible in digital format, with the information being overseen by multiple unconnected government departments and non-governmental agencies — a phenomenon that leaves Britain lagging behind almost every country in the western world.

“The property market is long overdue for transformation,” says Maria Harris, the chair of the OPDA and the former director of lending at the digital Atom Bank.

Indeed, because of the chaos involved, conveyancers seem fed up with doing a job that is considered by many in the legal profession to be a thankless task. Between 2021 and 2025 the profession lost about 15 per cent of its workforce, from about 13,000 practitioners down to 11,140. This follows a similarly seismic reduction during the financial crisis of 2008.