What is the Property Data Trust Framework?

The Property Data Trust Framework enables people and organisations to use and reuse information relating to a property. It gives us a way to access and share authenticated property information or “property attributes” with other people and organisations more easily.

The trust framework was written by participants of the Home Buying & Selling Group and is a set of common language fields, data formats, technical specifications, and process rules that all participant organisations agree to follow to deliver one or more of their services. This covers the standards, guidance, and rules which could translate to mandation or legislation.

By adopting these standards, all services and organisations using the trust framework can describe and share the property information they’ve created in a consistent way. The framework provides the common approach and minimum thresholds to deliver trust between framework participants.

Why do we need a framework?

Most of our home buying and selling process remains heavily reliant on paper and forms and collecting information rather than data – from identity checks to affordability verification to property information forms – even when we scan, photo, and upload them electronically, they’re still the same bits of paper!

Where we have created access to the data that we use in the home buying process today it is generally not fit for purpose. Most of our data isn’t recorded in a standardised format, it’s not typically stored or held in a way that makes it findable and accessible, and it’s not shareable in a trusted way – very little of our data meets the principles of being FAIR.

Even worse, where we do have data that is fit for purpose, in a standardised format and accessible in the right way, we don’t have the framework or compliance structure to share it or trust it unless we access it directly ourselves.

To help us transform the home buying process, we need the data we use to be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable or Reusable and we need a common framework across government and industry for sharing and trusting that data