Chimni's Nigel Walley has been made Chair of a new Working Group for the MHCLG's Home Buying & Selling initiative, investigating the potential role of digital logbooks like Chimni in the Home Buying and Selling process.

See article in Property Industry Eye:  Proptech Firms Tasked Wtih Developing How To Digitise Upfront Information

The MHCLG Sets Up A Working Group To Examine Property Logbooks Role in Home Buying & Selling

The Ministry of Housing, Community & Local Government (MCHLG) has been pushing hard to accelerate the digitisation of the home buying and selling industry.   They sponsor and cross industry body called the Home Buying & Selling Group (HBSG).  In response to the increased availability of digital information, the HBSG has now set up a working party to look specifically at the issue of property logbooks - to be Chaired by Chimni's Nigel Walley.  This folllows on from Dame Judith Hackitt’s recommendation for a digital record for every building in what became know as the Hackitt Report on building construction.   Hackitt called for a “golden thread of information” for all buildings, with the information available to all buyers and sellers.   The HBSG has been looking at how to provide this in a standard, secure way and how to incorporate it into the new online processes being developed by the property industry.

This comes at a time when all property records are being digitised with many turned into publicly available, online references.  However, data is still highly fragmented and unevenly distributed, with no standardised way of ensuring continuity between property transactions.

 A group of residential property logbook companies, who were already HBSG participants, were tasked with establishing a basis on which digital records of property information could be used for home buying and selling, as well as any other residential property related transaction.   The companies are Chimni, Etive, PIP and the National Deeds Depository.   

Nigel Walley, MD of Chimni who is chairing the group said “property records are increasingly being digitised which is a great opportunity to improve access and sharing of information.  However, data is still highly fragmented and unevenly distributed, with no standardised way of sharing electronically or ensuring continuity of data between property transactions. We believe residential logbooks can deliver this.”

The group are looking at data standards, security and integration with the systems being built by other parts of the industry. Their remit includes recommending a process of regulation for providers of logbooks.

The work of the Property Logbook Group work dovetails with other HBSG projects, such as the one being led by the Conveyancing Association to establish an industry standard data schema for’ buying and selling property information’, (known as the BASPI) and the work being done by National Trading Standards on data distributed by portals and agents.

The HBSG has been working to shorten transaction times, and improve transparency in residential property.  They view logbooks as a key component of this as property data is increasingly digitised.

Beth Rudolf of the Conveyancing Association said “It is vital now more than ever that we seek out every opportunity to improve the efficiency in the home moving process for the home mover, for the stakeholders and for the economy as a whole.  Prior to lockdown transaction times could be as much as 20 weeks after an offer had been accepted and the risk of a transaction falling through was around 34%.  There is simply not enough resource in the industry to support this amount of waste, let alone the poor consumer outcomes highlighted by government research and the Competition and Markets Authority report into mis-selling of leasehold property.

We know that instructing a property lawyer on listing and providing all information upfront results in average transaction times of just 6-8 weeks in other parts of the UK. 

Making Property Logbooks the norm will make it incredibly straight forward for home owners to collate and update information during their ownership.  Property Logbooks must be regulated to avoid the same issues which we had at the beginning of the century with searches which was eradicated by the regulation brought in via the Search Code.”

 The participating logbook companies are currently conducting an industry wide consultation with HBSG members including HM Land Registry, the Law Society, the NAEA and the Conveyancing Association.