Chimni MD Nigel Walley was quoted in the Sunday Times 'Homes' Section today, in an article by Carol Lewis looking at the delays and backlog in conveyancing process.  As we emerge from post-COVID lockdown, the impact of staff furloughs, redundancies and a surge in sales have conspired to increase the length of the homes sales process to unacceptable levels.

The article highlights the backlog in sales processing, and the structural problems in the conveyancing industry that have caused it. Beth Rudolph, of the Conveyancing Association, explains: “The selling process has speeded up, but the time to complete is the same, if not longer, because of a lack of capacity, backlog and other problems.” The article highlights property logbooks as potentially one of the solutions and quotes Chimni MD Nigel Walley:

'One way in which [an improved conveyancing process] might be achieved is through digital logbooks, where all the material needed to buy, sell or rent a property is held.   Nigel Walley, managing director of Chimni, a logbook provider, is chair of the HBSG’s logbook working party. He says: “There are just four providers and 5,000 users of logbooks — we are almost universally unknown.”

This could change in the next year. “We are about a year way from mass roll-out,” he says. “Then people could be perpetually ready to convey with all their house information in one place in a format that can be shared between everyone.”  It can’t come soon enough, with buyers and sellers growing increasingly frustrated by the delays and concern mounting that many will miss the stamp duty deadline as a result.'

This is the first article in the property section of a national newspaper to discuss property logbooks. A PDF of the full article is attached below:

Attachments:

Backlog Britain Article

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