The recent King’s Speech set out the Digital Information and Smart Data Bill. Just a year after the Open Property Data Association was launched, the bill’s inclusion of improving the homebuying process is confirmation that we’re on the right track. At last, we’ve parliamentary support to drive much-needed reform of the torturous homebuying experience.
It’s been a long time coming. I joined the mortgage industry 20 years ago and the lack of progress in the homebuying process over that time is embarrassing.
While other sectors have advanced digital services for consumers, homebuying has stuck to old ways of working, relying on forms, scanned documents, wet signatures, email, and even snail mail.
I didn’t set out to revolutionise the property industry. I wanted to take what I’d learned from creating the UK’s first digital mortgage and help other firms do the same. But sometimes fate, or visionaries like Kate Faulkner and Beth Rudolf from Home Buying Selling Council, have other plans.
Their seemingly simple request for me to digitise a buyer and seller property information dataset uncovered fundamental gaps in the way we access property data and how we work together for customers.
It took two years of working with a volunteer tech community made up of industry participants and a wide range of firms to prove that the gaps were real. The inefficacy and duplication of effort to get from property listed to completion is staggering.
We were so galvanised to fundamentally improve homebuying that we set up OPDA just over a year ago. We’ve achieved an incredible amount in that time, delivering open property data standards and models for trusting and sharing that data with free and open-source tools. We’ve created and implemented these in collaboration across government and industry.
Those using our data standards for digital property packs have seen time reduced from mortgage offer and purchase accepted to exchange of contracts within 15 days. Some of our biggest successes have been our member firms going live with digital property data, sellers instructing their conveyancer at the start of the transaction, and data flowing right through the transaction.
Following that success, our new members include some of the UK’s biggest banks such as Lloyds and HSBC UK, and Nationwide, the world’s largest building society.
One of our founder members is LMS. To mark our anniversary, Nick Chadbourne commented: “The importance of creating a more transparent and interoperable property industry is not only at the forefront of the OPDA but this is also true for us at LMS.
It was a natural step for me to become a member and help champion the sharing and utilisation of reliable open property data, encouraging collaboration and innovation within the sector. A digitalised property market is the future. I am grateful to be a part of a group that shares the same goals and enthusiasm.”
Our membership includes start-ups such as Kotini, founded by Kieran Witt, whose platform is used by estate agencies to automate their sales onboarding and compliance. As a small company, Witt has told us that they have benefitted hugely from OPDA membership because they’ve been able to tap the into experiences of other members to define what property data standards are.
As a result, they’ve adopted clear standards from the start. Since joining us, they’ve supported 1,400 property transactions using the standards.
I am immensely proud of what we’ve achieved and how it’s positively impacting our members’ customers and user experience.
As government gets back into the swing of day-to-day business, OPDA is reestablishing joint workstreams on the prioritisation of data to be digitised, creating the framework for trust and interoperability, implementing digital services such as identity and e-signatures, and driving adoption of open standards across the board.
The energy and commitment to getting this done is palpable and the momentum we’re seeing will deliver a significant tipping point for the industry.
Maria Harris is chair of the The Open Property Data Association
