The conveyancing process will be completely digital by 2030, experts have forecast.

The Council for Licensed Conveyancers has released a paper which suggests that the legal side of the house buying process may be handled by estate agency firms in the future and will be fully electronic. 

This will be supported by the Land Registry’s efforts to digitise property records.

The Council says homebuyers will benefit from much greater transparency over where they are in the purchase process and it will be possible to get more detailed information about a property upfront.

Greater automation will afford conveyancers more time to focus on the service and advisory side of their work.

The Council predicts that properties will have logbooks which are kept up-to-date so that future buyers have the full maintenance history for their home.

It says that ultimately data should help to create a “single source of truth” about a property, but it remains to be seen how this will be achieved so that all parties know which information they trust.

CLC chair Dame Janet Paraskeva says: “Many lawyers will be heartened by the prediction that there will be a greater focus on advisory work as the market changes and that it can be used to create a point of differentiation.

“However, while we can predict certain shifts in the market with confidence – in particular the inevitable move to electronic conveyancing – how they play out over the next decade remains uncertain.

“With so much work going on to improve and reform the process, we think now is the right time to take a wider view on what this all means in the long term and how we can ensure that the home buying and selling process works best for consumers, service providers and ultimately the UK economy.”