In fact, this topic was one of the core discussions at our recent annual conference, where Baroness Penn, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, addressed a roomful of conveyancers  and industry leaders stressing the central role they have to play in realising a digitised process.

It was emphasised to the Housing Minister that if digitisation was placed at the heart of home buying and selling reforms that transaction times would have the potential to reduce from months to weeks, possibly even days in some cases, but that change needed to happen ‘at pace’.

The Minister recognised that parts of the transformation needed to be driven by government but stressed that there is a huge amount that can, and is, being driven forward by industry.

The work of National Trading Standards’ estate and letting agency team in pushing forward upfront property information for consumers was also lauded. The team has been working with property portals, and with those across the industry, to ensure more material information is made available on property listings so that consumers can make informed decisions and agents can meet their legal requirements at the very beginning of the consumer journey. The aim, as with all reforms across the sector, is to ultimately provide greater clarity for consumers, this will also save estate agents time from wasted enquiries and provide greater efficiency.

But, is the industry chasing unicorns? Can an outcome of a digitised process that takes days or weeks instead of months, and which reduces workloads and financial and emotional stress, be achieved? Well, yes, very much so as our Norwegian counterparts will tell you.

Norway is a fantastic example of how digitisation can foster a simpler, more transparent process for consumers without imposing significant additional costs.

In Norway it takes an average of just 47 days from the moment a person thinks of selling to when the buyer moves in, about three weeks of which is compiling the information needed before the property can go on the market. There are no chains, because of the speed of buying a property, and bridging finance is widely used and easily available for the same reason.

And this is what the vision of the Digital Property Market Steering Group (DPMSG), which has been convened by HM Land Registry and led by sector experts, is. It wants to create a simpler, faster, more certain and less stressful system.

Mike Harlow, the Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Customer and Strategy at HM Land Registry, spoke passionately about the Norwegian system at our conference, attributing its success to the collaboration of all the stakeholders in the market – lenders, insurers, lawyers and institutions – in designing the system.

Mike Harlow also clearly highlighted the importance of dealing with both residential and commercial property together when introducing reform. He invited the conference to imagine if everybody who was a party to the transaction had a single shared view of what the property is, who the parties are, the terms of the deal and the progress of the deal, then there would be no chasing, no uncertainty, no need to make multiple phone calls to find out where something was stuck. This is what will make the process faster.

Undoubtedly, this is a future that all of us across the industry are striving for, and we are seeing incremental change in a number of areas. For our part, the CLC will continue to play an active part in helping the DPMSG steering group achieve its aims and more generally to secure these important progressions which will enable  conveyancers to deliver better transactions to their clients.  We encourage anyone with views on how to digitally transform the land and property market to get involved.

Stephen Ward is director of strategy and external relations at the Council for Licensed Conveyancers