A new research project aims to discover what buyers think must be done to improve homebuying in the UK.

The Open Property Data Association (OPDA) has issued a survey through over 30 of its member firms including Atom bank, Inventory Base, and Kotini to cover thousands of existing and potential homebuyers.

The results will provide key evidence for OPDA’s campaign to transform and digitise the homebuying process.

The survey takes less than 15 minutes, is open to all customers, and can be completed anonymously. The deadline for responses is 30 September.

OPDA wants to find out not only what homebuyers and sellers feel about the process but how they think it should be improved.  The trade association is particularly interested in how much homebuyers and sellers know about digital property information and how comfortable they would be using and sharing data.

Results and analysis will feed into a white paper that OPDA will publish and present to Government and other key stakeholders later this year.

Much of the homebuying process still remains reliant on paper, duplication, multiple signatures, and manual checks. Consequently, it is taking an average of 22 weeks for customers to reach completion on their home purchase (Source: Rightmove).

OPDA chair Maria Harris commented: “We’ve all heard examples of how bad the torturous and archaic homebuying experience is in this country. But we’re taking our research further by asking consumers not only what they think about the experience, but also how they feel it could be improved and about their attitudes to digital property information. ”