Why given the increased adoption of technology are there still long delays in the homebuying process?

This was one of the key debates at the opening keynote panel discussion Mortgage innovation and technology: what’s changed from 2025, where are we now?

Freddie Savundra, founder at instamo asked the MIT Live panel why given how quickly technology can and should work, he cannot agree to buy a house on 20 December and be moved in by Xmas Eve?

OMS chief executive Dale Jannels questioned why anyone would want to move that quickly and pointed out that regulation wouldn’t allow such a turnaround. Savundra countered that the option should at least be there.

Jannels did share the frustration at the length of time homebuyers continue to face. “You can have a mortgage agreed within minutes but you can’t complete for 25 weeks – that needs to change.”

Both Savundra and Jannels agreed that one of the key bottlenecks came from the legal side and this was something that needed to be addressed.

“There’s a lot of people living off that transaction process.” Jannels said

“The ones that are still holding it back are the legal side. Right now I would say that’s the biggest hesitancy in the marketplace is where they might have been getting 25 weeks of payment, if we are getting that down to five or 10 days, obviously that will have an impact and some are not going to be happy about it.”

In his special guest address at MIT Live, Applied futurist Tom Cheesewright highlighted the lack of progress in fixing what he referred to as the conveyancing issue. “There is still far too much friction in this area.”

MQube director of growth Jake Atkinson pointed out the disparities in tech adoption across the industry, specifically within the lender space were frustrating. “Some lenders are only just rolling out digital signatures while others are forging ahead. “ But he also said that, over the last 12 months in general, the speed from sale to completion had barely changed.