Monthly Archives: November 2018

At the Annual mortgage Conference held earlier this month, government officials criticised the delays in current conveyancing processes.  It was stated that it takes an average of 19 weeks to get from acceptance of an offer to completion. One of the speakers, Matt Prior an official from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, said that this was “a hell of a long time to wait”.The solution that was proposed was in the form of a logbook for your house. This logbook would provide a pack of information that is updated by each owner of the property and then provided to the new buyer at the start of the conveyancing process. The rationale behind this is that it would help avoid abortive transactions and therefore wasted costs for all parties – as the information is ready and available from the outset and not some horrible discovery later down the line. This approach is supported by the Conveyancing Association.You could compare the idea of a property logbook to the logbook of a car – which would work in theory. However, unlike with cars, residential homebuyers tend not to be repeat customers, with many people only moving once or twice in their lifetime. This would mean that you have homebuyers with limited knowledge of the conveyancing process being responsible for compiling the information they keep up to date in their own logbook. I would ask whether this is realistic or even possible? Particularly, as something that is a major issue and of real significance to one buyer could be a very minor detail to another. Equally, will property developers and homebuilders be required to produce hundreds of these logbooks when a new development is produced? Or would a central logbook for the development be sufficient, with each individual owner becoming responsible for the logbook to their flat when they come to sell?If this logbook is something that is going to become mandatory, it is going to require a lot more thought and a lot of support and guidance to make it effective in the long run.

Now is the time to invest in companies that make small furniture! The City of Westminster in the City Plan 2019- 2040 has suggested that new developments and conversions will (unless necessary to protect a heritage asset) not be allowed to provide units of greater than 150 sq m (1,615 sq ft) to ensure developments provide the number of homes required over the coming years in the area.Whilst this is above the nationally described space standards by a whole 12 sq m (129 sq ft), for a family home, this would hardly be palatial. The City of Westminster has pointed out that it is also 50% larger than the average size of a private market tenure home in Westminster, although presumably this figure includes the large number of pied-à-terres in the area.Without doubt something needs to be done to ensure there are enough decent quality properties at the correct price, however how many ‘average’ buyers could afford even a modestly sized property in Westminster, and will this solve the problem?  This does seem like another situation where wealthy foreign buyers are being blamed for a property market that just simply doesn’t allow for affordable homes as everyone on the property ladder wants to pull the ladder up behind them and make money on their own home. Realistically, how many first-time buyers are pushed out of the market by each mansion built in prime residential London?Whilst it has less than most boroughs, Westminster still has brownfield sites suitable for redevelopment, which I would argue would be a good place to start to create a stock of new, and hopefully decently sized, properties.The plans are open to consultation so watch this (lack of) space!