Property Professionals Back Government Home-Buying Reforms

New research reveals strong support among conveyancers, estate agents and lenders for the government’s home-buying reforms, with many professionals now able to begin planning for change. The findings come from Landmark Information Group’s report, Property transaction reform: What the market wants next, which surveyed 500 home movers, 100 estate agents, 100 conveyancers and 50 mortgage lenders.

Market Alignment with Reform Roadmap

Seven in ten respondents who recently bought or sold homes said they wished they had known more about a property before making or accepting an offer, highlighting widespread frustration with information gaps. All sectors identified similar pressure points: missing context before decisions, risks surfacing too late, repeated follow-up and insufficient confidence that information would transfer reliably between stages.

“The answer is ultimately sequencing the transaction in a logical order to bring about better certainty and speed,” the report states. It outlines four priorities: prepare earlier, close the upfront information gap, build greater certainty before pressure builds and make progress easier to see. Four in five property professionals agreed meaningful reform was long overdue, with 68% saying there was enough clarity for organizations to start considering necessary changes.

Information Gaps and Transaction Failures

Almost all movers agreed that having key property information available at listing stage would reduce stress, as would ensuring their estate agent, conveyancer and lender worked from the same data. When professionals cited the single most likely cause of an otherwise viable transaction failing, missing, incomplete or inconsistent upfront information ranked behind only mortgage-related issues.

Seventy-seven percent of conveyancers identified upfront information and data readiness as having the potential to most positively impact their productivity and business success. Already, the data shows improvement: one third of files previously required additional enquiries due to missing information, down from 43% in 2023 and 51% in 2022.

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Professional Perspectives and Industry Sentiment

Landmark chief executive Simon Brown noted that while the reform direction is set, the real challenge lies in practical delivery. “Our research shows that home movers and property professionals are experiencing many of the same problems, whether that is making important decisions without the right information or spending valuable time trying to understand how a transaction is progressing.”

Former licensed conveyancer Rob Gurney, managing director of Ochresoft, acknowledged the encouraging reduction in additional enquiries but emphasized that too many issues still reach the legal process that could have been identified earlier. The Council for Licensed Conveyancers’ latest sentiment tracker found stamp duty reform as the top priority for the upcoming Budget, with 27% of conveyancers supporting this measure.

Other priorities included mortgage affordability measures (23%), greater fiscal certainty (17%), and support for first-time buyers (15%). Confidence in property market stability fell to its lowest level since the regulator began quarterly surveys in early 2025, reaching just 26%.

Stephen Ward, director of strategy and external relations at the CLC, acknowledged challenging market conditions but emphasized that government reforms will revitalize the market if the sector works together effectively.