With affordability pressures remaining elevated and transactions taking longer than many would like, inefficiencies across the property market continue to have a significant impact on borrowers and professionals alike. Joe Pepper, UK CEO of PEXA, explores how outdated processes are adding cost, delay and uncertainty to the home buying journey, and why greater digitisation is essential to creating a faster, more transparent and resilient housing market.
Outdated, fragmented property transaction processes create unnecessary cost, delay and uncertainty, making the market inefficient for all involved, but it doesn’t need to be this way.
In today’s market, mortgage rates are changing faster than many buyers and brokers can keep up. Data from MoneyFacts found the average mortgage loan is now £788 a year more expensive than before the Middle East conflict began, and a recent UK Finance report shows the strain on borrowers’ affordability has worsened.
In fact, it has reached its tightest level since 2008, with homebuyers spending just over a fifth (21.3 per cent) of their gross income on mortgage repayments.
The negative impact of geopolitical tension is very much present, but it must also be acknowledged that the issues in the housing market are not solely the result of these circumstances.
These pressures are exacerbating a home-buying and selling process that has long operated on an inefficient and fragmented system, leaving it susceptible to failing transactions, high stress and ever-increasing costs for consumers and brokers alike. Tackling this is very much in our control as an industry.
Cost of inefficiency
With the market volatility we have seen in recent years, primarily showing itself through unstable rates, the ability to progress a transaction efficiently and with certainty could not be more crucial. Ongoing reliance on legacy back-end infrastructure is causing huge blockers to this, though.
It is not dissimilar to what we saw during the 2022 ‘mini-Budget’ – buyers need to secure rates quickly before they expire, sellers need to move fast before circumstances change, and brokers find themselves in increasingly stressful situations trying to secure the best possible outcome for their clients because the system simply doesn’t move fast enough.
One of the key reasons for this inefficiency is caused by a lack of upfront information and a single source of truth, as well as repeated verification checks and lots of duplicated work as information is rekeyed from one system into another over and over again. As such, the average transaction takes over 4 months, and it has been estimated that there are over nine million hours a year lost.
It is a vicious cycle. Delays and unpredictability push up costs for lenders, which can then negatively feed into pricing and product criteria. This has a detrimental impact on borrower affordability, which has already been put under pressure by the current economic environment. Brokers must navigate this and find competitive products for their clients, but even when they do so, transactions can still fall through if completion does not happen before a mortgage offer expires.
These system inefficiencies force professionals to work to tight timelines with transaction delays and fall-throughs, often causing them to have to find alternative and often more expensive deals. The stats back this up. Every year, £560 million is wasted on failed transactions, each one costing homebuyers approximately £1,240, as well as costing the wider economy £1.5 billion.
For brokers and their clients, delays are not just inconvenient; they carry significant financial consequences, draining time, effort and money.
Driving modernisation
This problem is not going anywhere. The market is still seeing strong buyer demand, with 723,000 house purchase mortgages advanced in 2025, up 17 per cent year-on-year. Decision makers within the industry must respond appropriately, and they are doing so.
Over the last year in particular, there has been increased, cross-industry support to find a solution, with multiple stakeholders including banks, technology providers, third-party industry bodies, conveyancers and brokers working closely with the Government to find the best balance between public and private investment.
HM Land Registry continues to digitise its data, and the Government’s response to the Home Buying and Selling consultation, including proposals on upfront information and more trusted, reusable verification, is eagerly awaited.
But real, lasting change can only be delivered when the whole process is considered in its entirety. We must tackle the process end to end, starting with better upfront information and greater interoperability of data as demonstrated by the Property Data Trust Framework from the OPDA, and not finishing until settlement of funds and registration of title has taken place.
Home buyers and sellers, as well as property professionals, all stand to benefit from a more digitised process. PEXA’s recent partnership with NatWest has already proven the impact of such reform, delivering remortgages in just two working days.
There is a clear commitment from the industry in-making these changes happen, and meaningful progress has certainly been made. But there is a clear gap between buyer demand and what the market’s existing infrastructure can deliver.
Greater digitisation will free up time for all stakeholders across the property chain, enabling brokers to provide a better service to their clients and reducing fall-throughs and delays by way of a more transparent and efficient process. The pace at which this is occurring must accelerate.
Without greater modernisation, consumers will continue to bear the brunt of an outdated system that is unable to fully support the very stakeholders who work so hard to keep the market moving. Delivering a more certain, secure and transparent end-to-end completion process is within reach and entirely within our control – we must all act.
