Survey: Brokers put 2022 behind them and acknowledge conveyancers “vital” to industry

More than nine in every ten mortgage brokers agree that conveyancers are “a vital part of the property transaction process”.

In a poll of 250 mortgage professionals, commissioned by Groundsure, 92 per cent of brokers agreed with the statement “conveyancers are a vital part of the property transaction process”.  While 6 per cent disagreed, the remainder weren’t sure.

During the pandemic property boom, the performance of conveyancers became a frequent complaint of brokers looking to undertake business in a rampant housing market.

But Groundsure’s polling showed that the majority (54 per cent) of the mortgage professionals now admit that conveyancers had a tough time in 2022.

Furthermore, almost half (47 per cent) of the mortgage professionals surveyed acknowledged that extra responsibility is being put on conveyancers to check more things in the property transaction now than in the past.  While approximately a third (32 per cent) do not think more responsibility has been put on conveyancers, 22 per cent said they weren’t sure.

The research was unveiled as part of the headline speech from Malcolm Smith, Groundsure’s Chief Operating Officer, at the second annual British Conveyancing Awards, held at 8 Northumberland Avenue, off Trafalgar Square on 21st March.  The awards, hosted by multi-award-winning journalist and broadcaster; Samira Ahmed, are the centrepiece of National Conveyancing Week, a week designed to raise the profile of conveyancing across the property industry.

Malcolm Smith said “Conveyancers continue to work tirelessly for their clients, undertaking greater responsibilities on behalf of lenders — all the while facing attacks in the media.  It’s nice that other branches of the property industry are capable of looking back at 2022 and releasing that conveyancers might not have deserved the monstering they received.  Far from the villains of the piece, we should be celebrating the conveyancers as property superheroes.”

However, the polling demonstrated that brokers were only sympathetic to conveyancers up to a point. When asked, “Looking back on it now, do you feel sorry for the individual conveyancers tackling epic workloads in the pandemic mortgage boom?”, approximately two in every five of the mortgage professionals polled (39 per cent) said they did not.  

And, while 22 per cent of respondents said the conveyancing industry was unfairly maligned by the mortgage industry press in 2022, 53 per cent did not agree. 

Malcolm Smith said: “Our polling suggests some residual friction in the industry, left over from the febrile days of the 2022 property boom.  That’s a shame as conveyancers were tackling huge volumes of cases at the time, and deserved some sympathy from their fellow mortgage professionals.  

“It’s clear that the different parties across the transaction need to understand each others’ pressures and especially the degree of scrutiny and due diligence that conveyancers have to sign off.  We are playing our part to make this easier on environmental and climate risks as each party increasingly focuses on this as new guidance emerges.”