Following its consultation on reforming home buying and selling, the Government published its reform roadmap in June 2026, setting out plans for substantial changes to the way homes are bought and sold.

So what could this mean for buyers, sellers — and their conveyancing solicitors?

The problem with the current system

The Government’s figures suggest that a property transaction currently takes around 120 days on average, while approximately one in three transactions falls through.

Those are national figures and they do not reflect our own experience at Comptons.

Transactions for our clients will frequently complete considerably more quickly than the national average and, in our experience, the proportion of transactions that fall through is also significantly lower.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the conveyancing system as a whole can be improved.

The Government believes its reforms could ultimately reduce the average transaction time by around four weeks.

One of the central ideas behind the reforms is remarkably simple:

Find out more about the property before the buyer makes a commitment to buy it.

At the moment, much of the important legal and practical information about a property is obtained only after an offer has been accepted.

That means problems can emerge weeks into a transaction.

The Government wants to move much more of that information to the beginning of the process.

More information before a property goes on the market

A major part of the proposed system is greater provision of information upfront.

Rather than a property being marketed with relatively limited information and the detailed investigation beginning afterwards, sellers and their representatives would be expected to provide considerably more information at an earlier stage.

That could include important information about the property itself and, in the case of leasehold properties, matters such as lease terms and ongoing costs.

For conveyancers, this is potentially one of the most important parts of the reforms.

Much of what the public describes as a “conveyancing delay” isn’t necessarily caused by the conveyancing solicitor.

We may be waiting for management information.

We may be waiting for replies from a managing agent or freeholder.

We may be waiting for search results.

We may discover a defect in the title that nobody knew about until the legal documents were examined.

Or a buyer’s lender may impose a requirement that has to be resolved before they will release mortgage funds.

If reliable information is available before the transaction properly begins, some of those problems can potentially be identified — and hopefully resolved — considerably earlier.

The move towards digital property information

Another important part of the Government’s plans is digitisation.

HM Land Registry and the Government are already working on making more property information available digitally and establishing common data standards.

The ultimate aim is that information can move more easily between estate agents, conveyancers, lenders and other professionals involved in a transaction.

That matters.

At present, the same information can effectively be requested, entered, checked and rechecked by several different organisations during the course of one transaction.

A genuinely connected digital system could reduce duplication and allow professionals to spend more time dealing with the issues that actually require legal expertise.

Could agreements become binding earlier?

Perhaps one of the most interesting areas being explored is how buyers and sellers can have greater certainty earlier in the process.

Under the current system in England and Wales, either party can generally withdraw before exchange of contracts.

That means a buyer can spend money on searches, surveys, mortgage arrangements and legal work only for the transaction to collapse.

Likewise, a seller can spend months progressing a transaction only to find that the buyer walks away.

The Government’s reform programme includes measures intended to encourage greater commitment earlier in the transaction and reduce the number of sales that fall through.

Exactly how these arrangements develop will be particularly important.

There is an obvious attraction in giving buyers and sellers greater certainty — but any system also needs to recognise that legitimate problems can emerge during a survey, title investigation or mortgage application.

Will this mean the end of the conveyancing solicitor?

Almost certainly not.

Digitising information and making it available earlier does not remove the need to understand what that information actually means.

A title can contain restrictive covenants, easements, rights, restrictions and defects.

A lease can contain provisions that affect whether a lender will lend on the property — or whether a buyer should want to own it in the first place.

Buildings can have complicated fire-safety issues.

Management companies can create problems.

Planning and building regulation documentation may be incomplete.

And sometimes a perfectly innocent-looking document contains something that an experienced conveyancer immediately recognises as a potential problem.

Technology can make obtaining information faster.

The important distinction is that obtaining information and giving legal advice about it are not the same thing.

Will the reforms actually make buying a house quicker?

Potentially, yes.

As conveyancers, we would welcome sensible changes that remove unnecessary duplication and allow problems to be identified earlier.

But there is an important caveat.

A faster conveyancing system cannot simply mean imposing shorter deadlines on the conveyancers at the end of the process.

If information that currently takes three weeks to obtain still takes three weeks to obtain, giving the solicitor a five-day deadline doesn’t make the transaction faster.

It merely gives the solicitor five days in which to wait for something that takes three weeks.

The real opportunity lies in changing when information is collected.

If sellers instruct solicitors earlier, title documents are checked before a buyer is found, leasehold information is ordered in advance and reliable property data is readily available digitally, the transaction can begin from a very different starting point.

That could make a genuine difference.

What could this mean for sellers?

One practical consequence may be that sellers need to start thinking about conveyancing before their property goes on the market, rather than after they have accepted an offer.

This is an approach we strongly support at Comptons.

There are problems that can be identified simply by an experienced conveyancer looking at the registered title before the property is marketed.

Sometimes they are easily dealt with. Sometimes they require further work. But discovering them before a buyer is waiting — and before a chain is depending upon the transaction — gives a seller the opportunity to understand the issue and decide how to address it without the same time pressure.

In other words, one of the best ways of making conveyancing faster is to start some of the thinking earlier.

And what could it mean for buyers?

For buyers, the biggest benefit should be greater transparency.

Finding out important information about a property earlier allows a buyer to make a better-informed decision about whether to proceed.

It may also reduce the risk of spending substantial sums on surveys, mortgage applications and legal work before discovering a problem that could have been identified much earlier.

A long overdue modernisation?

There is undoubtedly room for improvement in the English home buying and selling system.

Property transactions involve estate agents, solicitors, lenders, surveyors, local authorities, managing agents, freeholders and numerous other organisations.

A transaction can only move as quickly as the information passing between all of them.

The Government’s ambition to create a more digital, transparent and joined-up system is therefore welcome.

Whether the reforms ultimately shave four weeks off the national average remains to be seen.

But the principle of identifying issues earlier is one we very much agree with — and sellers don’t necessarily need to wait for the Government’s reforms to start doing it.

Thinking of selling? Let us check your title before you go to market

As part of our commitment to being proactive rather than waiting for problems to arise, Comptons is happy to carry out an initial check of the registered title to your property, free of charge, before you put it on the market.

We can identify any obvious title issues that we think could cause a problem or delay once a buyer is found and advise you on what may need to be done about them.

The free service is limited to the initial review of the title and our advice on any issues we identify. If further legal work is required to resolve an issue, that work is not included in the free title check and we would discuss the options and any costs with you before undertaking it.

There is, of course, no guarantee that every issue affecting a transaction will be apparent from the registered title alone. Some matters only become apparent once further documents, searches, enquiries, surveys or mortgage requirements are available.

But if there is a problem sitting on the title that can be spotted before the property even reaches the market, we would much rather find it then than when your buyer is waiting to exchange.

If you’re considering selling your property, get in touch with our conveyancing team and ask us about our free pre-sale title check.