A new survey launched by the Open Property Data Association (OPDA) aims to gather insights from homebuyers and sellers across the UK, with the goal of improving the homebuying process through digital transformation.
The research project, distributed through over 30 member firms such as Atom bank, Inventory Base and Kotini, seeks input from thousands of consumers to inform OPDA’s campaign to modernise and digitise property transactions.
The survey, open until 30 September, targets those who have recently bought or sold a home, as well as aspiring homeowners. OPDA is particularly interested in understanding how comfortable consumers are with using and sharing digital property data, as well as their views on what changes are needed to streamline the often cumbersome and time-consuming homebuying process.
According to Rightmove, it currently takes an average of 22 weeks for home purchases to reach completion, highlighting the inefficiencies in the system.
Digitised property market
One of the key aims of the survey is to support OPDA’s push for a fully digitised property market, a goal that includes sourcing digitised data from the Land Registry, planning permissions, and local searches.
The association hopes that these changes will reduce delays and make property transactions smoother. OPDA’s existing digital property data standards have already reduced completion times to just 15 days in some cases, demonstrating the potential impact of modernising the process.
Maria Harris, chair of OPDA, outlined the importance of consumer feedback: “We’ve all heard examples of how bad the torturous and archaic homebuying experience is in this country. But we’re taking our research further by asking consumers not only what they think about the experience, but also how they feel it could be improved and about their attitudes to digital property information. We’d love the industry to share the survey link with their own customers to generate the biggest consumer voice possible.”
The results of the survey will be compiled into a white paper, which OPDA plans to present to the government and industry leaders later this year.
