By Legal Futures Associate Search Acumen
- Real estate legal firms set to save a minimum of nearly 130 hours per month with combined offering from Search Acumen and Avail Title
- Avail AI’s title analysis platform – Avail Title’s AI-enabled title document analysis to be integrated into Search Acumen’s platform
- Collaboration provides lawyers with a one-stop-shop to streamline and simplify access to property transaction data
Two market-leading proptech firms, Search Acumen and Avail, announce details of their new partnership, designed to bring together their specialisms to further their joint goal of digitalising the real estate sector. Search Acumen’s property data expertise and Avail Title’s experience with title document risk analysis are being brought together to support real estate lawyers by simplifying and streamlining the property transaction process.
Both companies make use of cutting-edge, AI-enabled technology to efficiently and quickly analyse and digitally display information required by property lawyers when carrying out transactions. Search Acumen’s research has calculated that the average law firm stands to save 115 hours a month through automation, adding up to a saving of more than eight million hours each year across the sector through digitisation. Avail has found that each lawyer can save 14 hours a month through use of Avail Title. This combines to nearly 168 hours saved per user per year, driving productivity for lawyers thanks to the pairs different but complementary strengths.
What is Search Acumen?
Search Acumen’s end-to-end digital due diligence platform for residential and commercial property transactions gives lawyers access to over 500 layers of essential property data. Having this data digitally and on-demand, allows lawyers to analyse transaction sites and portfolios with ease. Most recently, the innovator became the first in the industry to begin beta testing the integration of ChatGPT into their platform, signifying a huge step towards rapidly automating parts of the transaction journey.
What is Avail Title?
Lawyers taking advantage of Search Acumen’s platform will now also have access to Avail Title, which uses AI to accurately read registered title documents, generating legal risk reports with unrivalled levels of detail, that analyse potential issues with a property, immediately. Avail Title’s effectiveness can be seen in firms reporting an average return on investment (ROI) of 1500% and an estimated industry saving of £42 million since 2020. Importantly, Avail Title reads indemnified documents directly from the Land Registry, rather than relying on the unindemnified digital extract as some other providers do, making the analysis extremely reliable. The digestible formats of Avail Title’s reports allow lawyers to easily communicate potential risks with clients at the start of the property transaction process, avoiding delays later down the line.
How does this benefit lawyers?
The integration of Avail Title into Search Acumen’s platform gives lawyers access to a one-stop-shop, making the process seamless and efficient, streamlining their workflow. It gives lawyers all the information they need to identify and communicate to clients on red flag issues, by accelerating their access to searches and titles, and providing easily digestible analysis of the problems at the beginning of their work on a property. Examples of these issues include personal covenants, third-party restrictions, cross-checks of proprietary clients against Companies House and more.
The time saved through the use of these applications in tandem will allow lawyers to increase their productivity, enabling them to spend more time on tasks that directly benefit the client and their firm, without being weighed down by administrative work.
Andrew Lloyd, Managing Director at Search Acumen, comments: “We are delighted to have entered into such an important and impactful partnership with Avail Title. Using our combined strengths in property data and title analysis, we are able to provide lawyers with a platform that can transform the way that they work.”
“The property industry, to its detriment, has always lagged behind other sectors in embracing technological advancement. Its use, specifically AI, is a vital and integral part of transforming the way the property industry functions, bringing it in line with other sectors. The integration of our offerings in another step towards our goal of achieving digitalisation in the property sector. This aim is echoed by Avail Title, and we are excited to work together to continue striving to achieve this.”
On the partnership, Dom Conte, Avail’s Chief Product Officer, says: “We are really excited to unveil our collaboration with Search Acumen, a partnership that will play on the strengths of both companies to deliver a comprehensive and genuinely helpful product to real estate lawyers.”
“Avail Title has been developed by lawyers, for lawyers, so we hold a deep understanding of what is needed to minimise their workload. Our expertise and tailored product, combined with Search Acumen’s deep sector experience and innovative platform, will deliver a game-changing product for real estate lawyers.”
