By Legal Futures Associate Search Acumen
- SNaPS (Search of the National Polygon Service) is a first-of-its-kind service that instantly interrogates property boundaries and ownership data – allowing property lawyers to make immediate assessments and act earlier for their clients
- The new service uniquely draws together HM Land Registry (HMLR) datasets to provide property lawyers with an instant visual representation of title information
- This service is the latest in a series of enhancements from Search Acumen to give commercial property lawyers up-front property intelligence
- Lawyers will experience significant cost savings while benefiting from a comprehensive ownership report combined with more illustrative insights than previously possible
SNaPS is a new service to help property lawyers make faster decisions on behalf of their clients – providing unprecedented access to property information while reducing transaction costs.
It is the first time a service of this nature has been purposely created to give law firms immediate access to HMLR data that otherwise takes time to source individually. SNaPS is offered via Search Acumen’s ForeSite platform, a development on the current Search of the Index Map (SIM) process that property lawyers must execute as part of property transaction due diligence.
SNaPS will enhance solicitors’ understanding of the types, owners and boundaries of land and property titles by providing instant, visual datasets. SNaPS examines all HM Land Registry (HMLR) titles in seconds to define a designated area, identify all applicable ownership data and produce a map showing how the titles fit together. The datasets used are:
- HMLR National Polygon Service (NPS), containing 25 million titles and includes 28 million polygons
- HMLR Corporate and Commercial Ownership Data (CCOD), containing more than 3.6 million title records of freehold and leasehold property in England and Wales
- HMLR Overseas Ownership Data (OOD), containing around 100,000 title records of freehold and leasehold property in England and Wales, registered to companies incorporated outside the UK
The SNaPS service creates a ‘customer-friendly’ report that commercial property lawyers and conveyancers can use directly with their clients to inform and evidence any early decisions.
The launch of Search Acumen’s SNaPS product follows the recent addition of wide-ranging new property and environmental datasets to the ForeSite platform. ForeSite is the UK’s first integrated platform for managing the due diligence of commercial property transactions. SNaPS is now available to all law firms.
Lynne Nicholson, Head of Data Products and Services at HMLR comments:
“Search Acumen’s new SNaPS report is a great example of how HM Land Registry datasets can be used to drive innovation and deliver proptech solutions in the property sector.”
Andrew Lloyd, Managing Director at Search Acumen comments:
“We saw an opportunity to address a pain point that all property lawyers are well aware of by re-inventing the process of searching HMLR’s mapping records to carry out vital due diligence tasks. It’s the bedrock of any property transaction but until now the true potential hasn’t been explored and brought to market.
“With so much legal property data at our fingertips, we see no reason why commercial law firms cannot do more as part of the due diligence process. Our SNaPS product turns property data and technology into a practical business tool which will improve performance and save costs for legal firms and their clients.
“Search Acumen is committed to delivering a wholly digitised experience for searching property records. The outcome is a more efficient due diligence process where lawyers are properly equipped with the insights they need to act as consultants at the heart of the property transaction process.”
