- Interactive Data Snapshot provides live property data to lawyers and enables them to alert clients much earlier on to potential risks affecting their chosen property or site
- Tool will help conveyancers and property lawyers to provide more informed advice to clients and anticipate barriers to successful transactions
- Ability to view real-time risk information on a desktop, laptop or tablet shows how better use of data and technology can improve the transaction process.
Search Acumen, the property data insight and technology provider, has launched a new tool that provides real-time property data to lawyers via interactive reports, empowering them to advise clients earlier and progress transactions more efficiently than ever before.
Interactive Data Snapshot provides conveyancers and property lawyers with unprecedented access to live property due diligence data that is crucial to transactions, without having to wait for official Local Authority search results.
Since the onset of Covid-19, the closure of many Local Authority offices has left lawyers waiting for weeks to receive the necessary searches to progress residential and commercial property transactions. Protracted turnaround times continue to delay completions, with some areas of the country experiencing a wait of more than 40 working days for official local searches.
Search Acumen’s technology enables legal firms to get ahead of these delays and explore potential transaction risks on behalf of their customers at a much earlier stage of the process.
Interactive Data Snapshot plugs conveyancers and solicitors directly into live information from Search Acumen’s ForeSite real estate platform, which can be viewed on a desktop or laptop and can be personalised to share directly with clients.
The cloud-based mapping service is available 24/7/365 and combines over 60 datasets showing a range of physical, environmental, infrastructure and legal risk factors, including planning, ownership rights, conversation areas and highways.
Legal clients can annotate the interactive map and switch individual data layers on and off to work more collaboratively and provide their customers with a better, more informative consultancy experience.
Interactive Data Snapshot builds on Search Acumen’s standard Data Snapshot reports, which were launched in the early months of the Stamp Duty Land Tax holiday to help conveyancers and solicitors deal with the huge spike in property transaction volumes.
Search Acumen’s Quarterly Conveyancer Market Tracker showed a 26% increase in completed transactions between Q4 2020 and Q1 2021 as buyers rushed to complete their purchases before the Stamp Duty discount ends.
Andrew Lloyd, Managing Director at Search Acumen, comments:
“The property sector has come back to life with a bang since mid-2020 when the first lockdown lifted. While many firms in the sector have pivoted towards digital ways of working to keep the market running during the pandemic, it is important the spirit of innovation continues.
“Limited adoption of technology in the transaction process, combined with heightened demand, means that many firms are currently gasping for breath to manage the activity in the market. It is essential that we work together and embrace new solutions to help transactions progress more smoothly for buyers while easing the exceptional load on lawyers’ shoulders.
“This new tool enables frank discussions to be had upfront between legal firms and their clients about potential property risks, empowered by technology and informed by data. Given the size of investment involved in buying residential or commercial property, it makes no sense for buyers to spend weeks in the dark about the potential risks. Interactive Data Snapshot means legal advisers can start thinking ahead from a much earlier point in time to identify and manage properly risks, so they can ultimately deliver a superior service and outcome for customers.”
