It has been a busy start to the year for the property market.

The Land Registry’s digital mortgage service has now seen it’s 7,000th  mortgage deed signed electronically, nearly two years after starting the service. The service allows remortgage customers to complete on a remortgage in just a matter of days.

In October the service saw it’s 1,000th electronic mortgage deed having been signed and so this shows how quickly mortgage lenders and conveyancers are utilizing the service as much as they can as the 7,000 mark has been reach just a few months after this. This shows a confidence in the process by borrowers and mortgage lenders and perhaps paves the way for this to be rolled out further. 

HM Land Registry do plan on widening the service to all home owners, however there are no immediate plans for this. Unless the buying and selling of property process changes on the whole, most people will still need to sign a contract and transfer, therefore perhaps the digital mortgage service may not impact on the speed or efficiency of transactions for most people.

Rightmove have reported that there was a record breaking 152 million visits to their site in January 2020, this was a 7% increase in visits during January 2019, this equated to 1.17 billion minutes on the site, 4% up from January 2019.

It is hoped that this uplift in activity on the property market will continue throughout the year with the market showing signs of improvement. However, the figures may be representative of transactions which were delayed last year due to the uneconomic uncertainty and Brexit negotiations.

HMRC have also released figures for the stamp duty statistics over the fourth quarter of 2020 which are similar to those of 2018. It is thought that first time buyers are trying to make use of the recent stamp duty changes to get into properties before house prices rise throughout 2020.

If you are busy on property sites or thinking about moving, please give us a call for more information.