Conveyancing - Consider other services too

Estate agents can increase their income through conveyancing but they must focus on delivering a quality service in order to build a loyal customer base

More than 1.2 million residential property transactions - that’s 2.4 million individual transactions - generated £960m worth of conveyancing business in 2006. At a time when the property market has slowed down, these figures prove that conveyancing alone can help you survive. But how is this possible and, more importantly, how do you get your share of the market?

A number of options

There are a number of options for those of you wishing to generate income from conveyancing. Firstly, you have to decide whether to work directly with a local firm, directly with a national firm or, alternatively, whether to use a panel manager, or a mixture of all three? With so many choices, getting started can often be confusing, which is why a conveyancing service can offer what you need. But with several companies offering conveyancing services, how do you know where to start your search?

Checklist

You should opt for a fixed-price service. This will allow you to budget precisely for the work, so there are no unforeseen expenses. Secondly, you should look for ‘no sale, no fee’ policies. This will ensure that there are no outstanding legal fees in the event of a failed sale or purchase. Thirdly, it’s important that you and your clients have the facilities to track a house move whenever you like. Finally, how consistent is communication between a conveyancing firm and its clients? This is crucial because any sub-standard service will only reflect badly on you, from your clients’ perspective.

HIPs

Whether you love them or hate them, Home Information Packs are here to stay and, believe it or not, here to improve the process of both buying and selling a house, albeit slowly.

You should consider charging upfront fees for the packs at the same time as selling conveyancing services.

This will not only add value to a customer’s sale but also increase your profits.

If a HIP costs £349, you can generate a profit of £124.

If you sold the HIP with a conveyancing service you could make an additional average profit of £125. This means the average office could make a profit of £47,000 per annum.

Added value

You should not limit your focus to conveyancing and HIPs as additional revenue sources - there are many other products, which offer lucrative opportunities, such as searches, title insurance, utilities switching, buildings and contents insurance and van hire.

All of these products are a great way for you to impress your customers. Choice and flexibility make happy clients. But, as with any third party provider, you should ensure that service levels are maintained since a highquality service is much more likely to generate repeat business. Then, all that is Ieft for you to do is decide how to spend your additional revenue.

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