The conveyancing industry is being held back by a lack of recruitment and training, Search Acumen’s Conveyancing Market Tracker has indicated.
The conveyancing industry is being held back by a lack of recruitment and training, Search Acumen’s Conveyancing Market Tracker has indicated.
The tracker found that 72% of conveyancing firms see finding and training the right people as the biggest barrier to a successful 2016 for the industry.
Dev Malle, group distribution director at My Home Move, which trains around 90 graduates per year at its academy, explained why the market is crying out for new blood.
He said: “The recession saw a lot of people leave the industry and firms cut back on staff, similar to what we experienced in the mortgage sector.
“As the market recovered there has been a capacity shortfall, as a lot of firms haven’t had the confidence to commit resources and invest in training. This is particularly true of multi-disciplined law firms who are not conveyancing specialists.
“Subsequently as the market recovered the shortfall in capacity became more prevalent.
“If you take a firm with one conveyancer they would be increasing their conveyancing resource by 100% if they took somebody on.”
Conveyancing activity stopped growing at such a rapid pace in 2015 – transactions increased by 10% in 2015 after rising by 33% in 2014, 15% in 2013 and 40% in 2012.
Despite the 10% increase the number of firms active in the market fell by 9% to 5,357 in 2015.
The top 1,000 firms strengthened their hold on the market, taking 71% of market share in 2015. A decade ago the top 1,000 accounted for just 55% of activity.
Mark Riddick, chairman of Search Acumen, said: “The average firm saw its transaction volumes grow at the slowest rate since 2012. This was the year when the property market was still coming out of the post-recession doldrums – and therefore a very low benchmark. Growth in the upper echelons was also muted despite the top 1,000 gaining market share.
“We’re likely to see a spike in transactions in the first quarter as clients hope to complete transactions before the rise in stamp duty on second and buy to let homes. This means that speed and quality of service will be crucial to differentiating the winners and losers.”
