More than nine in every 10 mortgage brokers would say that conveyancers are “a vital part of the property transaction process”, new research from Groundsure has found.

The environmental analytics business found that 6% of brokers disagreed with the statement, while the remainder were unsure.

Groundsure suggested that amid the pandemic property boom, the performance of conveyancers became a frequent complaint of brokers looking to undertake business in a rampant housing market.

However, the firm’s research, which polled 250 mortgage brokers, showed that the majority (54%) of mortgage professionals now admit that conveyancers had a tough time in 2022. Groundsure also revealed that 47% of the brokers surveyed acknowledged that extra responsibility is now being put on conveyancers to check more things in the property transaction.

While approximately a third (32%) do not think more responsibility has been put on conveyancers, 22% of respondent brokers said they weren’t sure.

“Conveyancers continue to work tirelessly for their clients, undertaking greater responsibilities on behalf of lenders – all the while facing attacks in the media,” commented Groundsure chief operating officer, Malcolm Smith.

“It’s nice that other branches of the property industry are capable of looking back at 2022 and releasing that conveyancers might not have deserved the monstering they received. Far from the villains of the piece, we should be celebrating the conveyancers as property superheroes.”

However, the polling demonstrated that brokers were only sympathetic to conveyancers up to a point. When asked whether they felt sorry for the individual conveyancers tackling large workloads in the pandemic mortgage boom, approximately two in every five of the mortgage professionals (39%) said they did not.

Furthermore, while 22% of respondents said the conveyancing industry was unfairly maligned by the mortgage industry press during the pandemic, 53% did not agree with this statement.

“Our polling suggests some residual friction in the industry, left over from the febrile days of the pandemic property boom,” added Smith. “That’s a shame as conveyancers were tackling huge volumes of cases at the time, and deserved some sympathy from their fellow mortgage professionals.

“It's clear that the different parties across the transaction need to understand each others' pressures and especially the degree of scrutiny and due diligence that conveyancers have to sign off. We are playing our part to make this easier on environmental and climate risks as each party increasingly focuses on this as new guidance emerges.”

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