Delays in conveyancing are now running so long that bank loan offer periods are expiring and many would-be buyers are later unable to raise that cash again. They are therefore relegated to buying a less attractive or smaller home while hefty wasted survey fees are washed down the pan.

According to the report released recently by the Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers (IPAV), over a quarter of its 1,300-plus estate agent members (26pc) say that bank withdrawal of loan offers after conveyancing delays run over the expiry period, happen ‘frequently’, in their experience.

Had the conveyancing been done in a reasonable amount of time, the loan offers involved would not have lapsed and the agreed deals in question would have closed. Instead the buyers lose their loan and lose the house.

The August survey of Ireland’s estate agents showed that almost all of them (84pc) had experienced house sales falling through because of delays in the conveyancing system.

While Ireland has long had problems with an outdated approach to verifying the title and status of residential property for sale, the problem has become particularly pronounced in the last year or so with domestic price inflation kicking in in earnest and interest rates surging.

It means that buyers in particular now have far more to lose. While a vendor will have to find another buyer in the event that a deal falls down, likely at a similar price; a purchasing couple who were given bank approval for a six-month period are now increasingly at risk of having that amount marked down significantly on a new application in the event of their approval period expiring and they have to reapply.

So they are looking at not only losing the house they wanted, but (given that they are likely to be offered less funds next time) face being dropped down to looking at homes of a lesser quality, or a smaller size, or in a less attractive location.

Some banks are not only stress-testing now for higher interest rates as would be expected (the variable at AIB for example went up from 1.1pc in the nine months from August 2022 to 4.6pc in June 2023) but also taking into account other increases in living costs, such as heating bills.

So a conveyancing delay which runs the approval period into expiry could be the cause of a couple having €350,000 to spend today reduced to €310,000 tomorrow. If they’ve agreed to buy a house for €345,000, then that sinks the deal. All the work done by both sides over weeks or months, including the cost of a survey and all other legal costs, are for naught.

According to IPAV, it takes on average 10.4 weeks to conveyance a property between the sale being agreed and the signing of contract, plus a further 5.3 weeks between the signing and the closing of the sale. In all that’s almost 16 weeks.

“Other countries laugh at us,” says Brian Dempsey of DNG. “In the USA it’s possible to buy a house and be living in it within 28 days. Other countries have the profession of notary which does the job for both sides and does it well. So it can be done.”

Aside from now perma-panicked home buyers and vendors, estate agents obviously have a vested interest in ensuring that all deals they are working on go ahead so they can get paid. Now they’re looking to Government and to long delayed legislation and measures, in order to sort it out. But these continue to drag on without apparent result, just like modern-day conveyancing.

For example, two-and-a-half years ago Justice Minister Helen McEntee appeared to commit to creating a new profession of ‘conveyancer’ in Ireland to undertake the work normally done by solicitors, who are often overloaded or distracted with other case work.

In March 2021, McEntee issued a public statement saying that she had written to the Legal Services Regulatory Authority (LSRA) to ask that they prepare and submit a report on the creation of a new profession of ‘conveyancer’, akin to the role of notary in other countries. It would mean that lay people who are not solicitors can conveyance homes legally, once they have the correct training.

Her initiative was triggered under section 34 of the Legal Services Regulation Act which makes specific provision to address this remaining area of legal services reform. The UK, New Zealand and Australia are among the countries in which such non-solicitor conveyancing specialists operate successfully.

Minister McEntee said at the time: “Under Justice Plan 2021, I am fully committed to reducing legal costs and reforming legal services.” According to the LRSA at the time, the report was to have been submitted within 18 months.

It’s a full year overdue. So where is it?

I asked the LSRA this week. A spokesperson confirmed that the report had not yet been delivered to the minister, adding that it is “at an advanced stage and we expect to deliver it in the coming months”.

This is important because the bigger picture suggests that the problem is not just with the conveyancing process itself but with the fact that it is overloaded and that many solicitors will keep taking on additional work even though they are already too highly engaged.

It means those selling a property can actually find that their own solicitor is in fact the source of the problems. Short of dropping that solicitor and delaying the process further, they find themselves unable to do much about it if the other side comes complaining that their solicitor has been uncontactable or won’t answer phones or emails, or has unexpectedly ‘gone on holidays’ for three weeks without warning.

There’s also that old solicitor’s foible of leaving absolutely everything until the last minute and only then uncovering vital issues.

One estate agent of long standing, who wished to remain nameless, says: “There are good and bad solicitors, the same as any profession. So it’s like this, if we ask who is your solicitor and we hear it’s Joe Bloggs, we bury our head in our hands and go ‘Oh God, no!’

“Joe comes back at the eleventh hour to say, we don’t have a PPS number for this person and apparently they don’t have one, so it’s going to delay things another four weeks. Despite the fact that he should have checked that and ticked it off weeks ago. But like so many solicitors, he left it until the last minute. Joe can’t be contacted for most of a week. Joe doesn’t respond to emails for days.

“On the other hand, if we hear your solicitor is Mary Bloggs we might breathe a sigh of relief, sort of. Because the problem now is that everyone knows Mary is more efficient than Joe, and so everyone goes to Mary. That means her work piles up and she ends up having a backlog. So you might have problems getting responses from Mary also.”

So back to the IPAV survey results, which underline that problems communicating with the vendors and purchaser solicitors were ranked by almost a quarter of estate agents (23pc) as their biggest conveyancing delay issue. That’s simply not getting responses to emails or phone calls. It suggests that there aren’t enough solicitors to tackle conveyancing needs in Ireland.

Tellingly, a hefty 75pc said that initiatives put forward by the Law Society in 2019, such as the Pre-Contract Investigation of Title (PCIT), have not improved the situation. But 60pc said delays in securing documentation and problems with deeds were the biggest problem overall.

Finally 88pc said the length of time conveyancing takes has not improved since the IPAV’s last survey eight years ago in 2015. The problem now is that with inflation and interest rates up, these delays are causing far bigger issues than they were eight years ago.

Dealing with four important factors can help the situation. First is the ongoing digitisation of Land Registry, which has been going on for some time. When completed, this should (although it’s not guaranteed) speed up the process somewhat.

Second is doing your own due diligence as a vendor. DNG’s Brian Dempsey adds: “Most good estate agents will start preparing the folder for conveyancing as soon as the client indicates they want a buyer. Some agents don’t, but I’d say most efficient ones will get their client on to this straight away and with urgency.

“There’s a pre-contract questionnaire check list you can find on the Law Society’s web site, to run through all the things you need to consider. That’s the first thing you need to do. Have you an extension without proper planning permission? and so on. There are about 35 pages to get through, but in my experience this is vital to complete right at the start. It means your side is ready with everything.”

The third element is Helen McEntee’s proposal for the creation of a profession of conveyancer and the training of non-solicitors to access the new profession. We await the long overdue report and hope she acts on it.

In much the same way that deregulating the taxi sector (despite the established profession being very much against it) led to increased competition, a decoupling of conveyancing from the legal profession should lead to greater availability, more affordable charges and, we should assume, greater efficiency.

Finally comes a legislative bill already making its way through the process. The Seller’s Legal Pack for Property Buyers’ Bill 2022 is designed to address the situation somewhat regarding the process itself, and make it more efficient. The bill is due to reach second stage in Dáil Éireann on October 5. Ireland’s estate agents are holding their collective breath.

Pat Davitt, IPAV Chief Executive, adds: “The Seller’s Legal Pack Bill involves gathering the critical documents up front prior to a property going on the market. It is currently used very effectively in online and public auction sales and has been for many years.”

He points out that it front-loads the current process rather than beginning it when a property goes ‘sale agreed’. “When enacted, the bill will speed up the entire sales procedure without adding any further costs to the consumer, and it will also help put an end to the practices of gazumping and gazundering.”

Meantime would-be home buyers, vendors and their estate agents watch the clock and continue to chew their nails, waste their time, lose their deals and flush their funds.