New tech to cut UK house buying times in half

Buying a house in the UK could take 12 weeks instead of the current 22-week average, saving buyers thousands of pounds, through new data-sharing technology backed by the government.

Property data platform Moverly, a winner of the government’s Smart Data Challenge, is cutting the average time to buy a home by 10 weeks, the Department for Business and Trade said in its Industrial Strategy Year One report.

The government said other use cases enabled by Smart Data regulations could also save people thousands of pounds.

The delays in house buying largely stem from fragmented information, with conveyancers, lenders, surveyors and estate agents each requesting the same documents separately.

Smart Data regulations enable user-consented data sharing across sectors including property, energy, digital markets and financial services, letting buyers share verified information once rather than repeatedly proving the same facts to each party in the chain.

Shorter transactions cut costs directly. Long chains collapse more often, and every extra week adds legal fees, extended mortgage offers and duplicated searches, costs that fall on the buyer.

A ten-week saving also reduces the window in which a sale can fall through because a buyer’s circumstances change or a seller pulls out.

The same consent-based model is designed to cut household bills beyond property. The government said Smart Data use cases could support switching, lower costs, and new business models across energy and financial services, applying the framework that opened up banking data to household utilities.

The property push sits within a wider government data programme. A National Data Library has launched as a single trusted gateway to public-sector data, with five kickstarter projects including AI-powered legal guidance from the National Archives.

A Creative Content Exchange pilot has also launched with 10 organisations and delivery partner Harbr Data, creating a trusted marketplace for licensing digitised cultural and creative assets, informing a £12 million investment in data-sharing infrastructure.

The government said businesses identified data as an underused asset fundamental to growth, including AI adoption, with better access unlocking innovation, more efficient operations and new revenue streams.

Faster completions would ripple through the housing market, and the Smart Data framework behind Moverly is built to extend across other sectors where consumers face slow, repetitive paperwork.

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