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Case Study - First Homes on the RLBA Register

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 14:02:58 GMT

Working with Bristol City Council to deliver housing data innovation

This Case Study is the second blog covering the RLBA's work with MHCLG on delivering an innovative housing data solution for Local Authorities around the First Homes initiative. This blog describes the successful implementation of the solution and highlights the work with Bristol City Council.

The Challenge

There is a growing demand for Local Authorities to be able monitor and report on issues in privately owned housing in the UK. The NetZero revolution has increased the monitoring burden for Local Authorities around the energy efficiency of homes in their area, and the Government’s Help to Buy schemes, which need local distribution and management, have similarly brought new monitoring challenges.

One such scheme is Home England’s ‘First Homes’ scheme, which enables qualified locals to buy units in new build developments overseen by Local Authorities at a significant discount. Developers working under the First Homes framework typically designate 20% of their units to be sold at an average of 30% discount to market rates.

While Local Authorities take no ownership in these properties, the units are intended to carry their First Home status into future sales. Local Authorities are required to keep lists of eligible locals, not just for the first sale, but for these future sales when owners are required to sell them back into the First Homes framework. Maintaining the integrity of the First Homes scheme through future purchases means being aware of when units are offered for sale. The units are also restricted in their ability to be let out in the private rental market. Owners are only allowed to rent them out in very limited and very specific circumstances.

This means that Local Authorities need to be able to monitor the status of these properties throughout their life, and to be aware if and when their occupancy or tenure might change. But Local Authorities don’t currently have the systems to maintain this level of connectivity and monitoring of homes outside of their own social housing stock. They also don’t have the systems to monitor the sales and rental markets for early warning signs of abuse of the First Homes properties.

The Solution

The UK is slowly catching up with the roll-out of Digital Property Logbooks for residential property. This is a new digital product that has been increasingly adopted across Europe in the last few years. In countries like France and Belgium Logbooks are now mandatory for all new homes as well as for any homes that have had a significant refurbishment or energy efficiency upgrade. A small group of proptech companies have pioneered different forms of digital property logbook for the UK targeted at both the privately owned and social housing sectors. Represented by the Residential Logbook Association (RLBA) - they have been making the case to national and local governments that logbooks can deliver against a range of policy objectives. These will eventually include digital planning, energy monitoring, NetZero improvements and even homeowner communications. From the outset, the RLBA has driven the use of the UPRN within Logbooks and have included it as a mandatory field in the RLBA recommended Logbook Data Schema.

As RLBA Project Lead Simon Lumb said “ a key function of Logbooks is to aggregate data from a wide selection of public and private sources. The UPRN is the only data point that can enable us to do that ”.

A key issue in the roll-out of Logbooks has been the prevention of property fraud: making sure that only the verified owner of a property is able to create and access a Logbook. To support this, the RLBA has built a National Register of Logbooks which maintains a list of Logbooks issued by trusted partners such as Conveyancers, Estate Agents and Local Authorities. The UPRN is the key search term the Register relies on. The Register also works to establish the tenure status of any given property, eg if it is being offered for rent or sale.

Working with MHCLG and Homes England, it was suggested that, if all First Homes properties were given an RLBA endorsed Logbook, then the Logbook Register could provide a solution to Local Authorities’ data monitoring needs around the First Home’s scheme. To deliver this would also require development of a specific ‘First Homes Logbook’ optimised for the needs of Local Authorities. Details of this Logbook, and the way it would be used by Developers, Local Authorities and the National Logbook Register, were developed by the RLBA in conjunction with MHCLG through a series of workshops in 2023 and put into development in 2024. The role of Logbooks in the First Homes Scheme was then added to the Homes England guidance notes for the scheme, which were circulated to participating authorities in 2024.

Local Authorities participating in the First Homes scheme are now able to require developers to provide an RLBA registered ‘First Homes Logbook’ for each of their units sold within the First Homes scheme. The first Local Authority to provide logbooks and access the National Logbook Register is Bristol City Council, who came on board as a pioneer user in August 2024. Initially used to ‘back-fill’ logbooks on schemes already built, the Council is now incorporating them as a requirement in future First Homes backed developments.

Under the initiative, the Logbooks are created once the Section 106 Planning Consent has been delivered and are Registered on the National Logbook Register as ‘unbuilt units’. At this point the UPRN is issue to the developer and lodged in the Logbook. The initiative has also entailed the creation of a Local Authorities specific interface and dashboard for the National Register of Logbooks. The dashboard enables a Local Authority to monitor units as they progress through the key stages of the scheme through Construction, Marketing (when the Council need to provide candidate buyers), Conveyancing, Occupation and ultimately Resale (when the Council once gain needs to provide candidate buyers). During Occupation, the system provides Local Authorities with alerts if a property is listed on any agents websites for lettings or sales or on any property boards such as Gumtree or AirBnB.

The Benefits

Outside of the scheme the Logbook Register had already begun to be integrated into the software used by estate agents and Conveyancers. This enables an exchange of data based on schemas and APIs developed by the Conveyancing industry themselves, that the First Homes Logbooks are able to piggy back on. This has facilitated the Local Authorities interaction with commercial systems in the property lettings and sales markets. The UPRN provides the key property identifier that sits at the heart of the data exchange as it cuts across different industry sectors.

The Logbooks themselves contain digital versions of all the key handover information that a developer would normally give to a first time buyer and, with homeowner permission, can exchange data directly with Council systems as they become available. For developers there is almost no incremental cost as they have to compile handover packs (containing user manuals, guarantees, warranties etc) currently in analogue form. The Logbooks replace these handover packs and many developers are already swapping to using Logbooks for their developments.

The initiative has created a platform by which LAs are able to investigate how developers could be compelled to deliver including materials records and circularity statements. In time it is envisaged that Logbooks could provide regular updates to Local Authorities on issues of growing concern like carbon footprints and energy use of homes.

Implications

More broadly, the implications of the First Homes and other Help To Buy initiatives are that Local Authorities are having to interact with industries like conveyancing, lettings & rental and the mortgage industries in ways they previously never had to. Most importantly, these industries are themselves digitising and Local Authorities will increasingly have to exchange data with the new systems being built by those sectors. Having the UPRN as the unifying identifier for property that cuts across a variety of industries has enabled data exchanges within the First Homes Logbook initiative.

The First Homes Logbooks initiative represents the first formal use of digital property logbooks by the public sector in the UK to interact with privately-owned homes and their owners. The home is that initially, its benefits could be rolled across to all the other forms of Help To Buy schemes in the UK as a statement of Government intent. Longer term it provides a basis for Local Councils to explore how they want to interact with private homes in the digital arena over the coming decades.

Do We Need GDPR For Property?

Wed, 24 May 2023 11:54:07 GMT

Are we heading towards a signifcant data privacy problem around our homes?

In recent years, there’s been a revolution in attitudes towards the privacy of personal data. As consumers we have become aware of how much data is created about us by organisations we encounter. After years of concern, legislation like GDPR and ‘Right to Erasure’ has shifted power back to individuals and away from corporates looking to exploit data for commercial gain.

As yet we haven’t had the same debate about the data generated by various organisations about our homes. For most of us a home is not just the most expensive asset we will ever own, but its also deeply personal and private place that we would normally guard carefully.

However the property data industry has begun to display the same disregard for homeowner rights as they did for personal rights before GDPR. It is increasingly common for data created about our homes by professionals in the property industry to be kept for their own use or sold on to data brokers for commercialisation. Which raises the question of whether we need an approach like GDPR to protect data privacy around our homes.

The problem has arrived as the result of multiple, separate and seemingly innocuous initiatives. Individually no one project is a significant problem, however the cumulative impact is alarming. Like boiling a frog we haven’t spotted the problem as it has been heating up around us. For instance, the RLBA has long lobbied for estate agents and portals to remove records of homes that have recently sold from their websites. Internal photos and layouts should not remain in the public gaze once a property has sold. However, the intellectual property rights for images and floorplans remains with the estate agent who commissioned them. The right to personal privacy trumps IP ownership rights but homeowners don't know they are able to ask for removal, and don't know the point of law to pursue if the request is refused.

It has also become standard practice for the mortgage industry to allow the detailed contents of the valuation surveys it commissions on our homes to be sold to data brokers. The surveying company retains the IP for the survey and the brokers aggregate the data and sell it on to portals and other proptech companies. The mortgage industry began selling surveys without any public discussion about the rights to the content they contain. No homeowner is given the option to keep the contents private, or to assume ownership of the data. There are no opt-outs from commercialisation. None of this mattered in a world of paper, or even PDF reports when all data was hard to find, hard to share and often out of date. But with machine readable, shareable data, a new world of commercial exploitation has opened up without any debate about the ethics or the rights of homeowners to prevent sale of information on their home .

Like boiling a frog, this process is slowly being extended to other data without recourse to the rights of homeowners and without them being aware of the extent their personal data is being exchanged. Smart meter data is the next data asset being considered for public access. The companies, trade bodies and academics that make up the ‘Retrofit community’ are pressing for as much of the smart meter data as possible to be put into the public realm, using a ‘public good’ argument. The only discussion is about granularity - how much half-hourly detail can be put into the public sphere without revealing homeowner behaviour or habits (eg ‘ they only shower on Wednesdays’ ). Smart meter data is covered by the ‘Smart Meter Data Access and Privacy Framework’ (DAPF) which does actually define smart meter data as ‘personal data’.

The DAPF currently allows suppliers to access half-hourly consumption data only with the consent of the customer (i.e. the customer must “opt-in”) but there appears to be zero consumer awareness of this. Energy suppliers can access daily or less granular data without customer consent, but they must give a clear opportunity to opt-out from that access. It is unclear how a homeowner would know about this or what constitutes a ‘clear opportunity’ to opt-out. Finally, suppliers can access monthly or less granular consumption data without customer consent, and without offering an opt-out, if the consumption data is required for billing, fulfilling a statutory requirement or fulfilling a (so far undefined) licence obligation. The ICO have already raised concerns about these processes in a response to an OFGEM consultation (see their submission here ) stating their concerns that the vague approach will result in suppliers having full access to ha lf-hourly consumption data without customers’ consent, or potentially in conflict with a direct refusal to give consent.

Part of the challenge is that this is not a new problem. We started boiling this frog a long time ago. Local Authorities have long published full details and drawings of Planning Permissions and Building Control decisions on the open web. This includes publishing the full case file and detailed drawings for every decision. This barely mattered when files were buried in council filing cabinets. But with open web systems the details of your home is open to any predatory person whether stalker, burglar or data salesperson. This data is also now being extracted from council systems by data companies and sold on the open market. Oddly, while Planning Permission information has to be published under the Planning laws, Building Control data doesn't have to be published. Many councils are publishing this private information for no reason.

Also HM Land Registry's publishing of Price Paid Data (PPD) - which now appears on the property portals and many other property data websites - is another long-published area that appears to conflict with personal data privacy. It would seem sensible for HMLR to publish street or local area averages, but it has never been explained why it should be public knowledge what an individual paid for their home. The Price Paid Data is published under the Government 'Open Data Licence' but is clearly tied to the finances of individual homeowners and there is a long-running dispute with ICO on this. ICO are clear that they believe that PPD is personal data. In 2012 ICO wrote " OGL does not cover the use of personal data, in our view, this is therefore not a suitable vehicle for the publication of property price information." (See Owen Boswarva's summary here ). This dispute is not resolved.

Most homeowners are horrified when shown how much data the organisations in the buying & selling ecosystem have on their home. They would be equally horrified to know how this information is traded on the open market. The RLBA believes that we need to move to a presumption that property data belongs to the property and is only shared with homeowner permission.

Not only do we NOT have this presumption at the moment, but often the homeowner doesn’t even have rights of access to any data held by publicly funded bodies on their home. For instance, Land Registry charges a homeowner to access the information they hold about their own home, while selling it on the open market. While Trustmark, who hold certification and Retrofit data on a million homes don’t have any mechanism to share the certification and installation data they hold with homeowners.

The GDPR has a chapter on the rights of data subjects (individuals) which includes the right of access, the right to rectification, the right to erasure, the right to restrict processing, the right to data portability, the right to object and the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing. But these cover data that can be clearly defined as ‘personal’. While some data about our home has been classified as ‘personal’ most hasn’t and there is no clear precedents for homeowners exerting their rights. The RLBA believes that many of these rights need to be extended to our properties.

The starting assumption for any property-specific data set should be that it is a digital asset related to our home and is the property of the homeowner. The homeowner should be in control of the data created ‘by, for or about’ their home and they should have control of when and who it is shared with. This is particularly true if data has commercial value - if data has value then it is value that belongs to the homeowner. This may necessitate the creation, perhaps through legislation, of a special category of information that links to personally held assets whose usage and commercialisation rights are clarified as reserved to the homeowner. The first step will be to treat our property data in the round and not as individual data challenges and then to clarify the legal status of the data our homes create.

At what point does the boiled frog jump out of the water and what would that look like. At what point do homeowners say 'no'. The county is about to embark on the biggest national programme for house renovation ever attempted as we attempt to Retrofit 25M homes for new NetZero standards. NetZero may be the point where policy fails because we didn't deal with the data issue. We will not get the public to join us in the NetZero endeavour if they sense that any information created by surveys, EPC assessments and Retrofit plans will immediately be sold to the highest bidder.

GDPR legislation has proved costly and complex for business. Let's solve the issue of data privacy in the property world now, before the data privacy authorities do it for us.

Putting Real Estate On The Front Foot With Data Ethics

Tue, 07 Mar 2023 14:43:13 GMT

A guest blog by the Real Estate Data Foundation.

The Real Estate Data Foundation is a not-for-profit initiative bringing together the whole sector around the topic of data and to raise data ethics up the agenda and we are delighted that the RLBA is supporting this collaborative alliance.

But what is 'data ethics', why should you care and what should you do about it?

What is data ethics

Ethics is important in all corners of real estate, but as the volume of data that we collect and use grows, it is important to make sure that we apply ethical thinking to this. Having the technology to collect data and being allowed to under law is not enough - we need to consider whether we should be collecting and using the data. Ethics is all about asking 'should we?' If buildings of the future are about the user's happiness, health or productivity we can collect huge amounts of data on all of this - but should we? Where does the risk outweigh the benefit?

Before COVID, the idea of having your temperature taken to assess your health to be allowed to enter a building seemed inconceivable, yet for a while it became the norm. At what point should we stop collecting and using this data?

A more extreme example may be the decision about placing cameras inside buildings. This can allow all sorts of data to be collected and used to improve the experience for the resident, but there is a high risk that residents will resist it – and complain about it, as happened recently when North Ayrshire Council used Facial Recognition Technology in its school canteens. But what if the cameras are used to assist the elderly to continue living on their own by providing an automatic alert system for any falls or health problems? As long as data was suitably anonymised and secure and residents were fully aware of what was being collected and why, then this may feel like a more acceptable use case.

Whatever your views on the examples above, we can see that the ethical use of data is not black and white which is why the real estate sector needs to be on the front foot.

Why it matters

Data ethics in real estate matters for 3 reasons:

Serving our building users - first and foremost, as a sector we need to serve the people and the organisations that use our buildings and spaces. How data is collected and used is rising up the agenda and it is important that as a sector we are on the front foot, rather than waiting for things to go wrong. Ethics are at the heart of professionals' advice and this needs to extend to data.
Reducing risk - by taking some simple steps to build data ethics into our thinking, we can head off many problems that we will face and reduce the impact when we do. Being open and transparent about what we are doing and why is both the right thing to do and avoids significant reputational and financial risks.
Outside reputation - real estate does not always benefit from the best image and as we become ever more data driven, how we approach data is going to be key. A strong data ethics approach by the sector today will enhance our reputation or at least prevent further harm being done to it.

What to do about it

The ethical use of data is complex and subjective, but the good news is that it is easy to take significant steps towards making sure that you are using data in an ethical way. The RED Foundation has developed 6 data ethical principles that we ask both people and companies to sign up to. Sign up to these today and build them into any decisions you make relating to data and you are well on the road to addressing it.

For those who wish to take a step further, we have published a Data Ethics Playbook which builds on these principles and provides practical guidance on how to build data ethics into your thinking.

Written on behalf of the RED Foundation by:

· Sue Chadwick - Chair of the RED Foundation Data Ethics Steering Group

· Dan Hughes - Founder of the RED Foundation

· Damian Wild - Chair of the RED Foundation Steering Group

Delivering FirstHomes With Property Logbooks

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 18:23:45 GMT

Exploring the potential of the RLBA Logbook Register

January 2023 - In the last two years digital Property Logbooks for our homes have moved from concept to reality, with almost a quarter of a million homes in the UK now having one. There is a vibrant and competitive market for Logbooks emerging, as the six different providers represented by the Residential Logbook Association (RLBA) will attest.

Their impact is already being felt in the Conveyancing industry, where Logbooks are part of the wider digitisation of the sales process. Now we are beginning to ask where else can they help deliver Govt policy.

RLBA member companies are already active in the New Build market, which is increasingly seeing digital Logbooks as a tool to help the post-sale ‘handover’ process. The obligations on housebuilders to deliver data to buyers is increasing with the post-Grenfell Safety Bill and Net Zero performance targets both affecting new properties. Property Logbooks that are integrated with certification bodies and construction portals are becoming a standard feature of this new ‘data rich’ New Build market.

Simon Lumb of National Deeds Depository and a founder member of the RLBA says: “As well as being a repository for the extra information that needs to be passed on at sale of a First Home, Logbooks offer some other features and functionality that will make the First Homes scheme easier to implement for Local authorities, particularly as they come to market for a second or third time. “

At the moment, Local Authorities are examining how to create individual First Homes registers to maintain the integrity of the scheme for the local authority and its local community and key workers. We believe that a solution from the RLBA could deliver a workable and interoperable national register with little cost to Local Authorities.

For a Property Logbook to be registered on the RLBA Register they have to conform to an agreed data and functionality specification. One aspect of this specification is that a Logbook should be able to flag up a special feature or function and support the notification function. When trialling this functionality RLBA member companies have enabled a ‘First Homes’ trial flag in their Logbooks enabling, amongst other things, summary reports on the number and distribution of ‘First Homes’ properties.

Nigel Walley of Chimni, another RLBA member says: “This means that the RLBA Register, without significant extra development, could provide a central register of ‘First Homes’ properties for Local Authorities who want to outsource the challenge. The only requirement to enable this is for First Homes developers to be register an RLBA Property Logbook with each First Homes property.”

The RLBA Register will be integrated with Estate Agent and Conveyancer systems in such a way that an alert could be sent to the Local Authority when material upfront information for sale is generated directly from the Logbook. In addition, Property Logbooks created to support the First Homes Scheme will have a flag; an alert could be sent in cases where any inbound data fields from a prospective seller match an existing Logbook, irrespective of whether upfront information was generated.

In this way, the RLBA Register will be able to notify participating Local Authorities at the very moment a First Homes property is marketed for resale and create a day “one” trigger to help ensure the specific terms, discounts and eligibility requirements set by the Local Authority are adhered to.

There is also no system by which a Local Authority can monitor if owners and agents are properly marketing a property so that it doesn’t fall out of the 3-month sale window agreed for First Homes properties. The RLBA Register offers the ability to address these issues, flagging a property’s first presence on websites and enabling a council to monitor the sales process and timeline to ensure it is free from any sales ruses which may compromise the raison d’etre of the scheme.

To require developers to deliver digital Property Logbooks to buyers of new homes, is not imposing new cost or admin on them. They already have to incur the cost and admin of collating their handover packs. Registering Logbooks as part of a First Homes sale will merely nudge them along the path towards digitisation. But for Local Authorities working on First Homes developments, a system of monitoring and reporting delivered by Property Logbooks could be transformational and help avoid the set up and implementation costs of each one building and maintaining its own First Homes register. A scenario which would lead to huge time delay and expense, and the potential for 355 siloed Registers across England and Wales.

For more information on Property Logbooks Register and our work with First Homes please email: chair@rlba.org.uk

Monitoring & Reporting The NetZero Revolution

residential.logbook@gmail.com (RLBA Admin) — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 18:05:19 GMT

How Property Logbooks can support the roll-out of NetZero and Green Energy measures in the home.

A Review Of RLBA Activity Around Data Exchange and Reporting

October 2021

The RLBA and its' member companies are working across a number of functions and government departments to look at how Property Logbooks can support Government home buying, housing and energy policy. We have pilot projects in Home Buying & Selling, Local Government, Retrofit and Modern Methods of Construction (MMC). In each of these areas, a core emphasis of the Logbook work to date has been building on their ability to aggregate documents and data from a wide variety of source to create a single source of truth. This is still a crucial function, but we anticipate, as logbooks and data sources evolve, there will be less emphasis on 'documents' and more emphasis on live links to data sources through integrations.

The RLBA is working on standardised industry mechanisms for connecting Logbooks to property registration and Certification Bodies, Local government and Industry organisations. The initial focus is gathering data. But this ‘connectivity’ brings opportunities to do other interesting things. Increasingly we are being asked what Logbooks can deliver back up these connections. There is an emerging theme across all strands of our work which we haven’t picked out and reflected on – the ability of a property logbook to deliver monitoring and reporting of specific activity where national and local government goals and targets are involved.

For the professional and industry bodies, the answer is simple. Logbooks can deliver the data required to support a wide range of functions. For Home Buying & Selling (HBS) Logbooks are being configured to deliver data for the BASPI form, and even complete ‘Property Packs’ configured to the agreed ‘Contract Ready’ standard agreed by the HBSG’s Upfront Data workgroup.

For Local Authorities Logbooks can deliver standardised Building Control and Planning applications, and the information needed to support them. We are also working with councils to investigate how, using systems developed for Open Banking, we can enable Property Logbooks to have ‘privileged links’ giving homeowners secure access to Council records for things like the Electoral Register, Council Tax

But beyond these connections, there are an increasing number of trials being planned where Logbooks will provide reporting and accountability BACK to the connecting bodies. Examples of this include:

A project with a group of Local Authorities to look at how logbooks can be connected to council systems to exchange data and receive services from councils. Councils are under pressure from government to be able to report on a range of issues including the NetZero status of homes in their areas, and the progress against Retrofit goals. Our trial is looking at how Property Logbooks (with permission from owners) can offer a data feed that reports status of projects and certification in these areas. In the long term this will be a direct data feed between Logbook and Council, but in the short term (given the limitations of current council services) the RLBA is building a council dashboard to deliver reports aggregated from Logbooks connected to the RLBA Hub.

A second area, also linked to the Retrofit debate, is in the role of Property Logbooks in delivering Retrofit Plans (See previous blog here ). Working with the Green Finance Institute 'Retrofit Framework', we have built a model to host Retrofit Plans within Property Logbooks and have them report (again, with homeowner permissions) on the status of the Retrofit works within the plan and the EPC rating achieved. Reporting on progress at individual property level, and aggregated level can deliver huge insight

Building on the Retrofit activity, we are working with a group of banks and building societies, to establish a reporting basis for Mortgages and Green Loans. The challenge these finance houses face is that they are being asked to report on the green status of their loan books but have no mechanism to do it. Our projects are looking to give every homeowner taking a green loan a property logbook, with the ability to report project status and the EPC status resulting from the work. Once again, our projects are based on Logbooks initially reporting to a dashboard on the RLBA Hub, before aggregated reports are sent to the finance houses. Our aim is to make the case that all mortgages given with Government assistance should bring with them an obligation to report on retrofit/green energy issues. A Logbook given out with each mortgage can deliver that reporting.

The long term vision is of a national ‘digital twin’ with every home in possession of a node on a national property data network through which they exchange data and services with local and national government, certification bodies and finance groups. Our projects are the initial steps towards this goal, and we aim for logbooks to be at the core of meeting the monitoring and reporting needs of the new greener housing market.

Delivering Retrofit Plans With Property Logbooks

Sat, 02 Oct 2021 16:09:37 GMT

How Property Logbooks will deliver Building Retrofit Plans (BRPs) for UK homeowners.

Retrofit Plans Being Trialled Within RLBA Member Logbooks

1st October 2021 - This blog has been written to coincide with the launch of the Green Finance Institute's new White Paper on Building Renovation Plans, which publishes a new data structure developed with support of a wide group of industry players including the RLBA and its member companies.

Introduction

The drive to NetZero in housing and the need for Retrofit Planning have arrived at a time when the Government has been investigating different areas where open, shareable residential property information could drive change. The Grenfell tragedy drove a call for better construction & materials information to be made available for all residential buildings - what Dame Hackitt called a ‘Golden Thread’ of property data.

The resulting Building Safety Bill also mandates that safety information be open and shared. This has led to call for digitally hosted Safety Plans, available online to all stakeholders in a residential building. The 'Golden Thread Working Group have encouraged use of 'common data environments to ensure there is controlled access to a single source of truth'.

DLUCH are looking to build on the Golden Thread idea and find ways for all new homes to come with a digitally-hosted 'Materials Record' and a plan for materials re-use that will bring housing into the ‘circular economy’. Local councils are investigating new mechanisms for sharing planning and property data digitally.

The Lettings industry has called for all property on the rental market to publish a 'Lettings MOT' with all key certificates, permissions and insurances available digitally to all stakeholders. At the same time, the problems in conveyancing have led to the DLUCH to call for all homes being sold being able to publish online records of all property data, including building work with the relevant permissions and certification held in open digital format.

Research has shown that homeowners don't want multiple, overlapping apps and services to cover all these functions. The job that the RLBA has been asked to do is to bring these strands together into a single, comprehensive solution to residential property data that puts the homeowner in control.

Retrofit brings a new dimension to this challenge.

The Role of Logbooks In Delivering BRPs

Up till now, RLBA member companies have focussed on creating records of past activity - transactions, building work, materials and maintenance records. The RLBA has worked with industry bodies on data standards in each of these areas and an RLBA registered Logbooks can display these data sets in a consistent, standardised way.

Retrofit brings a view forward as well as back. As we know, our homes are responsible for 14% of carbon emissions (CCC 2019) and all homeowners have been challenged with bringing up to new NetZero standards. For most of us that means planning for a series of future works to be undertaken on our homes over the next decades up to 2050.

Property Logbook owners this means adding a set of future project plans to their record of past ones. So a Renovation Plan is a 'plan of works' with intelligence and integrations built in. It is likely that these Plans will differ widely depending on the housing and ownership types. For social and managed housing a 'Whole Home Plan' (PAS2035) approach will be possible. But for the majority of owners, the Retrofit process will be self-funded and these homeowners need the information and tools to self-manage the process. Property Logbooks can deliver plans to these homeowners in manner consistent with they way they already manage their homes.

Whichever Retrofit approach is used, at the core of each type of plan has to be consistency in approach and data captured. The industry has needed a standard data approach to this challenge, and the Green Finance Institute’s work and the new White Paper has delivered that solution.

There is a direct link between the data in a Renovation Plan and the rest of a the data in a Property Logbook. Logbooks already contain EPC information, historic project records and links to certification bodies. As each component of a Renovation Plan is completed, the data will becomes a historic project record along side all the other project records in the Logbook.

An Integrated Approach

Connectivity and integrations with certification bodies and other service providers will also be key for Renovation Plans. RLBA registered logbooks already integrate with certification bodies and registers (like the EPC Register and HMLR). Logbook companies will need to integrate and share data with companies running stand-alone Retrofit services. Those companies in turn will need to be able to lodge data in a home's logbook.

For Retrofit finance to work these integrations will also need to extend to finance companies to allow green loans to be measured and monitored. The RLBA is working with banks and building societies to establish a standard basis for this reporting to happen with trials expected to start at the beginning of 2022.

It is also likely that many homes will be sold in the next few years with this Retrofit journey only partially completed. This means that progress will need to be assessed as part of the conveyancing process and project / green finance information will need to be passed between owners on sale. It is therefore crucial that the information in Renovation Plans is co-ordinated with the other digitally-hosted data being collated by homeowners considering selling their home. This data needs to be integrated with the conveyancing and mortgage industries. RLBA registered logbook already deliver these integrations.

For RLBA members to be able to create a standardised way of delivering this within Logbooks, we required an industry agreed data standard for Retrofit Plans. This is why the Green Finance Institutes work in this area has been so crucial to service providers looking to support change. The publication of the new White Paper on Renovation Plan data is a seminal moment. The first Renovation Plans based on the new data schema agreed during this recent project will be launched within RLBA Logbooks before the end of the year.

Next Steps

The next challenge will be agreeing how this data can be exchanged and shared between the various systems and services being developed by the Retrofit community. We recognise that there will be Retrofit Assessors and Coordinators building stand alone software and web apps using this new data standard. It is crucial that these systems can share data with homeowners in a variety of ways, including app integration and data sharing with Property Logbooks.

We look forward to working with the other industry players to agree data and API schemas necessary for this integration and data sharing to take place.

Nigel Walley - MD Chimni - Oct 2021.

Member Focus - Chimni

Mon, 27 Sep 2021 22:01:29 GMT

A digital companion for your home

Chimni is a property logbook company that provides a digital companion for the complete lifecycle of buying, developing, enjoying then selling a home.

Chimni has a direct to consumer service in which homeowners can set up a logbook and 'get their ducks in a row' before they even consider selling. Click our introduction video below to get an overview of the Chimni service from the perspective of your customers:

For more info on our direct to consumer service please go to www.chimni.com

Chimni also works with conveyancers, agents and housebuilders to provide Logbooks as a mechanism to support the handover of newly sold homes to their buyers. This service applies to new build and existing homes, and is rapidly becoming a staple of the conveyancing process. See our Chimni.pro demo video below:

To find out more about how Chimni can help your business please go to www.chimni.pro or contact:

Nigel Walley, MD

nigel.walley@chimni.com

07836 203388

Member Focus - Spaciable

Sun, 26 Sep 2021 21:52:08 GMT

Spaciable - Property Logbooks For the Homebuilding Industry

We work with over 200 private residential, build to rent and commercial developers, managing agents and housing associations. Spaciable – our award-winning portal – digitalises their sales, handover and aftercare processes. By making these processes more efficient and automating numerous time-consuming tasks, Spaciable saves our clients time and money.

Admins and home users each have access to bespoke dashboards in the developer’s branding. Admins can use their dashboard to create events and invite residents, using the calendar feature, as well as upload important documents and communicate with home users on a development, phase or individual plot basis.

Home users have access to a wide range of plot specific information, such as their fixtures and finishes, a library of documents relating to their home, including appliance manuals and our expertly written home user manuals, key contact details, FAQs, an area guide, a defect reporting tool, a home designer suite, and access to exclusive deals and offers.

By pre-empting common issues faced by home users and giving them the tools to self-serve solutions, customer care calls are reduced, costly call-outs drop and customer satisfaction skyrockets. Spaciable is an omnipresent reminder of the elite customer experience your brand provides.

We are the market leader with a digital delivery of over 100,000 plots for a number of reasons – one of which is our ability to evolve and adapt. With Spaciable, our clients benefit from continued development and additions. This has recently included two game changing new features: My Journey and Spaciable Legal.

My Journey is a digital handholding tool that guides home users through the entire homebuying journey, from sale through to legal completion and beyond, thereby getting sales across the line in less time and improving cashflow. By breaking the journey up into easy-to-follow steps with instructions for what needs to be done, home users feel supported throughout the process, without time consuming input from sales teams. This ensures key tasks don’t get missed, causing costly delays to legal completion and frustration for all parties.

Spaciable Legal is already revolutionising the way homes are sold, with completion times reducing by 48% and with 67% fewer fall-throughs. The incredible feature takes the conveyancing process online, using groundbreaking technology to provide instant quotes from solicitors, automating tasks, such as local searches, and facilitating all aspects of the process, from submitting queries and anti-money laundering checks to exchanging contracts and making payments. By providing all of this through a single platform used by sales teams, solicitors and home users, the process becomes more transparent, minimising buyer frustration and the need to chase for updates. What’s more, Spaciable Legal is a free add-on and can even earn developers commission from referral fees. This itself can offset the cost of Spaciable!

Member Focus - National Deeds Depository

residential.logbook@gmail.com (RLBA Admin) — Sun, 04 Jul 2021 12:35:48 GMT

National Deeds Depository

The Property Logbook Company

Do you know where your property deeds are? Are they with your solicitor? Maybe your bank has them? More than likely, they were given to you when you bought the property… now where did you put them?

Your Deeds packet that we will store typically contains:

The Deeds to your home
Essential Planning Consents
Building Control approvals
Guarantees such as NHBC new house building certificates
Leases
Deeds of Variation
Share Certificates
Indemnity Insurance Policies
Certificates and guarantees covering new windows, boilers, electrical work etc

Every year hundreds of thousands of people rack their brains and search their lofts, filing cabinets and kitchen drawers looking for the crucial paperwork that is needed to sell their house or flat. Without these documents, the sale of the property will be delayed and extra costs incurred.

In a recent survey of conveyancing solicitors conducted by the Law Society:

76% stated that the lack of documents caused material delays
90% stated the lack of documents adds material costs to the conveyancing process
88% stated that deed packets and documents were not normally readily available from their clients
The National Deeds Depository has been set up to solve this problem, once and for all.