Selling: Nice experience for filling in property information form, leasehold information form etc

JamesBell

I am selling my flat at the moment and got a bit annoyed when filling in the PIF/LIF/fixtures and fittings forms for my conveyancer.

Annoyances being:
1. Duplicate information I had to fill in multiple times
2. Hard to do digitally

I was wondering - would anyone be interested in a site that lets you complete the forms online and then generates a compliant PDF of the forms for you to send to your conveyancer?

I’m considering building such a thing but would only do so if it would actually help people.

SmashedAvacado

I think you need to be careful because those forms are protected by copyright. The issue being that the protcol for conveyancing transactions references particular forms. If you propose developing different forms, then they will not fulfill the protocol.

NaughtiusMaximus

If it was a free site then yes but it's not something I would be willing to pay for. They key factor is would both mine and the buyer's solicitors accept such a form as being valid?

agrinnall

For something that you'd probably only need to do maybe half a dozen times (some less, some more) in your lifetime the amount of effort needed to fill out a few forms is negligible.

JamesBell

Thanks for the feedback - regarding the format of the form that would be generated it would be directly into the Law Society template PDF, this would not be a bespoke form. The entry might have a different UI, but the output would be exactly compliant. I haven’t checked into the copyright of the form, will do so before doing anything.

It would be free, no ads and would not retain any users data once the forms are sent.

eddddy

JamesBell wrote: »

I was wondering - would anyone be interested in a site that lets you complete the forms online and then generates a compliant PDF of the forms for you to send to your conveyancer?

I’m considering building such a thing but would only do so if it would actually help people.

I think your target market would be solicitors - but I suspect they would be looking for a more complete solution.

i.e. The seller logs into the solicitor's website/portal, and enters all information online with a digital signature (i.e. TA6, TA7 and all other docs and forms that the solicitor needs), and the solicitor access it from there.


But law firms and solicitors are a bit notorious for being slow to move forward with new technology.

JamesBell

eddddy wrote: »

I think your target market would be solicitors - but I suspect they would be looking for a more complete solution.

i.e. The seller logs into the solicitor's website/portal, and enters all information online with a digital signature (i.e. TA6, TA7 and all other docs and forms that the solicitor needs), and the solicitor access it from there.


But law firms and solicitors are a bit notorious for being slow to move forward with new technology.

This makes sense to me - I do wonder what the solicitors do with the forms on the other side - would it be beneficial for them to get the responses in something they could copy paste from for example or do they just read it and not enter the information elsewhere

SmashedAvacado

The forms are protected by copyright. They are available to law firms by paying a subscription to a service whereby they can use the forms.

Think on.

JamesBell

SmashedAvacado wrote: »

The forms are protected by copyright. They are available to law firms by paying a subscription to a service whereby they can use the forms.

Think on.

Thanks for looking into that! Seems a bit unnecessarily restrictive given they all contain the same information! I wonder whether there is anything that can be done directly with the conveyancers (e.g. have them class the online form as their own and therefore be covered within the subscription)

SmashedAvacado

JamesBell wrote: »

Thanks for looking into that! Seems a bit unnecessarily restrictive given they all contain the same information! I wonder whether there is anything that can be done directly with the conveyancers (e.g. have them class the online form as their own and therefore be covered within the subscription)

You are creating a solution for a problem that does not exist.

Filling in the front page of two forms takes about 30 seconds. You can also write "previously given" on it.

The forms are proprietory and relate to protocols that firms sign up to use. if they don't use the form, they wont comply with the protocol. Some versions of the forms can be electronically populated. There are multiple providers of the form - Oyez, the law society, lazerforms, etc.

mouthscradle

Am I weird to actually enjoy filling in forms like this by hand? I love a good old paper form! A chance to dig out my lovely fountain pen. I didn't find it at all annoying, or too time consuming.