Your hub for everything Kotini and home buying and selling industry news. Discover the newest trends, product updates, and expert insights for estate agents, mortgage brokers, and conveyancers.
Close to one in four agreed sales never completes, and 38% of those failures happen within four weeks. The material information checklist disappeared in 2025. The duty did not. Kotini and The Able Agent on why the questions asked at instruction decide both your fall-through rate and your fee.
Kotini has launched an Integrated AML Risk Assessment, built directly into its platform for estate agents. It lets a Money Laundering Reporting Officer capture every HMRC risk factor – covering both client and transactional risk – as agent disclosures come in, then submit a final decision to proceed, pause, or stop. The assessment is stored as structured data and a PDF report, and pushes to CRMs including Alto, Apex27, Loop, Reapit, Rex, and Street. It replaces the need for a separate platform, spreadsheet, or third-party AML provider.
The UK’s home buying reforms aim to cut average transaction times from 19 weeks to 15, but estate agent Matt Baldock of Charles David Casson argues the real fix isn’t legislation, it’s process. Collecting AML checks, identity verification and material information as one guided flow at the point of instruction, rather than as separate manual requests to agent, seller and solicitor, is what actually reduces fall-throughs and speeds up completion. It’s the model Kotini’s onboarding platform is built around, and Baldock reports his own agency now gathers material information faster than ever as a result.
Getting a signed contract has long been the moment estate agents celebrate. But the government’s home buying and selling reform roadmap makes a compelling case that this is the wrong finish line. If a transaction takes an average of 120 days to complete after offer acceptance – 60% longer than it took in 2007 – something in the process isn’t working. The question for your agency is whether you’re ready to shift how you think about what success looks like.
Efficient agencies document processes before buying technology. The sequence is: automate what needs no judgment, offshore what needs no local knowledge, outsource specialist tasks, then hire. AI agents working databases replace prospecting sessions most teams can’t run consistently.
Agencies offering flexible fees – no-sale-no-fee, part-paid, or fully prepaid – add over 20% to revenue per listing within the first month. Withdrawal rates drop from 38% to 8% when vendors pay upfront, because loss aversion keeps them committed to completing.
Brand is what clients think when you’re not in the room. Agents with consistent personal and business brands convert more valuations and hold higher fees — not through better logos, but through deliberate, repeated visibility that builds trust before the valuation appointment.
Why estate agents undercharge and how to stop
UK estate agents charge an average of 1.1% – the lowest of any major market globally. The gap isn’t the market; it’s self-belief. Agents who discount before being asked signal they don’t trust their own value – and vendors notice.
Estate agents are losing time and vendor confidence to fragmented onboarding tools. Disconnected AML checks, e-signatures, and PIQs across multiple platforms quietly damage client trust – at the moment it matters most. Here’s what the best-run agencies are doing differently.
Under the DMCC Act 2025, the CMA can fine estate agents the higher of £300,000 or 10% of global turnover for failing to disclose material information — without requiring anything to have gone wrong. A digital audit trail is now essential.
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