When Paul Logan was caught in an interminable transaction trying to sell his loft-style Glasgow city-centre flat in 2007, he decided to do something about it. With his career forged in the Stock Exchange, where secure, accurate electronic financial transactions are essential, Logan was amazed that no such technology existed to conclude his sale — so he set about creating some.

“It was a straightforward sale of a modern flat, made even simpler by the fact that I was selling to a family member,” he says. “And yet the process just dragged on and on. I thought, there had to be a better way.”

The result was Yooseful Technology, a partnership formed with his similarly experienced brother, Anthony.

Their invention, software called Your Offers Online, could revolutionise our home-selling culture by making buying a home in under 24 hours a reality.

The key is having funding in place, a home report that both parties are willing to accept and the newly established regional missives that have simplified the conveyancing process. The software, which paves the way for the electronic conclusion of missives, is the final piece of the jigsaw.

Yooseful Technology’s innovation couldn’t be more timely. With Scotland in contravention of the European Union’s E-commerce Directive, which demands that all sales transactions should be able to be concluded electronically, it is hoped that legislation will soon enable solicitors and estate agents to offer and conclude bargains online, instead of having to exchange paper missives.

Kevin Davidson, whose firm KWAD in Aberdeen is among those lawyers testing the software, believes that companies that don’t use the program will be left behind.

Davidson says that the speed and security of digitally made offers can have a profound effect on conveyancing, which is still reliant on snail mail and faxes, as email did a decade ago.

Yooseful’s platform allows solicitors to send and receive offers for residential property using the appropriate regional missive. Having noted their interest, purchasing solicitors submit their offers through Yooseful’s online offering platform. Offers are written onto a password-controlled database.

The platform alerts and informs all parties throughout the process — that is, potential buyers, sellers and legal representatives, who are allowed levels of access to case notes, feedback, financial details, home reports and viewers’ feedback appropriate to their status in the negotiations.

Buyers and sellers are given access to a case-management system that details all the relevant activity relating to their sale or purchase. Lawyers, meanwhile, get password-protected access to case notes and information that allow them to conclude missives and conveyancing.

Some experts are sceptical about the software, however. Sandy Burnett, of Murray Beith Murray in Edinburgh, says: “This system may work for simple sales, but it could prove to be just a marketing gimmick for the first few firms that offer it. The whole point about when a contract is actually binding also remains a grey area. That can’t just be resolved electronically.”

According to Logan, Your Offers Online is simply the collation and streamlining of information that has previously been attainable only via disparate sources.

Lawyers will be able to manage their security, time, correspondence and record keeping in such a way that the whole process of buying and selling homes will be enhanced.

Richard Loudon, a property partner at Simpson & Marwick in Edinburgh, says: “It is something we should all adopt as quickly as we can.”

The biggest challenge will be getting his profession to buy into the idea, he believes.

“There were lawyers who didn’t think you should sell properties on the internet, just as previous generations didn’t see the need for For Sale boards or photographs of properties for sale, but without challenging that thinking we’d still be using quills and parchment,” he says.

Greg Gordon

Link -  http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/buying_and_selling/article7106790.ece