Voice of the Agent Live: Should Estate Agents Replace Conveyancers?

Why does buying or selling a home still feel harder than it should? And if conveyancing causes so many delays, why don’t we just… remove it from the equation? In this episode of the Voice of the Agent podcast, we drop you straight into one of the most talked-about moments from the Voice of the Agent Conference at Bletchley Park. It’s a live panel debate exploring the relationship between estate agents and conveyancers, what’s broken in the home-moving process, and what “best practice” actually looks like when everyone’s under pressure. Hosted by David Opie, the panel brings together Clare Yates, Matt Baldock and Simon Thomas, representing frontline agency, legal expertise and customer experience. Things really heat up when Russell Quirk throws a hand grenade of a question into the room: if other countries can complete transactions in weeks, why are we still stuck with a system that takes six months — and should estate agents just do the whole job themselves? After the clip, Toby Martin unpacks what you’ve just heard and connects it to the hard data from Part Four of the Voice of the Agent Report, revealing how long transactions really take, where communication breaks down, who consumers blame when things go wrong, and what the minority of smooth-moving chains are doing differently. If you’re an agent, a conveyancer, a lender, or someone currently stuck in a chain wondering why nothing has moved for weeks, this episode will feel uncomfortably familiar — and genuinely useful. You can download the Voice of the Agent Reports for free at https://www.weareunchained.co.uk/thevoiceoftheagent