Home buying reform moved from consultation to commitment on 19 June 2026. MHCLG published its roadmap for England and Wales that day. Sellers will have to provide upfront information at the point of listing. A code of practice for property agents follows later this year. That is the first firm date in the package.
What did MHCLG publish?
A roadmap rather than a bill. It confirms the government will go ahead with proposals consulted on between 6 October and 29 December 2025. The changes land over the course of this Parliament.
The problem it sets out to fix is well documented. A transaction takes an average of 120 days. Around one in three fails. MHCLG expects the package to halve failed transactions and cut roughly four weeks off the five months between instruction and completion. It puts the saving for a first-time buyer at £710.
Housing secretary Steve Reed presented the reforms as the biggest change to home buying in a generation.
What goes in the upfront sales pack?
More than most firms currently assemble before an offer.
The proposed list runs to tenure, council tax band, EPC rating and property type. It adds legal and transactional information, including title information and seller identity verification. Then leasehold terms, service charges, building safety data, standard searches, planning consents, flood risk data, chain status and clear floor plans.
A property condition assessment sits in there too, tailored to the age and type of the property.
Three further strands travel with it. Binding conditional contracts aim to curb gazumping and gazundering, with a financial penalty for pulling out without good reason. Digital property logbooks and standardised data sharing underpin the whole thing. Digital identity verification becomes routine.
Does home buying reform shift liability?
No, and this is the point clients will get wrong.
Liability stays where it has always sat. What changes is the timing and the quality of the information. A conveyancer still owes the same duties on the same material. The material simply arrives earlier and in a more consistent form.
The practical effect is that work moves to the front of a transaction rather than disappearing from it. Firms will prepare sales packs before a listing instead of answering enquiries after an offer. Total effort may not fall much. Its position in the timeline changes completely.
That has a commercial consequence. Fees earned late in a matter get incurred early, before a transaction is certain to proceed.
Upfront information moves work to the start of a transaction rather than removing it. Firms will prepare sales packs before an offer rather than answer enquiries after one. Liability does not shift. What changes is when the information arrives and how good it is. The code of practice for agents lands later this year and is the first firm deadline in the package.
What is the timetable?
Staged, and only the first stage has a date attached.
Later in 2026 brings a code of practice for property agents, plus guidance on the quality of information in listings. The code sets minimum standards, and the government has kept the option of legislating if compliance is poor.
2027 brings a consultation on mandatory qualifications for estate agents, and expanded digital tools.
Mandatory sales packs and binding conditional contracts sit further out and need legislation. Separately, the government plans to cap what managing agents charge for information requests, and how long they may take. It will use the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024.
What should firms do now?
Four things, none of which need legislation first.
Advise seller clients to instruct before listing rather than after an offer. That single change puts a firm in position for the future regime and shortens transactions today.
Audit how the firm gathers title, leasehold and search information, and how early it can realistically do so.
Look at billing structure. If work moves forward, the point at which a firm gets paid needs to move with it or cash flow suffers.
Read the code of practice when it appears and self-assess against it. It is non-statutory at first, which is exactly why early compliance is cheap.
The Legal Brief covered the last major residential property change in its report on the Renters’ Rights Act coming into force. It set out the wider housing programme in its King’s Speech 2026 round-up.
MHCLG summarised the announcement on its media blog, and the underlying consultation sits on the MHCLG consultation hub. Bristol Law Society has published a practitioner summary.