The summary report, produced with the assistance of Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, CBRE and HM Land Registry, explores the process of selling a commercial investment property. It covers from the point that a decision to market the property is made, up to the completion of the Land Registry’s registration processes, highlighting causes for delay in the current transaction process, applicable technology including blockchain and property passports, barriers to the adoption of technology, and the drivers of change.
Reed Smith supported the project through its Innovation Hours scheme, which provides up to 50 hours of billable credit for lawyers to work on qualifying projects, actively encouraging them to develop innovative solutions, resulting in the generation of new products and ideas.
Following a successful pilot of Innovation Hours in 2017, the results led to a firmwide roll out and the summary report is one of the projects that has now reached completion. Created as part of The Oxford Future of Real Estate Initiative at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, the report explores the potential impact of new technologies on real estate transactions.
Lucy Dillon, chief knowledge officer at Reed Smith, said: “As a firm, it is imperative that we focus on the future development of legal services and understand the ever evolving markets and technologies that underpin the industries we support. Most importantly we must ensure we are well positioned to advise our clients on what these changes could mean for their businesses.”
“When we were presented with this project we felt that it matched the Innovation Hours criteria perfectly and, as you can imagine, the firm’s global Real Estate group was delighted to be able to support research that would predict the changes faced by the industry over the next decade.”
Andrew Baum, Professor of Practice and leader of the Oxford Future of Real Estate Initiative, said: ‘We would like to thank Reed Smith for their support and expertise, which were instrumental in the development of this research.”
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