The Governmentโs ambition to make home buying and selling faster, cheaper and less stressful has been given a boost with the launch of a new service from property inspection app Survey Shack.
Designed to enable estate agents and energy assessors to achieve comprehensive, structured property condition insights at a far earlier stage than has traditionally been possible, Survey Shack Pro dovetails perfectly with the Governmentโs Home Buying and Selling Consultation.
Survey Shack Pro helps bridge the gap between the aims outlined in the consultation and the reality on the ground.
Qualified surveyors are in short supply, with the RICSโ Surveying Skills Report 2025, published in October, reporting that skills shortages are already reducing capacity, increasing costs and holding back innovation.
87% of the professionals that RICS surveyed felt that a shortage of skills was having an impact on their industry/profession, while 27% felt that impact was already critical. This is why tech-driven solutions will be crucial if the Government is to achieve the aims outlined in the consultation.
Designed with this in mind, Survey Shack Pro provides estate agents and energy assessors with a simple way to incorporate property condition inspections into existing workflows. Doing so can do much to support a more transparent selling and buying process, resulting in fewer delays and fall throughs.
Survey Shack Pro helps estate agents stay compliant with strengthened consumer protection laws by putting property condition front and centre. Agents can use it to identify significant defects before marketing, thus improving listing quality, building trust with buyers and progressing sales with greater clarity.
It also enables energy assessors to expand their role beyond EPCs and RAs, offering property condition reports as a natural extension of their existing expertise. This creates new opportunities to support agents and vendors, speeding up the sales process while adding measurable value to every appointment.
Brett Ray, Founding Partner & CEO, Survey Shack, comments: โCrucially, Survey Shack Pro extends our professional indemnity insurance to inspections carried out by Survey Shack Approved Inspectors. This allows qualifying energy assessors and agents to deliver inspections within a defined framework, giving adopters a clear point of difference and PI backed reassurance. All Approved Inspectors work under Survey Shack guidelines and quality controls. This PI backed structure is an important milestone in changing the status quo and creates what we believe is the first end to end service that combines owner led condition checks with a professionally delivered report in a single, scalable delivery mechanism.โ
Survey Shack Pro reports would also feed into the Open Property Data Associationโs Property Data Trust Framework designed to improve transparency, make transactions easier and more efficient and accelerate the digitisation of the property market.
In the UK, where RICS reports that construction and the built environment sector account for around an estimated 20% of GDP, new tech initiatives such as these are essential for keeping the marketโs momentum alive and reducing the painfully lengthy times to exchange.
Survey Shack, selected as one of only six startups forming part of the 21st cohort of the Geovation Accelerator Programme from Ordnance Survey and HM Land Registry, is already leading the field, having recently revealed its new Genie service. Part of the appโs Premium package, Genie enables users to connect with a professional surveyor to discuss up to three aspects of their Survey Shack property condition inspection report. Clear, expert guidance is provided within 48 hours โ another push to combat current property transaction lengths.
For more information, please visit www.survey-shack.com. You can also download the Survey Shack app via the App Store and Google Play.
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