The Open Property Roadmap: Homebuying Goes Digital | June ’26 AI Bulletin
Pete Gatenby – June 2026
Overview
For years, slow and failed home purchases have been blamed on the process. This month a government-backed coalition named the real cause: less than 1% of homebuying data is digital. CFIT’s Open Property roadmap sets out how to fix it, and this month’s AI Bulletin looks at what that means for lenders.
The Challenge
A purchase still takes around 22 weeks, and almost a third of deals fall through. CFIT puts the cost of failed transactions at around £560 million a year. The cause is not effort, it is infrastructure. Data that arrives as PDFs, email bodies and free-text notes cannot move across a connected journey.
A National Blueprint for HDI
The Open Property roadmap is, in effect, a national blueprint for Horizontal Digital Integration: the operating model that connects every party so data flows end to end, rather than being rebuilt at each handoff. That same connected data is what AI needs to work safely. Infrastructure and capability are moving together.
The Regulator Is Building For AI
The FCA has moved from permitting AI to building for it, with a Supercharged Sandbox cohort focused on agentic AI and live AI testing now under way with major lenders. The position still holds: principles-based, outcomes-focused, no separate AI rulebook. Build confidently, and evidence what you do.
Two Steps for Lenders This Month
Map your data against the roadmap and start removing anything that still arrives as a PDF, an email body or a free-text note. Then take one contained workflow, such as document triage, source of funds or case pre-screening, and run it with AI assistance, built to the standard the FCA’s testbed is now setting.
Facing a similar challenge?
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