It can be pretty frustrating trying to decipher a property from a postal address alone, especially if it's a complex block of flats or a rural address that has an obscure name! This is where the Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) comes to the rescue. Much like a vehicle registration plate, the UPRN is a unique numeric reference allocated to every addressable location in the UK. It will pinpoint the exact property you’re looking for without any ambiguity.
You may be thinking – but we have a postcode for this. The issue with postcodes is that they can cover multiple properties, especially in dense areas. Albeit very rare, postcodes can change whereas a UPRN stays with a property throughout its entire lifecycle.
Then why not use the title number? While the title number represents land ownership, recorded in the title deeds and shown as a line on a map, it isn't always precise. A title number may represent a single building, but it could also cover multiple buildings or a single building with many units. Additionally, not all properties are registered. The UPRN gives a more complete and detailed reference, making it easier to accurately identify a property.
The UPRN also helps any organisation with different systems to match and exchange records. As you can imagine, address recording across different companies is inconsistent. One company may have an address listed as Suite 1, another as Apartment 1 and a third as Ground-Floor Flat. Similarly, Saint Johns Road may be recorded by other companies as St Johns Road. It can also prove tricky trying to identify individual units in a block of flats. How can you be sure you have the correct property? Well, it will only have one UPRN - that's how!
The UPRN in estate agency
Despite the housing market being crucial to the economy's health, housing data is difficult to access and is held by numerous parties. This often causes delays in transactions as checks need to be made to ensure data and documents relate to the correct property. The UPRN removes any doubt in property identification. The property market is screaming out for up-to-date, accessible data in a standardised format. Agents often face challenges linking multiple property datasets to compile home reports or create marketing materials. The UPRN provides a simple solution, pulling together information from various sources seamlessly.
There appears to be patchy awareness around the UPRN, even though it's been in existence for over 20 years. Whilst many agencies may be aware of the UPRN, they may not necessarily understand its benefits, and this hinders the adoption of the use of this unique reference number. Whether you realise it or not, UPRNs are already a significant part of agents' lives. Take Zoopla - each one of their listings has a UPRN, helping utility companies, mortgage lenders, and others, ensure they are dealing with the correct property when providing information for its sale or rental.
The UPRN isn’t solely for use in the property sector, it’s also used in the logistics and delivery industry, retailers, banking, finance, insurance and much more. It has the power to bring together the public and private sectors with one common unified number.
The Lettings Industry Council have a working group whose aim is to promote the adoption of the UPRN. Hopefully, this will make waves to encourage increased use. It isn’t the only time property market stakeholders have tried to get the ball rolling. In January 2021, over 50 organisations in the industry wrote an open letter to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, calling for the government to roll out UPRNs. They aimed to make a property's full history easily available, helping to create a more transparent, connected, and data-driven property industry.
Progress has been made. The UPRN now firmly takes its place on the EPC certificate, lenders like Nationwide use it to make decisions faster and for some councils, it helps speed up property completions.
“UPRN allows each address in the country to have a unique number and can have ‘attached’ to that number the sort of activities and characteristics which agents need to know about – for example, planning permission for when it was first built and subsequent extensions, building regulations, council tax payments, utility providers, EPCs, health and safety checks on rental properties, and more.”
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What are the benefits of the UPRN in estate agency?
- Data exchange is easier:
As you might expect, having inconsistent addresses can cause integration issues. If every system uses the same unique reference such as the UPRN, data exchange is easier and more accurate.
- It links multiple industries:
Property impacts numerous industries, including construction, finance, and real estate, generating vast amounts of data. A unique identifier, like the UPRN, allows all these diverse data sets to be linked, creating a complete, easy-to-access record for each property.
- It’s accurate:
UPRNs are highly accurate because they provide a unique and consistent identifier for every property, making them a reliable tool for verifying property data and ensuring that all records are correctly linked to the right location. There’s much less chance of data exchange errors occurring.
- Helps to speed up the buying and selling process:
By using UPRNs, you can automate a lot of the manual validation and processing that slows things down. This helps conveyancers move faster by reducing human error and speeding up property verification.
- Help reduce fraud:
Properties can be accurately identified, reducing the risk of fraudulent activities like selling or renting out non-existent or misrepresented properties. It can also reduce identity theft as it becomes harder for fraudsters to manipulate information or steal a property’s identity. As lenders, local authorities and regulators can more easily verify and share property data, it is, therefore, easier to detect any suspicious activity or discrepancies.
- Reduces Fall Throughs:
The UPRN can help reduce property sale fall-throughs by improving accuracy, transparency, and communication throughout the transaction process. It reduces the risk of errors caused by misidentification which can delay or derail the transaction. Due diligence is sped up and risks can be uncovered earlier in the process such as unregistered land or ownership discrepancies that could cause a sale to collapse. It also helps to improve property listing data quality, so the buyer knows as much as possible about the property before putting in an offer.
- Better data insights and analysis:
With consistent property references, UPRNs make it easier to gather and analyse property data, leading to better insights and decision-making.
- Elimination of unscrupulous landlords:
UPRNs allow authorities to track properties accurately, ensuring landlords are registered and comply with legal requirements.
- Greater protection for tenants:
With every property tied to a UPRN, tenant issues like safety concerns or rental disputes can be traced more easily, promoting better accountability.
- Better enforcement of housing standards:
Local authorities can monitor properties more efficiently using UPRNs, making it easier to enforce housing standards and identify non-compliant landlords.
- Faster and simpler property sales:
UPRNs streamline the property transaction process by connecting various data points, reducing the chances of misidentification and speeding up verification for buyers, sellers, and conveyancers.
- Faster and simpler lettings sales:
Letting agents often struggle with varying local authority interpretations of licensing requirements and the complexity of paperwork. The UPRN simplifies the licensing process by providing a unique identifier for each property, ensuring consistent identification across different authorities. This reduces confusion, streamlines paperwork, and makes it easier for agents to determine licensing needs, leading to quicker and more straightforward compliance.
What are the barriers to UPRN usage?
- ADOPTION: Some organisations use the UPRN, and others don’t. The industry needs a better understanding of UPRNs and their benefits to increase use.
- COST: The UPRN is currently free for public sector use, however, data is licensed outside of the public sector meaning that cost is the biggest barrier to adoption. However, Find My Address does allow you to perform up to 10 free searches a day to discover the UPRN.
How can TwentyEA help with UPRN adoption?
Our Match tool can reveal hidden leads within an agency's CRM. It provides real-time updates of any market activity. It will flag all properties in an agency’s database that are currently on the market and the status of these. The agency can find out if the property has had a price reduction, a fall-through or if it's been withdrawn. It also flags those that are most likely to come to market in the next two months with the help of our AI tool Forecast. Match uncovers leads for agents and uses the UPRN so that the results are more accurate.
TwentyEA's Match tool can clean up and improve your database. We have the most reliable and accurate database - and you can too. We also have the data cleanse tool Inscriptio, used by various industries. Inscriptio improves the accuracy of address data by matching addresses to unique UPRNs. The idea behind the tool is to avoid targeting the wrong properties in marketing campaigns and reduce wasted spend. As UK property market experts, TwentyEA provides property data for estate agents. We'd love to help your agency to grow.
Conclusion
The UPRN is invaluable to estate agents by providing a standardised and reliable way to track and identify individual properties throughout their lifecycle ensuring that data such as lease agreements, energy performance certifications, and maintenance records remain accurate. They have the potential to help reduce fall-throughs, accelerate conveyancing, enhance property listing data quality, and improve the quality of leads provided to agents. Especially considering the numerous processes, paperwork, and various stakeholders involved for a single property.
If we have something that can speed up the home moving process, should we all not be rallying around and adopting it? It could form the start of a property logbook and may be the only way to make conveyancing quicker and more accurate. This means happier vendors and faster commissions - what agent wouldn’t want that?