What Rightmove Is Telling Agents About Sales Packs and Logbooks (and What It Means for You)

On 23 September 2026 Rightmove ran a one-hour webinar for estate agents called "Property Information Revolution", fronted by Sally Holdway, founder of Home Owner's Passport and one of the longest-standing advocates of upfront information. Agents who attended, or who log in to the Rightmove Hub afterwards, get three handouts: a one-page guide to the government's reform roadmap, a "three things to do today" action plan for the branch, and a written Q&A from the session. The materials sit behind the Rightmove Plus login and we are not going to reproduce them. What we can do is set out what the portal is telling agents, where that advice comes from, and what it means for anyone selling, buying or letting a home in England and Wales over the next two years.

What Rightmove actually did

The session was promoted on 16 September and recorded live on the 23rd, 10am to 11am, with a live Q&A and a recording for agents who missed it. It carries CPD accreditation on the Hub. The agenda had three parts, and the order is the point.

1. Property red flags that delay sales. Leasehold issues, restrictive covenants, rights of way, flood risk and "other common problems", with advice on tackling them before a buyer's solicitor finds them.
2. What "transaction ready" looks like. What belongs in a quality sales pack and how to judge whether the information is good enough for a conveyancer to rely on.
3. Choosing the right provider. What to look for in a sales pack provider, why source data matters, and how to spot information that only appears complete.

Rightmove's head of education, Jason Charles, framed the purpose as helping agents spot issues earlier and prevent avoidable delays. Holdway's line was that upfront information is "here to stay" and, handled well, is a triple win: more instructions, shorter completions, fewer fall-throughs.

What Rightmove has not done matters just as much. As of 12 October 2026 it has not added mandatory listing fields for sales packs or logbooks, has not said it will display pack or logbook data on listings, and has not partnered with a logbook provider. Anyone telling you a "Rightmove requirement" exists is ahead of the facts.

Why the portal is moving before the guidance

This is Rightmove's second public move on the reform. On 22 June, three days after the government published its Home Buying and Selling Reform roadmap, chief executive Johan Svanstrom called the sales pack proposal "an encouraging step towards a faster and more efficient property market", while warning that "the implementation and phasing of these initiatives will be key". Rightmove's own numbers explain the interest: a typical sale takes about 170 days, more than one in five agreed sales fails, and failed deals cost sellers an estimated £400 million a year.

The portal has form here. It helped shape the National Trading Standards material information rules from 2022 onwards, and those rules became real for agents not when they were published but when Rightmove and Zoopla started flagging listings that lacked tenure, council tax band, flood risk or building safety data. The government's reform is built on a voluntary phase first. A voluntary phase only works if someone with leverage turns "encouraged" into "expected". In residential sales that someone is the portal, and a training webinar with a branch action plan is exactly how it did it last time.

The red flags, and the document that proves each one

The webinar's first section is the practical heart of it. Every one of the problems Rightmove listed is a problem of information arriving late, usually at week six, from the buyer's solicitor. Each has a document that would have surfaced it at instruction.

Red flag	Where it hides	Document that reveals it	Who can get it before listing
Leasehold complications	Short lease, escalating ground rent, major works, building safety status, slow or expensive management pack	The lease; freeholder or managing agent's management pack (LPE1); service charge accounts; building safety information	Seller, via the managing agent; order at instruction because turnaround is the usual delay
Restrictive covenants	Charges register of the title, often from the original developer or a former owner	HM Land Registry official copy of the title register	Seller or agent, same day, £7 per document
Rights of way and easements	Property register and title plan; sometimes unregistered and only visible on the ground	Title register, title plan, and the seller's answers on the TA6 property information form	Seller or agent; the TA6 is the seller's own evidence
Flood risk	Environment Agency flood maps and the environmental search; also a Part A material information item	Environmental search; EA long-term flood risk check; insurance history	Agent at instruction (the listing field already requires it)
Planning and building control gaps	Extensions, loft conversions, replacement windows without a completion certificate or FENSA record	Planning decision notices, building control completion certificates, FENSA or CERTASS certificates, indemnity policies	Seller, from their own file or the council's planning portal
Chain position	Not a document at all until someone writes it down	A dated chain statement from the agent, updated through the transaction	Agent

Read the right-hand columns together and the pattern is obvious. Almost everything that stalls a sale is available to the seller before the property is listed. Our conveyancing documents checklist and the leasehold documents guide cover each item in detail, and the free sales pack readiness checker tells you what a particular home can assemble today.

What "transaction ready" means in practice

Rightmove did not publish a definition. Holdway's own published material does, and it is the standard the webinar was built on. A pack is ready for a conveyancer when its contents map to the roadmap's Annex B list of anticipated sales pack contents: tenure, title documents, leasehold or estate terms, council tax band, EPC rating, building safety information, standard searches, the TA6 property information form, seller identity verification and chain status. The roadmap also names a property condition report, accessibility information and a floor plan, which most commercial packs do not yet include.

The sharper test is not the list but the quality of each item. Holdway's framing, which she calls conveyancing-grade data, has four parts: the data comes from the organisation that holds it (title from HM Land Registry, council tax band from the billing authority, service charge from the building's manager); its origin and date are recorded; it is recent enough to act on; and it arrives in the forms the transaction already uses, so nobody re-keys it. A figure typed into a spreadsheet by a seller is a claim. The same figure with a source and a timestamp is a fact a solicitor can rely on without re-checking.

That distinction is what the third part of the webinar, "information that only appears complete", was about. A pack that has a box for every Annex B item but fills half of them from the seller's memory saves nobody any time, because the buyer's solicitor will order the official copies anyway.

Choosing a provider: the questions the webinar put to agents

We have no commercial relationship with any provider and are not recommending one. The questions below are the ones an agent, or a seller being asked to pay for a pack, should be able to answer from the provider's own documentation.

• Where does each data item come from? HM Land Registry, the local authority, the EPC register and the managing agent are sources. A scrape of a portal listing is not.
• Is provenance recorded? Can the conveyancer see the source and date for every item, not just the pack as a whole?
• Are the searches real searches? Ordered at instruction from the local authority or a regulated search provider, with a date, so the buyer's solicitor does not reorder them.
• Which forms does it output? The Law Society's TA6, TA7 and TA10 are what conveyancers work from.
• Is the provider a member of the Residential Logbook Association, and does it register the logbook on the National Logbook Register? That is the mechanism by which a logbook survives the sale and is found by the next conveyancer.
• Who pays, when, and what happens if the sale aborts? Models now on the market charge the seller at instruction, bundle the cost into the agent's fee, or offer the agent a free report with the conveyancer instructed at listing. See who pays for a sales pack.
• What happens to the data after completion? A pack that dies at exchange is a search bundle. A logbook that passes to the buyer is the thing the reform is actually trying to build.

Our guide to choosing a property logbook provider goes through the same questions from the homeowner's side.

The branch action plan, from Holdway's public playbook

The "three things to do today" handout is behind the login, so we will not guess at its wording. Holdway's published advice to agents is consistent and public, and it is a fair guide to what a branch is being asked to change:

1. Order searches at instruction, not at offer, and request the leasehold management pack at the same time, because the freeholder's turnaround is the single most common cause of a stalled leasehold sale.
2. Pull and read the title before the buyer's solicitor does. Covenants, rights of way and charges are on the register from day one; the only question is who finds them first.
3. Start the legal work during marketing. Instruct the seller's conveyancer at listing so contracts can be drafted from a verified pack rather than assembled after an offer.

None of that requires a logbook. All of it produces one as a by-product, which is why the portal is comfortable training agents on logbooks before government has defined them.

Where government has got to, as of 12 October 2026

The roadmap promised three things for 2026: non-statutory guidance on property listings, an industry-agreed voluntary list of sales pack information, and a Code of Practice for property agents. None has been published. Since the webinar, two things have changed the picture. On 29 September the Housing Secretary announced that estate, letting and managing agents will need a licence under a new independent regulator, which goes beyond the voluntary code the roadmap described; our explainer on agent licensing and the new regulator covers what is and is not decided. And on 8 September MHCLG published research showing reservation agreements do not work without upfront information in place first, which confirms the sequence Rightmove is training agents for: packs now, binding contracts later.

The commercial market has not waited either. Landmark and Eden launched "reform-ready" pack products in July and September, and the first conveyancing case-management system integrated logbook lookup and registration with the RLBA National Logbook Register in July. We compare them in who is building the sales pack before government defines it, and track every milestone on the reform timeline.

What this means for you

Sellers. The agent you instruct this winter may well have sat through this session. Expect to be asked for documents at valuation, not at offer, and expect to be offered a pack. Before you pay for one, ask the provider questions above. Most of the contents are yours already; our sales pack guide lists them.

Buyers. Where a listing comes with a pack or logbook, read it before you offer and ask for the source of anything that matters to you. Where it does not, ask the agent why not. The reform's own figures say roughly a third of sales fall through, and most of those failures are information that surfaced late.

Agents. The two questions Rightmove put to you are the right ones: which provider, and is the data good enough for a solicitor. Keep the answers on file. When the Code of Practice and the licensing regime arrive, evidence of how you handled upfront information will be part of what a regulator looks at.

Frequently asked questions

Has Rightmove made sales packs or property logbooks compulsory?

No. Rightmove backed the government's plan in June 2026 and trained agents on sales packs and logbooks on 23 September 2026. It has not changed what a listing must contain, and neither packs nor logbooks are required by law as of 12 October 2026.

Can I get the Rightmove webinar handouts?

They are on the Rightmove Hub behind the Rightmove Plus login, which is for agents and developers who subscribe to the portal. The one-page roadmap guide, the "three things to do today" handout and the session Q&A are listed on the webinar page. A recording is available to logged-in users.

What did the webinar say agents should do first?

Rightmove's agenda covered red flags, transaction readiness and provider choice. Holdway's published advice is to order searches and the leasehold pack at instruction, read the title before the buyer's solicitor does, and start the legal work during marketing.

Does a sales pack replace a buyer's survey?

No. A pack deals with title, searches, leasehold terms and the seller's disclosures. The roadmap anticipates a property condition report in a future mandatory pack, but that is not yet defined and most commercial packs do not include one. Buyers should still commission their own survey.

Why does the source of the data matter so much?

Because a conveyancer can only rely on information whose origin and date are known. Title from HM Land Registry is evidence; the same facts typed in by a seller are a claim that will be checked again, which is the delay the reform is trying to remove.

Where has government got to on the 2026 deliverables?

As of 12 October 2026 none of the three 2026 items (listings guidance, voluntary sales pack list, agents' Code of Practice) has been published. On 29 September government went further than the roadmap by announcing mandatory licensing of agents under a new regulator.