Are wet-ink signatures still necessary: Why commercial property is moving towards digital execution 

For most of the industry’s history, a commercial property transaction was shaped as much by geography as by law. Deals moved at the speed of the post, the availability of witnesses, and the diary of a surveyor who needed to visit in person before a lender would commit. Developers, fund managers, institutional investors and bridging lenders all built their processes around the same assumption, that the parties to a transaction, would eventually need to be in the same room. That constraint is disappearing, and its disappearance matters far more than most people currently give it credit for.

Digital execution is not simply making transactions faster. It is changing how clients choose their advisers, how lenders assess and price risk, and, ultimately, removing geography as one of the biggest constraints on commercial real estate. Once that constraint goes, so does the old logic of instructing whoever happens to be nearby.

The tipping point

This shift has not come from a single piece of legislation or a single announcement. It is the result of several separate developments in Land Registry guidance, market practice and lending technology, each unremarkable on its own, which together have changed what a transaction requires to be legal.

HM Land Registry now accepts two methods of electronic signing for deeds under its Practice Guide 82. Mercury signing is a hybrid, the signatory still prints and signs the signature page by hand, but the document and the process around it move electronically rather than by post. A conveyancer-certified electronic signature goes further still, allowing the whole document to be executed through an approved platform without any printed page at all. Both routes remain subject to strict legal formalities, including oversight by the acting solicitor and, where required, physical witnessing. The point, however, is that these requirements no longer demand everyone gather in the same room to complete the transaction.

Identity verification and anti-money laundering checks have moved in the same direction. Source-of-funds enquiries, company searches and due diligence that once required a client to attend an office with original documents in hand now run through digital verification platforms, often with a clearer audit trail than the paper equivalent ever produced. Valuation has followed too. Lenders have expanded their use of desktop valuations and automated valuation models throughout 2026, particularly for standard assets where a full physical inspection adds time without adding meaningful certainty, recognising that a surveyor’s diary should no longer be the limiting factor on how quickly a deal can close.

None of these developments is remarkable in isolation. Electronic signatures, digital ID verification and desktop valuations have each attracted attention in their own right. Viewed together, they reveal something much more significant. Every stage of a transaction that once depended on somebody physically being somewhere, a fund manager reviewing documents on site, an institutional investor’s representative attending in person, a bridging lender’s surveyor walking a building, is gradually becoming location-independent.

Expertise replaces proximity

This is the point most commentary on legal technology misses. Once signing, verification and valuation no longer depend on physical presence, the traditional logic of instructing a law firm because it happens to be local starts to look outdated, and the same logic applies well beyond the transaction itself. A developer in Newcastle running a complex scheme gains nothing by restricting its adviser search to firms within a short drive, when the specialist expertise the project actually needs might sit with a team elsewhere in the country, or overseas advising on a cross-border element. A PE-backed operator managing assets from overseas, or an institutional investor acquiring UK property as part of a wider portfolio strategy, can now instruct the specialist team best suited to the transaction, regardless of where either party happens to be based.

This matters most on the transactions where expertise genuinely varies between firms. Complex development work, intricate lease structures, contentious construction disputes and cross-border ownership all reward depth of experience far more than convenience of location. Removing the logistical barriers to remote instruction means clients, whoever they are and wherever their capital sits, can build the strongest possible team for the specific job in front of them, rather than settling for whoever happens to be nearby.

What this changes across the market

The consequences extend well beyond convenience. Borrowers and developers benefit from faster, more resilient transactions because fewer stages depend on someone’s physical availability, and from lower costs too, since printing, courier fees and travel time no longer need to sit quietly on every file. Lenders, from high street institutions to specialist bridging providers, can assess and price risk more quickly using digital verification and increasingly sophisticated valuation models.

For law firms, however, the change is even more fundamental. Geography ceases to be a competitive advantage, and what replaces it is depth of expertise, responsiveness and a track record on the specific type of transaction in question. Firms that built their client base on convenient location now need a different answer to the question of why a client should choose them, and the same pressure is reshaping how developers and fund managers select every adviser in a transaction, not just their lawyers.

The direction of travel

None of this means the formalities can be treated lightly. Electronic execution still requires careful compliance with the Land Registry’s requirements, and getting the process wrong causes exactly the kind of delay it is meant to remove. However, the direction of travel is unmistakable. Twenty years ago, clients across the real estate market chose advisers largely because everyone could get in the same room. Increasingly, they will choose them because they are simply the best people for the transaction. Digital execution has not just modernised the completion process. It has quietly redrawn the geography of commercial property advice. Newmanor is well placed to take advantage of this change as the firm was built with technology front and centre to meet our clients’ transactional needs.