This is an empirical study of interprofessional competition in the residential land transfer process in the United States and the United Kingdom. The study focuses on competition between professionals to secure monopolies within each country and barriers to globalization of the real property services market. The study has the following theoretically derived research objectives: (1) to identify and describe the claims that are being made by competing professions in the two countries, the current allocation of tasks between competing professions, and the extent to which similar tasks are performed by different professional groups; (2) to assess the results of different divisions of labor in the two countries in relation to outcomes and to the claims that professionals make concerning the efficacy of their services; (3) to explain why lawyers currently have a monopoly over conveyancing services in the UK but not in the US; and (4) to explain apparent local barriers to transnational competition for the real property legal services market. The primary means of data collection will be open-ended tape recorded interviews with lawyers, real estate agents, title insurance companies, licensed conveyancers, lending institutions and house purchasers and sellers. Data will be collected in two areas of each country, one urban and the other rural. The house purchase transaction, perhaps more than any other, brings the general population into contact with the formal legal system. Nevertheless, no comprehensive study has been made of the land transfer process from a sociolegal perspective. This research will further understanding of competitive market forces across traditional professional boundaries and across transnational boundaries. As such it will illuminate a number of important questions regarding the roles played by lawyers and other professionals, the factors that condition those roles, the factors that cause those roles to remain embedded or to change over time, the ways in which regulation and market structure can affect the organization and cost of professional services, and the alternative ways in which markets for housing can be organized.
