10051734AIMEE - A new digital property product supporting legal and mediation services with mutual commitment paymentsClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UK**PROBLEM**: High residential property transaction failure rates result in sunk costs, significant wasted legal time and poor user experiences. **OVERVIEW**: Despite the importance of the housing market to both the economy and society, the process of buying and selling a home is confusing, disjointed, and incredibly stressful. Over 1 in 4 house sales fall through after an offer has been accepted. The market has become characterised by bad practices, such as gazumping and gazundering or making offers on multiple properties, stacking the odds against first-time buyers (FTBs) and inexperienced sellers. This crucial system is broken with recent government reports concluding that there is no current solution. Buying a home is the most significant financial commitment most people make in their lifetimes. Notwithstanding adverts from building societies, house purchases are fraught with risk for both buyers and sellers. This is due to a curious anomaly in that, unlike most 'domestic' or commercial transactions, there is no legal commitment on parties to complete after an offer has been accepted. For various reasons over 400,000 transactions fail annually in England and Wales in the 12-14 weeks between offer acceptance and completion with £1.08billion sunk costs lost. On average buyers and sellers each personally stand to lose £2,727\. **INNOVATION**: AIMEE (AI Mediation Enhancing Engine and financial compensation solution) is a self-learning, automated mediation and financial compensation solution that will reduce transaction failures improving effectiveness. The solution is initially aimed at first-time home buyers in England and Wales. AIMEE solves distrust and improves commitment. It does this by: 1. Requiring buyers and sellers to make commitment deposits which are refundable on successful completion 2. Having a simple effective system to resolve disputes This combination will reduce the number of transaction failures and consequent personal financial loss. In the event of a transaction failing a mediator will arbitrate to allocate the combined deposits between the parties. At present, mediation isn't a viable option due to high fees compared to the amounts disputed. By creating an AI mediation service it provides an effective, efficient and economical digital service creating a new market and increasing awareness of professional mediation services. AIMEE will be delivered by Housecure, a PropTech start-up with the requisite skills/experience needed to ensure the project is successful, including AI development and mediation/project/financial/risk management. We are initially targeting the property sector and, in particular, first-time buyers. However, AIMEE is also applicable to other markets where mediation is needed.