Top 3 Technologies Realtors Rely on to Sell Homes

While small to medium business (SMB) owners everywhere are embracing mobility, they’re also realizing that it means nothing if there are breakdowns in workflow and collaboration. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the real estate industry.

The ability for real estate professionals to work from anywhere has revolutionized the way they do business by allowing them to take meetings, correspond with clients, send emails and meet deadlines untethered. That includes the ability to juggle tasks while at a showing or hosting an open house. But as with any industry, this shift brought along its own unique challenges.

Today’s realtor requires  freedom to work where and how they choose with the benefits of a full hard-wired office experience – complete with push button processes that include remote printing and more, challenges which require products and solutions specific to these needs.

1. Giving Real Estate Workers the Square Footage They Need – In the Field

Real estate is a unique field, one that requires workers to be in perpetual motion. Properties might be static but the people buying and selling certainly aren’t – indeed, realtors are constantly on the go. That’s not all. With 44% of buyers reportedly finding the home they purchased on the internet¹, this makes the geographies that a realtor works in virtually unlimited, and requires them to have both connectivity and a strong online presence. Realtors may have a brick and mortar building where they hang their hat, but their real office is in the field; their work happens everywhere.

2. Realtors Engage with Prospective Buyers & Sellers on Mobile Devices

Ninety-one percent of realtors report using social media to some extent², so it’s no surprise that real estate professionals of all specialties rely heavily on their mobile devices.  Successfully closing a deal requires nothing less than 100% connectivity for agents on both sides of the table. An efficient mobile workflow ensures they’ll have access to the people and information they need at any time and from any place. The challenge is making it happen.

3. Realtors Utilize Technology to Manage Paperwork

While the way realtors approach their day has changed, for the most part, the real estate industry hasn’t. Take the paperwork involved, for example. From flyers, deeds and bills of sale to an affidavit of title and transfer tax declarations, the paper trail behind the sale of a property is long, weighty and complex. By and large the paper filing process is still manual, which makes it not only time consuming, but also prone to error. It also limits access, making it difficult to share client files. In many cases, regulations require that realtors file a hard copy record of the customer Property Disclosure statements so that they are accessible from various branch locations. Missing a page could derail a closing and may result in legal ramifications too.

The Solution:

Managing the document component of selling houses doesn’t have to be this hard. Realtors can now create an electronic filing complete with email notifications via a customized multi-destination scan app located directly on the Xerox® multifunction printer (MFP). Electronic docs can then be sent to a dedicated folder on the network or in the cloud that is specific to each client listing, with the option to enter the customer Property Disclosure ID as a filename and the email recipient.

With new mortgage regulations requiring even more documents than ever – an average loan file can be up to 2,000 pages –real estate professionals from firms of all sizes have been searching for a way to make the handling process more intuitive.

The Outcome:

All across the country realtors are reporting that this new digitized workflow has increased productivity while reducing errors, a huge coup since even the smallest errors can set back a closing – or halt a contract indefinitely.

By enabling realtors to provide timely notifications via email to everyone involved in the process, they were able to decrease the time required to close a property, resulting in satisfied realtors and happy clients.  This technology has also better enabled them to meet regulatory requirements, a top concern for any firm.

An optimized mobile workflow situation is a perfect example of what a seamless business transaction should look like. With the right technology in place to respond to the realtor’s needs and challenges at every step of the sale, everything from document storage to document sharing can be handled smoothly and efficiently, making this no longer a remote workflow, but just another day at the office—in the field.

Learn more about how you can give your remote workforce the tools they need to succeed by downloading our eBook Document Management for Road Warriors today.

<sup>1. 2015 National Association of REALTORS® Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers↩
2. 2013-2014 REALTOR® Technology Survey↩</sup>

Share this article on Twitter!
Tweet: How to optimize your mobile workflow when the world is your office: http://ctt.ec/mjHcq+ via @XeroxOffice
Tweet: Productivity up, errors down. How Xerox is changing the game for real estate agents: http://ctt.ec/AqxyW+ via @XeroxOffice

Subscribe to the Small Business Solutions Blog and receive updates when we publish a new article. [wysija_form id=”1″]