The real estate industry is changing.
Even though Real Estate is often perceived as a rather slow asset class compared to others, it’s actually changing quite quickly: Many aspects of the typical workflow are digitized, and new use cases for real estate are being created by a growing number of “proptech” startups, and customers across the board often expect almost-instantaneous answers and results.
Luckily, improvements in real estate technology are facilitating the adjustments necessary – with electronic signatures playing a vital role.
eSignatures are often the missing piece in digitizing the workflow of a typical real estate business. Proper integration of the right eSignign solution into the existing tools can dramatically improve the overall efficiency, the user experience, and increase the level of security to a standard required by many partners and users alike nowadays.
Let’s look at the top 5 ways eSignatures benefit the Real Estate industry.
Here Is How eSignatures Benefit Real Estate Businesses
Most people only see one aspect of the real estate industry. For a majority today, that’s signing a rental agreement. For many others, it’s signing the required documents to purchase a house – with all the required documents that go with it, from insurance to mortgage. On the other side, there are property owners, whether that’s residential or commercial – the papers they sign are usually about their contract with real estate agencies and the services they require.
What all of these groups – and many more – have in common is that they rely on legal documents that have to be signed. More often than not, significant sums of money are involved, highlighting the legal aspect and the signature part of the process.
eSignatures have come a long way since their first mention back in the 1970s, and today are ideally positioned to facilitate the digital transformation of the real estate industry.
Here are the 5 most important ways this is happening.
1. eSignatures Improve Turnaround Time
Time is money.
That’s true in any business, but arguably the real estate industry is feeling this more than others. If a regular work contract is signed a week sooner or later won’t matter as long as the starting date is in the future. But every minute a property is not rented out because of a missing signature somewhere, it’s money lost.
The typical turnaround time for rental contracts is anywhere between three and fourteen days – depending on the efficiency of the back office at the rental agency getting the documents ready to mail out, the postal service used, the frequency of the signatories checking their mailbox, how quickly they can sign and return the documents… and during this time, the property is technically still on the market, since no contract has been signed.
This leads to lots of unnecessary inquiries by other tenants, all of whom have to be put on hold until there is a signed contract. And should the tenant fail to return the signed contract, it’s on the agency to go back to other applicants and hope for better luck with the next one.
It’s a highly inefficient process, costing the industry millions each year.
Luckily, eSignatures put an end to this once and for all. With a digital contract that can be signed electronically, turnaround time can be as little as 30 minutes. The contract is sent out by the agency via email, arriving in the tenant’s inbox immediately. 20 minutes to read through the contract, 2 minutes to sign it electronically – and done. The agency is notified immediately the moment the signature process is completed, without any additional action required.
And rental contracts are only one example. You do the math: Take all the contracts your business needs signatures for every month, and reduce the turnaround time by a conservative 80%. How many hours would you save?
2. eSignatures Prevent Media Break
A lot of our daily activities have moved online. Watching movies, reading books, checking the news… we’re used to the convenience of having all the data we need in our pockets.
Documents, like rental contracts, have been created digitally for decades now. Most of us have never seen a typed-up contract, let alone a handwritten one.
Towards the end of the process, digitization has overtaken as well: paying a bond, paying the first months’ rent, it’s all digital and has been for years.
However, in the middle, there is usually what’s called media break: the interruption of the digital flow by another type of media. In this case, that’s a handwritten signature.
We’ve all seen it: A email with an attached PDF document, and the dreadful words “Please sign and return this to us”. And that’s where it breaks: It’s digital before and after, but there is a step that requires printing, manual signing, and returning (scanning, anyone?) – only to then know exactly that this signed paper will be converted to a digital version at the recipient’s office again.
No more media break: With eSignatures, the last manual piece in the process is removed. (Well – there’s always the keys to a property, but that’s actually becoming digitized as well…). Documents are created digitally, sent digitally, signed digitally, returned digitally, and stored digitally. No need to waste time, paper, and money on postage.
3. eSignatures Help Prevent Fraud (If Done Right…)
Fraud has been an issue for as long as humanity has been around. It used to be called impersonating someone, nowadays it’s known as identity theft: the act of pretending to be someone else, especially when signing a legal document.
Let’s face it: Unless notarized or actually witnessed in person, there is no way to know if the manual signature on a piece of paper actually belongs to the name below the line. There simply is no way to verify its authenticity, especially given that most times, there is not even a signature on file to compare it to.
Unfortunately, the situation is not much better with many eSigning solutions: they may record the IP address and some additional browser information about the person signing on the other end, but that says little to nothing about the actual identity of that person.
That’s where secure, digital identification comes in: top-of-the-line solutions like the Professional Electronic Signature (or PES, for short) include automated, intelligent identification services that prove the identity of the signatory beyond a shadow of a doubt. This happens through both visual identification of the person’s face, as well as an AI-driven scan of a legal piece of identification, such as their passport.
Signing a contract with the wrong person is dangerous, and can lead to all kinds of problems. By moving to secure eSignatures, that’s one less thing to worry about in the entire process.
4. (The Right) eSignatures Preserve Data Privacy
In today’s times, privacy is more and more in the forefront of people’s minds. Personal information holds a lot of power, and in the wrong hands, can be used for all kinds of mischief.
Before eSignatures, paperwork often including personal information was floating around the office freely, changing hands many times until it was signed and filed away. eSignatures minimized the number of people with access to that data, but on the other hand opened up Pandora’s box in return: cybercrime. With more and more data stored online, including confidential documents that require signatures, the risk of exposure to cybercrime has increased dramatically.
That’s where secure eSignatures come in. The best eSigning tools nowadays are built with a privacy-first approach, doing everything possible to minimize the risk of exposure.
And even though many providers mention privacy somewhere in their advertising material, when it’s all said and done, there is only one way to actually preserve it: with proper, end-to-end encryption across the board. Only this method of encryption ensures the complete privacy of the contents of any documents since they are encrypted on the users’ local device. No matter how they’re sent, no matter the attacker – nobody except the sender and recipient can access that content. Not even the eSigning provider.
Next time you sign something electronically, ask yourself: is this document really secure? Is it properly encrypted, meaning end-to-end? Is there a chance anyone could get access to the contents, even at the eSigning providers’ end?
Some risks are simply not worth taking. Using insufficiently protected or even unencrypted eSigning solutions falls squarely into that category.
5. eSignatures Elevate the User Experience
This one is often considered a “soft factor” by businesses – but it’s not. Unless your company is named Google, you likely have competition, trying to eat your lunch. They want your customers because market share is king. And they’ll do everything they can to get them.
From a customer perspective, that means there’s a choice – which is nice. And for many customers nowadays, a seamless, all-digital experience is what they’re after.
You may have limited options in the properties you offer. Or in the terms you’re willing to grant. But you do have the option of making the existing offers and terms as easily as possible to agree to for the end customer.
A fully digital, seamlessly integrated signing process will beat old-school paper contracts and signatures every time – no matter the type of document. Don’t be the business taking weeks to send paper documents back and forth. Make it possible to sign any contract within minutes from any device using the right eSigning solution, and see how it’ll elevate your user experience and the feedback that follows from it.
Bonus: eSignatures Support Remote Work
COVID-19 kicked it off, but it’s certainly here to stay: remote work. Whether that’s work-from-home or simply being more flexible with the choice of office, the times of static workplaces are likely gone for good.
With eSignatures, the location does not matter: whether the signatory sits in the office next door, in their bedroom at home, or in a coffee shop in Bali somewhere, the process is the same. As long as there is a device with internet access, any document can be legally, and securely signed on the spot.
And mind you, that’s not limited to your customers: your employees are no different. Whether that’s onboarding a new team member, or having an agent send out a contract for countersignature, the people you work with likely appreciate geographical flexibility just as much as your customers do.
The right eSigning solution can help your business embrace remote work by removing one more hurdle that used to require physical presence.
Final Thoughts
The real estate industry is not immune to many of the changes rolling over society nowadays: remote work, increased efficiency, full digitization, increased awareness of (online) privacy – times are changing, and so are the expectations of team members and customers alike.
Choosing the right eSigning solution can be the final step in digitizing the entire workflow and preventing media break. It’s fast, secure, and highly convenient for all parties involved.
Not all eSigning providers are created equal, though. Awareness of cybercrime and online privacy is increasing with every new incident of a cyber-attack or identity theft reported in the media.
Don’t become a statistic: make sure your eSigning provider provides the level of protection you need. This goes for both the encryption of the documents (remember – they need to be end-to-end encrypted to be safe) as well as for the signing process, which has to guarantee 100% reliable identification of the signatory.
If either one of those factors is not guaranteed, the gain in efficiency is likely not going to be worth the headache you’ll get the first time confidential data leaks, or you become a victim of identity fraud.
Choose wisely. Choose Certifaction.