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FHA Approves Use of Electronic Signature for Third Party Document Signing
The Federal Housing Authority (FHA) recently issued an official letter signaling its acceptance of the e-signing of third party documents such as purchase contracts, addenda and other transactional documents. Accordingly, Authentisign is now approved for use in FHA insured transactions.
The letter states “…that FHA will accept electronic signatures on third party documents included in the case binder for mortgage insurance endorsement…Third party documents are those that are originated and signed outside of the mortgagee’s control, such as a sales contract.” The FHA letter can be found here: http://nhl.gov/offices/adm/hudclips/letters/mortgagee/files/10-14ml.pdf
Are you considering using an electronic signature solution? If so, here are a few important facts about Authentisign to consider:
- Authentisign is ESIGN compliant.
- Authentisign is our own application. We built it and we own it.
- Authentisign is integrated with the entire suite of online software your members, subscribers and associates use – InstanetForms, Forms Online Gold, DocBox and TransactionDesk Pro and TransactionDesk Lite.
- Authentisign is approximately half the cost of DocuSign.
- Authentisign is the first and only e-signature solution to be chosen as a member benefit by any REALTOR® organization. The Montana Association of REALTORS® has chosen Authentisign as their signing solution and will provide it along with TransactionDesk as a member benefit in the very near future.
If you would like to get more information on Authentisign, visit the Authentisign website at www.authentisign.com .
Go Green, Go Paperless!
Find out how much you can save by going paperless using our paperless savings calculator. You can also call us at (800) 668-8768 or email us for more information about TransactionDesk, InstanetForms, DocBox2Go, DocBox, InstanetFax and Authentisign.
Florida REALTORS® Go Paperless in a Big Way!
We have just complied the complete 2009 usage numbers for our TransactionDesk users in Florida and they are very impressive. Florida REALTORS® have significantly increased their already heavy use of our system. Compared to 2008, in 2009 our Florida users:
- Logged in a million more times.
- Created over a million more electronic forms and contracts
- Faxed over a million more pages through TransactionDesk and InstanetFax
- Loaded a million more pages of documents into TransactionDesk and DocBox
Here are those raw numbers:
- 2.8 million logins
- 2.8 million forms created
- Nearly 1.5 million pages faxed
- 1.6 million document pages added to the system (forms and documents are counted separately and do not overlap)
Also, over 400,000 transactions were created in 2009 by our Florida users. That represents a 113% increase over 2008.
Here is the 2009 TransactionDesk usage report for Florida.
Go Green, Go Paperless!
Find out how much you can save by going paperless using our paperless savings calculator. You can also call us at (800) 668-8768 or email us for more information about TransactionDesk, InstanetForms, DocBox2Go, DocBox, InstanetFax and Authentisign.
2010 Green Resolutions for the Real Estate Industry
Here is an interesting link to a blog post by the WAV group. It describes what we can do as an industry to help the EPA, and hence our nation, meet its green goals – http://waves.wavgroup.com/2010-green-resolutions-for-the-real-estate-industry-how-can-we-help-the-epa-succeed.
A few highlights from the post about how we, as an industry, can help:
“Protecting America’s Waters – there is one simple, but unexpected way we can help clean up America’s waters. STOP using paper. By using electronic forms, faxing, and document management, we can help eliminate millions of gallons of wastewater generated by paper production. The production of just one piece of paper produces 13 ounces of wastewater. To produce the paper needed to process real estate transactions created more than 1.8 billion gallons of wastewater. We can eliminate this impact to the environment while saving money in our business by eliminating the cost of paper, printing, faxes, storage and retrieval costs. If you’re interested in just how much money you can save by eliminating paper go the Instanet website and check out their Paperless Savings Calculator.
“There are simple, every day steps each of us can take to save money and go green. We need to think about how to bake it into our every day operations. There are simple things you can do every day to green your business. If you want to learn more about a brokerage can go green, you can download our free paper Make More Green by Going Green. ”
Go Green, Go Paperless!
Find out how much you can save by going paperless using our paperless savings calculator. You can also call us at (800) 668-8768 or email us for more information about DocBox2Go and DocBox.
The Mobile Real Estate Office Depends on Being Paperless
You can’t go mobile until you go paperless – it’s that simple. While busy real estate professionals have worked to un-tether themselves from their brick and mortar offices by accessing their email and their MLS data from their mobile devices, they’ve discovered a serious limitation. Those that have not taken their listing, sale and lease files digital cannot be truly mobile. It’s simply impossible to access a paper file from a Smartphone!
However, new online services, such as DocBox2Go, are coming to market that allow real estate agents and brokers to access their files from their Smartphones and PDAs – provided they have digitized all their listing, sales and lease files.
Being able to access listing, sale and lease files, as well as other business documents creates a truly mobile real estate office. Agents and brokers can now access their files from virtually anywhere in the world and don’t even need a computer to do it.
Here is how it works. We’ll use DocBox and DocBox2Go, for our example. DocBox is an online document management solution for real estate. It allows agents and brokers to take their real estate offices paperless and store all their real estate files online. They can access those files from virtually any internet connected computer. They can also provide secure, selective access to their assistants, partners, managers, clients, service providers (e.g. – title, mortgage officers), etc. Their broker can also access the transaction files.
Once they’ve moved from paper to online files (click here for a few tips on how to do that), using DocBox, they can then use the mobile version, DocBox2Go, to access those files from virtually any phone with a mobile browser. So, for example, an agent is out of the office and a client calls and tells the agent he needs a copy of the sale contract and the property survey, the agent can securely accesses that sale file at www.docbox2go.com from her phone. Once the agent is in the online file, she can select the documents in question and email or fax the documents to the client from the phone. It’s that simple.
Go Green, Go Paperless!
Find out how much you can save by going paperless using our paperless savings calculator. You can also call us at (800) 668-8768 or email us for more information about DocBox2Go and DocBox.
Digital Signatures Reach Tipping Point in Real Estate
We are currently witnessing the ‘mainstreaming’ of digital signatures in real estate and we believe that 2010 will be the tipping point for this technology in our industry. We are seeing signs of interest and usage growth all over the country. As a company, we are continuing to see a rapidly growing interest in Authentisign, our own digital signing solution.
Though we’ve known that digital signatures have been used in a small percentage of real estate transactions, we’ve also known that usage would continue to grow (it has) and that at some point usage would start escalating much faster than before (it has). This rapid increase in the adoption of Authentisign in 2009 is just one reason we think 2010 will be the year that digital signatures really start to be a mainstream tool in real estate. A variety of signs tell us we’re on our way:
- Inquiries for individual Authentisign® accounts are soaring.
- Someone asks us about our digital signature solution in almost every demo and webinar we hold on our other services – DocBox, InstanetForms and TransactionDesk.
- We saw several new digital signature vendors at the 2009 NAR show (we’ll see how many are still around next year…).
- NAR bought a stake in a generic, digital signature vendor, DocuSign.
- We are getting more inquiries from REALTOR® organizations, MLSs and brokerages about buying an enterprise licenses for all their members/agents.
- As we expected, the number of REALTORS® visiting our Go Green Go Paperless booth at NAR and asking about our digital signature solution was incredible.
- Most importantly, again, actual sales of Authentisign subscriptions are rising exponentially.
We think this is happening for a variety of reasons:
- Real estate agents and brokers are doing more and more business when they are not sitting with a client and are conducting more and more business with clients when they are not in an office at a location where no printer is available (think coffee…).
- As real estate professionals have increased their use of Internet faxing services, such as those found in InstanetFax and DocBox, in an effort to go paperless, more are wanting to take the next logical step and go totally paperless. While Internet faxing services and fax to PDF services certainly help streamline the work required to gather signatures during a transaction, digital signature services can help even more.
- Technology use is seeing a natural progression.
- Fear and uncertainty over the legality and use of digital signatures is decreasing, largely due to the use in other areas of our lives (outside of the real estate industry).
- Agents see others using Authentisign and other digital signature tools, creating a ‘snowball effect’.
And, there are other reasons. Good digital signature services such as Authentisign are easy to use, efficient and inexpensive. They save everyone time and save REALTORS® money. They reduce the consumption of paper and toner since documents don’t need to be printed or faxed.
They also save gas as parties do not have to drive to meet in person. They also reduce the need for using mail or courier services for the delivery of ‘wet ink’ signatures. This saves more time, paper, toner and gas.
For all these reasons we expect to see 2010 as the tipping point for digital signatures in the real estate industry. The dramatic uptake of Authentisign, a digital signature tool we have offered for nearly five years, is a clear sign.
Find out how much you can save by going paperless using our paperless savings calculator and you can watch a training webinar on Authentisign. You can also call us at (800) 668-8768 or email us for more information about Authentisign.
Go Green, Go Paperless!