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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.

 

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!

The Benefits of Going Green and Taking Your Market Paperless

The main purpose of this post is to give you access to our whitepaper on The Benefits of Going Green and Taking Your Market Paperless.  The paper is primarily targeted at real estate association and MLS executives, but there are sections on the benefits of going green that any real estate professional who is interested in going green and going paperless will likely find interesting.
 
As a leader in your organization and your community, you are in a unique position to move the real estate industry forward, in regards to the environment, the use of technology, and making the industry more efficient. Agents and brokerage staff standing at fax machines watching 25 page faxes feed through a fax machine is still the industry norm and is neither time nor resource efficient.
 
Implementing an online document management system for your membership is a significant way for you to help your real estate market ‘go green’ and ‘go paperless’.  Consumers expect virtually all industries to make changes that will benefit the environment and reduce their use of both renewable and non‐renewable resources. Going paperless helps the environment in many ways:
 

• Saves paper, which saves trees.
• Reduces use of toner cartridges, which decreases landfill waste.
• Reduces use of gasoline, which has many benefits.

Just as important, going paperless can save brokerages and individual producers money and improve their profit in many ways, as will be described later in this paper. Consumers also expect efficient industries that deliver a high level of service around the clock. Today’s consumers expect access to information 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Consumers have been able to get the status of their overnight package, or their bank balance, online for years.

The ability to do these things, and so many others, online, has been the norm for nearly a decade now ‐ yet we as an industry are just getting started taking the core of real estate transaction documentation (e.g. ‐ contracts, disclosures, inspection reports, title and mortgage documents, etc) online.

Agents and brokerages that use document management systems, which include customer service portals, can provide a new service their clients have come to expect in many other facets of their lives – access to information online. We’ve been delivering listing information online for years. However, in most cases, once a sales or lease agreement is written, everything moves right back offline.

Learn more about using DocBox and going paperless by visiting our website or by watching one of our free webinars.

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 with your contact information.