What Have Re-tech Tools Done for You Lately?

If time is sales, and there are great tools out there that can help you sell more homes this year, you should be using them.

 

Take time to think critically about the reviews, “top-agent-touts,” and the too-good-to-be-true promises that are out there. We can support with a little guidance from the first-hand recounts and recommendations of the high volume realtors we work with on the daily.

One such realtor is Bonnie Spindler, who specializes in pre-1926 architecture and sells these multi-million dollar homes predominantly in San Francisco’s city proper. Bonnie, is a Victorian specialist and has been investing, selling, and restoring real estate for many years with some major titles to tout, such as the All-Time Top Residential Sales Agent at Zephyr Real Estate, a leading firm in San Francisco.

“I live on my phone, I text all the time; I rarely sit at my desk. When it comes to new tech, I try a lot of it, and if it doesn’t keep me coming back, improve my professional ability, or bring me new clients, I don’t keep using it. However, I do try it, even though at first it took much convincing from Ceily.”

Bonnie is referring to Ceily Landman. Ceily is a former software engineer turned Zephyr Top Producer. She literally knows RE-tech inside and out.

Bonnie and Ceily have their quiver full of technology that helps them to be successful. Choosing what makes the cut is simple: “It has to make the process easier. We keep tech around that truly streamlines and automates the tasks we have to do. If a program is unintuitive, I won’t use it.” Ceily

So much of the realtor’s workday is non-negotiable. From cataloging and sharing huge files of property information and compliance documentation, to simply keeping up relationships with current, past, and future clients, realtors don’t debate what they need to do, they improve how they do it.

Since sales take time, and sales volume is everything, and time is everything; Bonnie and Ceily recommend two tools that reduce time and improve ability as top agents in a few ways.

 

Disclosures.io stands out. “It’s much easier to work with than Google Drive and Dropbox. You can upload full documents without having to split them apart first, and I like that you get notifications when your clients have been looking at the disclosures”, Ceily Landman.

Disclosures.io helps agents with three significant features: Create & share listing information, Monitor viewer activity, and Manage offers, in one place.

Sharing property information and pre-sale inspections upfront isn’t the norm in for every agent, though this is mostly the case in lower-priced deals and less active agents. More than 80,000 California agents with a healthy 2019 sales volume, require their sellers to spend the initial $800 to $5000 for pre-listing inspections. This minimal upfront expense will save a deal from extremely costly credit-backs, unwanted renegotiations, lawsuits, or buyer or seller fallouts.

Time is everything. Spending time with unnecessary renegotiations takes away from the time you should be spending selling the next home. “You want to remove as many contingencies as possible” Bonnie.

“There are many reasons we do disclosures upfront. It helps the seller, and it helps the buyers. The old practice is to hire contractors and inspectors after accepting the offer. This leaves too much opportunity for buyers to back out. In a multiple bidding market, you do not want this to happen. The more information buyers have upfront will always have fewer contingencies down the line.” Bonnie

Reviewing disclosures yourself, then with your client, takes an enormous amount of effort. However, it’s an essential step in the process. Disclosures.io saves you time during the packet creation and the review phase. The diligence tracking and real-time notifications are also an agent favorite, of all the features.

 

Folio by Amitree is an AI-powered assistant for buyer and seller workflow. It helps agents maintain a smooth and consistent client experience while reducing the frantic back and forth during transactions. Their website, Home.Amitree.com explains in better detail how they give agents the ability to increase their deal capacity quickly.

“My older clients can get a bit intimidated by the tech I send their way, but my growing number of younger clients expect it. No matter their age, sometimes, clients get nervous at 2 in the morning. Folio is a huge help with reducing the back and forth while providing an easily accessible review of the deal status. Folio is very intuitive and super-easy; I don’t think I even got trained on it, I just started using it. It keeps getting better, too.” Bonnie

Folio works within the Gmail or Google Apps and Office365 ecosystems to magically detect transactions and organize milestones into interactive timelines that sync with an agent’s calendar, and keep everybody notified of changes (not to mention the hard work agents do behind the scenes). These timelines are fully built-out websites for each deal that are clean, professional, and tell everyone involved with the transaction what to expect.

At the end, all deal communication can be exported and downloaded for compliance with record-keeping regulations. It’s like they remade your email and calendar for real estate.

 

These tools improve the workflow, save time, and keep essential parts of the deal (from compliance to client engagement) from falling through the cracks. Using the two together creates a super-power deal management funnel that enables agents, with active clients, to move a sale along with more quickly while simultaneously exceeding client expectations.

Many of our most active agents use Folio by Amitree and Disclosures.io together. Both systems have a free-to-try option for you to get in the driver's seat and feel things out for yourself.