The COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant changes to both work and home environments, with more people working from home than ever before — and many families considering moves to less crowded areas of the country.
The market has been significantly erratic, with valuations fluctuating despite more people considering buying a home in suburban or rural areas to move away from overcrowded, virus-heavy locales.
What’s more, selling real estate during COVID-19 has gotten more complex, due to the need for increased health and safety practices that keep staff and potential clients safe.
Not only must agents comply with recommendations set forth by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but they must employ more virtual technology solutions to avoid in-person contact to the greatest extent possible.
In fact, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) has provided extensive guidance for ways that real estate agents can incorporate virtual tours, open houses, showings, and offers into their mainstream offerings to help maximize sales while staying safe.
The landscape of business during a pandemic such as COVID-19 has completely been completely restructured with an emphasis on remote transactions and a virtual environment.
For document-heavy industries such as real estate, this means a heavy reliance on a strong document management program to reduce storage bottlenecks, eliminate errors, and make it simpler for agents to easily access critical information.
Conquering Challenges Posed by Real Estate During COVID-19
No matter whether clients are buying or selling a home, agents must continue to deliver the same high-quality experience while adhering to government mandates concerning social distancing and other COVID-19-specific health practices.
The application of virtual technologies solves many of these problems, but real estate companies need the additional boost offered by document management to assist with essential data-related tasks that are multiplied by a virtual environment.
Specifically, document management provides a host of benefits to busy real estate offices, including:
1. Enhanced Efficiency for Better Customer Service
The more efficiently you can retrieve and track essential documentation, the faster you can close sales. Keeping your information in a secure, cloud-based environment allows agents to access contracts, appraisals, sales reports, offers, titles, disclosures, and loan information from anywhere — 24/7.
Eliminating tedious and error-prone manual processes increases the speed of transactions, reduces errors, and allows agents to provide swift and accurate service to both buyers and sellers.
2. Cost Effectiveness for a Healthier Bottom Line
To stay competitive through market fluctuations, agencies must pay close attention to budgetary concerns, ensuring that resources are properly allocated, and savings are maximized.
A document management system allows for digital storage of critical information, reducing the need to pay for cost-prohibitive brick-and-mortar storage spaces that can be used for office space for an expanded team or, alternately, be disposed of altogether.
3. Increased Security for Sensitive Information
Managing real estate transactions involves safeguarding a plethora of sensitive information — from personal data to financial information.
Document management offers encrypted security to help prevent — and detect — unauthorized access. In addition, a cloud-based environment with secure automated backups offers optimal data redundancies for protection in the event of data theft or loss.
Blue Technologies Offers Optimized Efficiency for Your Real Estate Team
At Blue Technologies, our team of document management experts has the right formula to help your real estate team manage — and exceed — sales expectations, even with the new challenges posed by COVID-19.
By streamlining your document capture and storage processes, our document management system integrates perfectly with your current applications — and with any new technology that you’ve leveraged as you pivot with market changes or move toward a more virtual workplace.
Agents will have access to all the information they need to conduct all aspects of sales and purchases — when and where they need it. They can work from home, on the road, or in your office with all their tools at their fingertips, providing the kind of customer service that will give your agency a competitive edge.
Finally, our team will ensure your data is protected throughout its lifecycle for strict compliance with privacy and data regulations and ultimate peace of mind. In this way, we can help you drive internal efficiency, optimize workflows, and reduce costs for a more productive and successful business.
Ready to accelerate sales, reduce error, and drive revenue? Contact a Blue Technologies consultant today to learn more about document management for your real estate business