Over five million properties are sold each year in the United States by over two million real estate agents in the United States (1.3 million of which belong to the National Association of Realtors). About 10% of the real estate agents in the United States are in California and about 6% of them are in Texas. If you are in the real estate industry, whether you are a realtor, broker, agent, transaction coordinator, or an administrative assistant there is nothing, aside from finding new clients, that is more important than the transaction management process.
Real estate transaction management means different things to different people. For some people – we’ll call them Group A – they are talking about the actual process of tracking what transactions are currently open, what has been done with them, and what is left to do before the close of escrow. Other people – we’ll call them Group B – within real estate talk about transaction management as a tool that helps to manage the process of tracking and completing the various steps and elements associated with getting a real estate transaction from accepted offer to close.
Group A – Process People
This group of people, while they are using transaction management to talk about a set of tasks and procedures it is fairly common that they are also meaning, by extension, a transaction management software tool. Whether using a tool or a more manual process, it is important to have a system in place to know what needs to be done and when. It also needs someone (or someones) who are responsible for keeping track of all of the moving pieces. Often times this person is a transaction coordinator.
Group B – Tool People
The second group or Group B, rather, are the group of people who are exclusively interested in talking about transaction management software. They believe that everything the Group A people are looking for is encapsulated in a transaction management software tool. When looking at a transaction management tool they are generally referring to a tool that allows for real estate document retention, transaction timelines, task tracker, esignature, easy method for sharing information with other parties, and the ability to modify pdfs.
- Document retention helps with broker licensing compliance and allows all parties to refer back to key documents after a transaction has concluded.
- Transaction timelines keep track of all important dates in a transaction such as the inspection contingency, appraisal contingency, loan contingency, and most importantly the close of escrow.
- Task tracker creates and monitors the important steps within a transaction such as a reminder to schedule an inspection or to fill out a form (like Texas’s Seller Disclosure).
- Esignature is more than just signing electronically but it requires a signature platform that properly records specific elements like a computer’s MAC address and IP address (e.g. electronic fingerprint) which not only make the signature legally binding but make it difficult to refute in a court.
- Sharing information is simply being able to pass documents and emails through the system rather than needing to send individual emails back and forth.
- Modifying PDFs allows real estate experts to break large PDF files apart into separate files or to delete unneeded pages. This helps save time and energy.
Whether you are a Group A person or a Group B person, transaction management is an important part of real estate.
