A Guide to E-signatures for Real Estate Agents

Signatures have been the bane of a real estate professional's existence for generations. With purchase agreements and closings getting more complicated every year, with more and more layers of mandatory disclosures, regulations, title assurances, and anything else you care to name, it's easy for customers to miss a signature or initial.

Historically, this meant that the real estate agent winds up expending precious prospecting time driving across town to track down the parties, or spending money to prepare and send documents back to them via FedEx.

No one wants to have a good deal delayed because of a paperwork snafu.

Fortunately, there's a better way, thanks to a miracle of modern information technology. It's time to embrace the e-signature.

The History of E-Signature Technology

E-signatures are not exactly new. The first completely paperless house sale, using only electronic signatures, took place half a career ago, on July 25, 2000. Both the sale and financing of a home were involved, and the entire transaction took five minutes to record.

Some industry studies are showing that using digital signatures on documents can result in turnaround-time improvements of as much as 80 percent. Yet many agents, sales support staff and other real estate professionals are still stuck in the dark ages, almost 15 years later.

We have a system where technology-challenged bureaucrats – including ones that happen to own brokerage companies – still have people standing in line for notary stamps and burning gas to track down that last signature.