Why is e-signature so beneficial for real estate agents? These benefits are worth knowing!

Contracts and documents are the basis of the functioning of real estate agencies. They must be signed in order to become valid. This is where several difficulties arise. Waiting for signatures, arranging meetings and laboriously searching for paperwork takes a lot of time and often leads to unnecessary losses. How to avoid these things effectively? A modern electronic signature can help!

As a real estate agent, you probably work with different types of contracts. Whether it's property reservations, buy-sell agreements, lease agreements or listing consents, all of these documents require signatures. On one side from you, on the other from your client. If you are still relying on a paper format, you are making your life unnecessarily complicated. How?

Disadvantages of paper documents in real estate agencies

Traditional paper documents bring a number of disadvantages that you are probably experiencing first-hand.

Higher operating costs

Printing documents costs something. You need to have your own printer, even if you run a larger estate agency, you probably need several of them. The same is true of photocopiers. You're probably printing dozens or hundreds of documents a day, so toners are going fast and there's wear and tear on the equipment as well.

When you add up all the costs associated with printing, you quickly realise that it's costing you several hundred, maybe even thousands of euros a year. Imagine if you didn't have these expenses at all. You would be able to use the money saved much more efficiently.

Time intensity

It's not just printing or scanning documents that takes a lot of time. The organisation of printed contracts and their laborious retrieval must also be taken into account. You need to have multiple binders in your offices where you store individual documents. If you need to find a contract from 3 years ago, you might spend several minutes looking for it.

That doesn't look bad at first glance, but when you add up all the time you spend filing and searching for documents throughout the day, it can end up being more than 1 hour.

Lengthy conclusion of agreements

Maybe you know it too. You need to book a property with a client, but the client is busy. You call him several times, rescheduling the meeting time and fitting it into your schedule. Such processes not only take up unnecessary time, but are annoying for both you and the clients.

People today are used to being able to handle most things online, from the comfort of their own home. If they have to travel an hour halfway across town to get to your office for one signature, it's annoying for them. Physical meetings for signatures unnecessarily prolong all the processes and create the risk that the deal won't happen in the end.

Real estate agency and electronic signature

As a real estate agent, electronic signing saves you a lot of time, money and hassle. It allows you to operate much more efficiently, close more deals and keep your clients happier. But the question is - how do you electronically sign a document to get all the benefits?

Qualified electronic signature

When you say electronic signature of a document, many people think of a qualified electronic signature, which requires an ID card with a chip and a reader. The latter is a good solution, but it is unusable for estate agents in many areas.

With a qualified electronic signature, you can sign documents intended for state bodies - courts, the tax administration or some authorities. However, you cannot use it for online signing of documents for banks or clients themselves. Also, the use for communication with the cadastral office is limited.

Electronic signature OKdokument

If you're looking for a way to easily sign any electronic document online, without the need for an ID card or reader, OKdokument is the answer. Our unique solution makes online signing fast, easy and secure.

How to electronically sign a document

How to activate the electronic signature and how to insert the signature in the PDF? It's really easy when using OKdokument. Simply register for free, upload your documents in PDF format, sign them and send them to your customers, business partners or institutions. You get the following benefits.

1. High security

The OKdokument electronic signature complies with the European Union rules for authentication and the GDPR. The signature data is protected by an encryption and the e-signature prevents changes to the text. Thus, there is no risk of someone falsifying the data.

2. Easy to request a signature

Once you have documents signed from your side, you can easily request a signature from the other side. For example, your client. They don't need to set up an account or download anything to sign the document quickly and easily online either. All he has to do is enter his email. You can also add two-step verification via SMS to the signature request. This way, you'll be sure that only the right person opens the document.

3. Speed and efficiency

With OKdokument, you'll have all your documents online, sorted into clear folders. You can find them in seconds. Getting signatures will no longer take hours, but minutes. You don't have to print anything or organise meetings with clients. Your real estate agency will suddenly operate much more efficiently, you will provide your customers with an excellent experience and you can focus on developing your business instead of laborious activities.