4 Tips to Organize Your Real Estate Transaction Documents
Hey there, fellow real estate friends! Let's talk about a topic that's not exactly glamorous but oh-so-important: keeping those transaction documents in check. Whether you're knee-deep in contracts or just dipping your toes into the world of real estate, wrangling paperwork is a must. So, grab your favorite mug of coffee (or tea), and let's explore four game-changing tips to keep your real estate documents organized and your sanity intact during those whirlwind transactions!
If you are a TC follower, you may find some value in today’s post, but today I really wanted to focus specifically on the agent experience. I always hear agents saying they wish they were more organized, they need to get more organized, or how they need to stay more organized. So I want to start a series and this is going to be the first one of how to stay organized in your real estate business!
The first blog post today is going to be about how to keep your real estate transaction documents organized. I’m sharing my top four tips for real estate agents on how to keep your transaction documents organized from the very beginning of working with a buyer or seller all the way to past closing and funding.
My first tip to keep your real estate documents organized in your transaction is actually more of a mindset tip, which is if you are not in a place to appropriately deal with and file away the document, don't touch it! Now, I completely understand there are some extreme instances where the lender or the title company or someone may need a document ASAP and we need to send it over to them. That is completely fine. But, maybe if you receive something back and you're not at your computer, you don't have time, and you can't do your process we're going to go over next from your phone, then that's okay. Let's respond or maybe forward the document, but then let's leave it unread or have some type of reminder in place where we know we're going to appropriately deal with this document later. That's one of the biggest hurdles to document organization in my opinion, is you get a document emailed to you, you read it, and you respond, maybe you forward it to the lender. Then, when you come back to your inbox, it's disappeared and the document doesn't get where it needs to go. So, tip #1 is - if you are not in an appropriate place to deal with a document that comes in, don't deal with it. This can be hard to get used to, but once you set the system for it and the habit, you'll feel more comfortable and it's going to pay off a lot in the long run for your overall organization!
Alright, now the second tip is to find a central place for you to keep all of your transaction documents. I'm not talking about your broker’s compliance system, I know they probably have a separate place for you to upload everything. We are going to do that, but we want one central place for our set of the documents where we can keep that indefinitely for our records and also something that's easy for us to access. I want to keep it simple by having one central place. I think a reason transaction coordinators are helpful is they help upload all documents to that appropriate place for you. I think agents can get a little messy or unorganized with this because you've got your signature platform, you've got your broker compliance platform, you've got the documents in your emails, you've got the documents someone texted to you. There are documents all over the place and we want to find one central place that we want to keep everything related to the transaction and the clients. I want to make it simple for you because I know you have so much going on as an agent. I've been there. Keep it simple. Think of one place to store all the documents.
I have a couple recommendations of places you can do this. My first recommendation is going to be utilizing a system that integrates with your email like Google Drive and Gmail. The reason I recommend this is because like we mentioned previously, you're going to get a lot of documents emailed to you, back and forth, things like that, and being able to click on your phone just to quickly add a document from an email into the appropriate Google Drive folder, that's something you can do on the go. You don't have to be in the perfect place to download it, review it, upload it to a new folder. You can literally click and organize it from your Gmail app on your phone into your Google Drive. So if you're a Gmail user, Google Drive is a great option. Another little pro tip on this I love is that you can share the Google Drive folder with your client either at the beginning or at the end of the transaction. Also, if you have a TC, they can upload documents there if you share it with them. We have several clients that we upload things to Google Drive on their behalf to help them with their records. It's a really user-friendly option. And like I said, what I like the most is that it integrates with your email. That way when you're getting all these documents in, you don't have to download them from somewhere else. You can just click that little save to drive button and then organize it to the appropriate folder.
Now, the second option I'm going to recommend for your central document storage space is going to be if you're utilizing a CRM or transaction management system that has document storage capabilities. That way when you create a new lead with a buyer or seller, you can start uploading documents under their file. This is super helpful because I'm all about minimizing the amount of systems that you're using as an agent. There's so much software out there, it just gets overwhelming, especially with all the other work you're doing day-to-day. So we want to keep it simple. If we can find something that works for our CRM needs, our lead tracking needs, our transaction management needs, whatever it is that also has document storage capabilities, that's ideal.
Lastly, is not really a recommendation, but it is an option I want to mention, which is storing everything in your e-signature platform. What this means is storing everything in your ZipForms or maybe your Dotloop or TransactionDesk or whatever you may be using to send documents for signature. One of the benefits to this is that if you send something out for execution, it's already going to be in there. One of the drawbacks of this is that it can get a little unorganized and messy because you have all of your working documents, which are unexecuted documents, in there alongside all your executed documents. You could see the same amendment multiple times, and one's the draft, then one's the one you changed, and then one's not signed at all, and then one's executed. So it can be a little bit more work to keep those organized, but typically this is something you're already paying for or is included with your brokerage or your dues., so it is a good potential option since you're already using it.
One additional tip is no matter which of these three options you use to decide for your central storage space, I want to advise you to create a folder and then subfolders. My recommendation, no matter if you're using Google Drive, if you're using a CRM, if you're using your e-signature platform, is to create one master folder for your client. You can name it the client's name instead of the property address. And within there, you can store anything that applies to all of their deals. Maybe this is a listing agreement, maybe this is a buyer representation agreement, or maybe a pre-approval letter. We can keep all of that under their main file and then we can create sub folders for each property they put an offer in on or they list for sale. This makes it super simple because it's going to minimize how many loops or how many transactions or folders you have, depending on what you're using.
My third tip is going over what I mentioned in the e-signature software, which is getting messy with unexecuted and executed documents. So, our golden rule is going to be that in our one designated storage space, we only upload executed documents. Now, obviously we can things that aren't signed but are part of the transaction like a survey or utility information. But in terms of documents that require signature, I'm going to encourage you to only upload your executed documents to this space. So if you're using your e-signature platform, as I mentioned, this can get a little messy. I have two recommendations. One is once you upload an executed version of a document, archive any unexecuted versions of it. And then second is to potentially create different folders. I mentioned working documents earlier. You can sometimes see in ZipForms, they'll have a working documents folder, which means things being sent for execution or negotiation, and then an executed documents folder. So, if you don't want to archive everything that isn't signed fully, you could make a separate file for unsigned or in-progress (“working documents”), and then have a separate folder all within the same client file for your fully executed documents.
My last tip is going to be to keep it electronic. I think another reason real estate agents get unorganized or feel unorganized is because they've got paper documents in their car or at the office, then they've got documents in their emails, sometimes someone texts an amendment to you, you've got documents in the broker compliance, etc. So like I said earlier, we want to keep everything in one place. And all of the things we've mentioned as central storage solutions, have been electronic systems.
If you do receive a paper document, let's immediately scan it in. Whether that just goes to our email for us to deal with later, as one of our golden rules, or we're able to directly scan it in to where we want it to go. Regardless, we want to scan it in immediately so it doesn't get lost or just sit there until the end of time. Two app recommendations for scanning things on your phone are Scannable, which integrates well with Evernote, and then also Genius Scan.
Remember, the golden rules are not messing with documents if we're not in a good place or we can't easily get them where they are supposed to go while we're on the go and then also we're only uploading executed documents to our designated storage space.
If you are a real estate agent or a TC who felt a little unorganized in your document organization and storage systems, I hope you found these tips helpful today! If there are any other topics you'd like me to cover specifically about real estate agent organization and systems, send us a message!
Happy TC’ing!
Allyson
