As the provider of member benefits for over 1.5 million real estate agents in the U.S. and Canada, it’s only natural that we get a lot of questions! So today, we’re introducing a new segment where we’ll showcase these questions and answer them for you.
And our first topic is one of the most popular ones out there: How eSignature works, and how to get it with your member benefit.
Let’s dive in!
How eSignature works
Though it’s been around for some time now, eSignature is increasingly popular as a tool to sign business documents and legal contracts in lieu of a wet signature. It owes a lot of this growing popularity to sanctions from government bodies accepting eSignatures as legal for these purposes!
In real estate, eSignature has two key functions that contribute to its usefulness.
First, it lets you highlight where on documents clients need to sign. That way, when you email them a contract to sign remotely, it’s almost as if you were right there with them, walking them through the process.
They don’t have to worry about accidentally signing in the wrong spots, and you don’t have to worry about them doing that either.
Second (and this happens mostly on the back end), eSignature solutions assign security certificates to each document a client signs. These certificates act as proof that the document is genuine, and hasn’t been tampered with.
With Authentisign, the eSignature solution built for our Transactions solutions, clients can actually set up a secure login for themselves after signing that gives them access to all of their documents and requisite security certificates.
And even if they don’t create a login, it emails them a copy so they always have it on file!
Why eSignature is more important than ever
This kind of goes without saying, but in our new digital world, real estate agents need to be able to get their work done remotely. And no work is more important than signing offers and contracts.
Completing transactions by hand is a time-consuming, inefficient, and outdated way of doing business, and today’s consumers not only know how to electronically sign documents, they have come to expect it. In this way, eSignature has become an indispensable tool in every agent’s work belt.
How to get eSignature with your member benefit
Good news—you have options!
For both the national member benefits in the U.S. and Canada, eSignature is available as an add-on to transaction management, and you can sign up for it right from within your transaction management member benefit.
It’s also worth investigating with your local and state associations, because some of them offer built-in eSignature as a benefit on top of your national benefit.
