Realty anticipates paperless deals

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By Jim Battey

(IDG) -- Closing a real estate deal can be about as much fun as a root canal. Thankfully for buyers and sellers, the Internet is now helping to take some of the pain out of the sometimes excruciating closing process.

The document-based real estate business is a prime candidate for online transaction management platforms, and companies are finally starting to implement a slew of Web-based services, including Homestore.com's eRealtor system, HomeAdvisor's Realty Desktop, and Realty Plus Online's CloseYourDeal.com.

Mike Ryan, president of The Planning Solutions Group, an Austin, Texas-based real estate consulting firm, predicts an increase in paperless transactions and the growth of an industry trend toward getting the various players online.

"The technology already exists to do it entirely paperless," Ryan says. "When you look at all the processes involved, there is a tremendous amount of time spent on phone tag, and I think that a market will open up for technology to link all of the people together."

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By nature, buying and selling a home is an emotional ordeal and closing the sale is perhaps the most trying part of the process. The chief goal of many transaction management products in the real estate business is to alleviate paperwork and phone calls to free up service professionals so they can spend more face time with clients.

"Customers get frustrated and mad at us when they call and it appears that we are too busy," explains Celia Goode-Haddock, president and CEO of University Title in College Station, Texas. Goode-Haddock says that when her staff is working on a close that is going through immediately, they might not be able to take a call from a customer whose close is still a few days away.

Goode-Haddock's company uses SmartClose, a service from Expeditrix, an Austin, Texas-based startup that puts the residential real estate closing process, including documents and workflow, online. The platform promotes proactive collaboration among the parties involved, allowing users to be notified of changes via e-mail, phone, or fax.

The SmartClose platform helps put home buyers at ease by notifying them of what's going on so they don't have to call, Goode-Haddock says. "The customer knows that we are working on the file even though we aren't on the phone with them," she explains.

"[An online closing platform] allows you more freedom to do your business," says Tom Polk, a real estate broker with Stanberry & Associates in Austin, Texas. Polk says that in the several months he's been using SmartClose, it has cut down on literally hundreds of phone calls.

Polk echoes Goode-Haddock, adding that his home-buying clients have benefited from the platform because "it gives them a tremendous degree of feeling plugged in."

Ryan foresees a day when consumers will conduct a transaction such as a mortgage refinance from a computer by themselves. Yet with all the promise of paperless transactions, success in the industry has been elusive. For example, iProperty recently pulled the plug on its Chorus online real estate management system.

Polk predicts that "at some point the whole listing and contract process will all be integrated," but adds that integrating solutions from multiple vendors may prove difficult. "It's going to be hard to get the diverse groups together to use the same thing," Polk says, highlighting one of the main hurdles to the prosperity of online systems.

Although she has seen a small dose of early success with the platform, Goode-Haddock is still waiting for the day SmartClose will make a significant difference in her business. Like any new technology, she says the ultimate payoff depends on the effort that goes into the implementation.

"It's a great product but only as good as what you put into it," Goode-Haddock explains.