technology-general » Technology Tools for Real Estate

I’m pleased to introduce this guest post by Keith Hackbarth of RentersFriend.com who’s got great ideas about how to make QR codes—like the one you see here—work for you.

QR codes, short for Quick Response Codes, are currently a hot topic in the marketing world. They look like barcodes. If you look around, you’ll see them in newspapers, museums, and online blogs.

Consumers equipped with smartphones such as iPhone, Android, or Blackberry can take a picture of these codes and be instantly transported to a website with helpful information about the properties.

Realtors and property managers have started placing these QR codes on their signage and brochures. For example, a rental property might have a QR code on the “For Rent” sign in front. Walk-by traffic will see this code, capture it on their phone, and instantly get a virtual tour of the property. Best of all, the QR code will also be stored in the phone’s memory for later reference.

To get started with QR codes, download “QR Reader” or “QR Scanner” software on your phone. There are many free applications, such as Google Goggles, for this. Next take a picture of the code and follow the link.

Ask your signage company if they can put QR codes on your lawn signs, flyers, and business cards. It might make the difference between a vacancy or not.

About the author: Keith Hackbarth is CEO of RentersFriend.com, a web service for online rental applications and credit checks. He loves finding ways to use technology to improve his family’s real estate business. If you own rental properties, take a minutes to check out his innovative service https://rentersfriend.com

Slide presentations aren’t known for being exciting. In fact, PowerPoint, by design, encourages linear presentations that contain mostly words.

But newer presentation packages encourage creativity and can be great vehicles for making a presenting, showing off a listing, or presenting information in an engaging way. Add cloud-based services and the ability to present from an iPad or an iPhone, and you’ve got what you need to make a stunning presentation wherever you happen to be. Consider these ways to produce and present information.

SlideRocket is a cloud-based service that lets you create and store presentations. Upload slide shows you already have or create new ones with their great tools. Once presentations are stored with SlideRocket, you can access and present them from anywhere. You can also share them with others, link to them from, say, Facebook, or embed them on your web page.

280Slides is another cloud-based service that gives you the flexibility to create, store, access, and present. Create a slideshow that has the look and feel of a presentation created on a Mac. Incorporate videos from YouTube or photos from Flickr with 280Slides’ built-in media tools. When you’re done, deliver your presentation, share it with others, add it to your website, or download it as a PowerPoint slideshow.

The Keynote App for iPad also lets you create, and present slideshows. If you’ve never used a Mac, you’ll marvel at how easy it is to make professional-looking presentations in Keynote by just touching and tapping. The iPad makes an excellent vehicle for presenting in someone’s home or in the office conference room. Newer iPads can also be connected to a projector for larger presentations. (For smaller presentations, the app works on your Iphone and Ipod Touch, too.)

With so many presentation tools to choose from—many free or modestly priced—there’s no excuse for giving dull, boring presentations.

Let me start out by saying, it can’t be done!

Even if you scoured the Internet 24/7, signed up for every new online tool, purchased every new tech gadget, and ordered every new software update—assuming that it was humanly possible to do all of this—you’d still be behind. The pace of change in technology is so rapid that it’s impossible for most tech experts to keep up, let alone real estate professionals who have other things to think about.

So don’t try to “keep up” with technology. Instead, recognize that for agents and brokers, technology is a means to an end. It exists to help you do business, that is:

To connect with potential clients;
To market yourself or the properties you have listed; and
To facilitate communication before, during, and after a sale.

Figure out which of these things you need to be doing better and then identify the hardware, software, and Internet services that will help you get the job done. Become an expert in the handful of technologies that improve your marketing efforts and enhance your ability to serve your clients. Learn all you can about those technologies and always be on the lookout for new and better tools that do the same thing.

You can’t be an expert on everything, so first and foremost be an expert on your business and what works for you.

You’ve probably seen them, those square barcode-like symbols that are popping up on buildings, on marketing material, and even on people’s business cards. They’re called QR codes (short for Quick Response) and they make it easy for anyone to encode a great deal of information in a small amount of space.

You create QR codes using a QR code generator easily found on the web. At Zebra Crossing for example, you’ll find a free open-source one that lets you imbed a URL, contact information, GEO location, text, or a calendar event into your code. In order for prospects to read the information embedded in the code, they’ll need a web-enabled mobile phone and an app for reading QR codes. QR code readers are easy to find; they’re available in the app stores of all the major phone platforms. Once the QR reader is installed, a prospect simply snaps a picture of the code and their phone “translates” it for them. If the code contains a URL, the web-enabled phone takes them to that website. If the code contains text, that text appears on their screen for them to read.

QR codes have been popular overseas for some time, especially in Japan. They’re only beginning to gain popularity in the U.S. and there’s a growing buzz about them in the real estate industry. They can be faster and easier for busy people to use than copying and pasting a URL, and they have an added “curiosity factor” since passersby can’t know what the coded message says unless they take some action. For these reasons QR codes have great marketing potential and many possible real estate uses. Here are some ways you might use them:

Use a QR code on the outside of a building to provide prospects with a digital property prospectus—text they can read on their phone that describes pricing, floorplans, listing broker information and more.
Post a video tour or a slide show of the property to the web then use a QR code to let prospects see what the property looks like on the inside even though they’re standing outside.
Use a QR code on a sign outside the property to alert prospects to an upcoming open house. Create a buzz in advance by posting QR codes around the neighborhood.
Buyer not interested in this property? No problem. Use the QR code to direct him or her to other properties nearby that are also for sale.
Add them to your Facebook page or the sidebar of your blog to let readers know about new properties or special events.

The possibilities are endless. What else can you think of?

For many years, the experts have talked about the possibility of the paperless office. Few industries generate as much paper as real estate, so it’s logical to question whether it’s even possible for a real estate office to be paperless.

Certainly the technology exists and a small but growing number of businesses are considering how it might be done. But real estate brokerages have their own special hurdles.

Agent Savvy. First and foremost, the agents in the office would have to be comfortable getting rid of the paper and working only with digital documents. They would need the computer skills, for example, to use whatever document management system the brokerage instituted. And where such systems are not hard to use, there are many real estate professionals who still struggle with basic computer skills.

Others’ Tech Skills. To get the deal closed, agents must work with many other parties. The clients, attorneys, inspectors and mortgage people involved would all have to be comfortable working without paper. Otherwise the advantage would be lost: hardcopies might still have to be printed out and hand delivered to non-digital savvy parties. Hardcopy documents received from them would have to be scanned back into the paperless system. The time and energy involved in all of this might undermine the ideal of working without paper.

The Paperless Closing. Then there’s the closing. All the parties may be on board with an electronic sales contract, but can all of the closing documents be signed electronically? For example, does the HUD-1 statement or the mortgage note have to have a “live” signature? Does the recorder of deeds in your jurisdiction have the ability to accept electronic documents? Does the title company have the technology to conduct a closing without paper?

Without a doubt, this will come together some day so that all the parties will be able to work with digital documents. Until that day, however, it’s likely be challenging for any one real estate brokerage to go completely paperless.

What are your views? Do you know of any paperless real estate offices? Have you participated in a paperless closing?