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Real Estate Services by Jon Griffith

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Rant of the Week: Techno Trail of Dust

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In an age where it’s nearly impossible to keep up with the changing technology, it becomes absolutely critical to the success of many businesses to be the first in the door with a new tool, process, trick…you name it. If you fail to join the technology revolution, you will be left behind with a bronze shield fending of laser guided photon plasma beams.  It is equally important if you are not a pioneer of changing technology to adopt it in order to remain competitive.

Every day thousands of documents are created that need to be verified, signed, stamped with blood. Signed documents make the world go ’round.

Rant #1: E-mail attachments are old news.

Sending messages through e-mail is a great way to quickly communicate a request. Sending attachments through e-mail is a disaster. The initial purpose of e-mail was to carry a very small message electronically to one or multiple recipients. The transport that carries the e-mail could be likened to a Yugo, or more appropriately, a Smart Car. Someone’s brilliance entered the picture (believe me, it seemed brilliant at first) and introduced a way to attach files to the e-mail. Immediately abused, this method, to illustrate it properly, was like attaching a cargo trailer to the hitch of a Smart Car with 50,000 pounds of pewter flatware, dishes, and goblets. To this day, sending attachments is still a horrible way to deliver large files over the internet.

The best way to accomplish sending large files is to create a central location where multiple people can go to retrieve the file at any time. When you send a huge attachment to 20 people in your e-mail list, you’re sending multiple copies, clogging up your outbound e-mail highway, eating up space and time on everyone’s system.

Try changing your way of thinking. Instead of sending the information through e-mail, upload it to your website or a file sharing site. Imagine if Hewlett Packard were to send out drivers for printers in e-mail. It would cost them a fortune and would make the lives of thousands of e-mail server administrators hellish.

Rant #2: Stop Printing What you Can Sign Digitally

Docusign is an absolutely brilliant tool that allows you to send anything you have on your screen through a printer driver to a digital signature website. The recipient clicks a few tabs on the document and the document is stored online permanently for you to access at any time.

Handwritten signatures expose you more than you know.  Did you know that you can scan a document with a hand-written signature, extract the signature using a photo-editing program, and insert that signature on just about any legal document you wish, then pass it off as legitimate?  It’s so easy to do (I’ve never done it, of course.)

Digitally signing a document builds multiple layers of security to prove that the person who signed the document is the person that was actually supposed to sign the document.

Not only will you find it more secure, you’ll also find it saves you time.  One example of how you can utilize Docusign would be in signing a document that was sent to you as an e-mail attachment (yuck.)  Okay, so we’re not going to be able to change over night, but we can get better.  When you receive that document, rather than printing it, signing it, scanning it, and re-attaching it, simply print it to Docusign, mark where it needs to be signed, click to sign it, and download the signed copy.  Then, send that copy to whomever needs it.  It can all be done without leaving the same spot.

It’s time to get with the times.  If you’re unfamiliar with these methods, then you’re already behind, and you might want to consider reading up on what’s what in the world of technology.

Digital Signatures vs. Digitized Signatures

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I used to teach real estate agents how to use their technology in a forward thinking way. Most of them didn’t understand the concepts. The ones who did understand already understood before coming to me because they had the ambition to learn on their own. They typically just used me as their general consultant and laptop provider. A select few picked up on the concepts, but there’s still a bit of confusion regarding digital signatures versus digitized signatures.

Anything that is converted into a format that a computer can read is said to be digital. The screen I’m looking at now is digital, it’s fed by tons of ones and zeros. So in essence, whatever you see on the screen is digital.

When we speak of digital signatures regarding contracts in real estate, what we’re referring to is the ability to authorize a document as a fully executed contract without bringing pen to paper. Some people would say that hand writing your signature on the screen of a tablet computer is a digital signature. While it’s on the screen and in a computerized format, it’s still a digital representation of a hand-written signature, so it’s not really a digital signature.

I could take a handwritten signature on one of your personal checks, scan the check into my computer, use photo editing software to extract the signature, and paste your signature on any document I wish. There is no accountability for this. No system in place to protect you, and no way to prove that you actually signed the document. Once I print it, granted I’ll have a forged document, to the recipient, it’s as good as executed.

Digital Signatures work differently than hand written digitized signatures. The digitizer tablet is a convenience and a more advanced way to capture your hand-written signature, and it simply removes one step out of the process of scanning your documents. The digital signature involves no hand-writing, and protects you. Here’s how it works through DocuSign, the company that I use to execute contracts between all parties in a transaction.

On my computer, I draft a document. I print it, and when I select my printer, I choose “Send in DocuSign Envelope,” a small program that I installed when I signed up for DocuSign. The computer whirls and spins and converts the document into a PDF file then uploads it securely to DocuSign. Docusign asks me who I want to send the signature request to, and I select someone by entering their e-mail address. DocuSign then allows me to assign areas on the document that need your initials or signature. I send the document and you receive notification that there’s a document to be signed. You login to DocuSign and setup your account the first time, which involves verifying a few details about you. Then, DocuSign opens the document I sent, allows you to review it, and shows you where you need to “click” to confirm that you agree to the terms. There’s no risk of missing pages where initials should have been because I have defined where you need to sign in advance. Once you have clicked all of the spots you’re supposed to click, the document is considered executed. The document is stored at DocuSign and I am notified that you completed the signing. I download the document from DocuSign and deliver a copy to my broker.

The benefits of this are vast, as long as you have an e-mail account and access to a computer, anywhere. The industry is going to change so much over the next 10 years, and if you’re not in tune with the way of the electronic world, there’s a good chance that you’ll find it more and more difficult to conduct business the old way, as you watch all of the youngsters beat you to the punch.