Beyond relocation trends, price jumps, and keeping track of a remote workforce, many in real estate had to change the very way they did business to adapt to the covid-19 pandemic.

Video home tours, virtual staging, remote online notarization, and the adoption of digital transaction management were merely a few of the technological advancements that gained a stronger foothold over the last 24 months or more.

Now that things have to an extent returned to a normal state of business, we thought it would be worthwhile for our clients and friends to know what tools and tech we leverage to ensure we’re doing all we can to offer the highest level of service.

Compass CRM

Among other reasons, its technology-forward approach was something that pulled me and my team toward Compass. A central component to that is its CRM, or customer relationship management system. 

This web and mobile app empowers us to know when and how to direct attention to clients, it helps us track how people are responding to our marketing and ensures we are always informed on the needs and wants of buyers and sellers. Using a series of automated task alerts, actionable reminders and team-focused features, we can work together on multiple facets of the business, and then address our individual responsibilities. It’s a highly valuable benefit of our brokerage relationship that we use daily.

Compass Collections

This is a fun and highly useful piece of web software that helps us and our clients get a grip on what the market has to offer. Collections is a “bulletin board” interface designed to curate groups of homes according to client preference, letting everyone participate in adding a property, removing ones that may not be a match, and even invite family members or friends to participate. This is a great way to stay organized, avoid redundant emails about a home we’ve already seen, and categorize homes according to neighborhood or style.

Another cool function of Collections is that once a home is input, everyone gets automated alerts of its status on the market, from price reductions to open houses. It’s not only for buyers, sellers can join a Collection to monitor how similar homes are performing in the market. 

ShowingTime

This product has been around quite a while, and it continues to evolve for the better. ShowingTime partners with local multiple listing services, as well as brokers, to coordinate home showings, arrange buyer tours and generally share information about when a property can be shown. We use it to schedule showings for buyers and set up when our sellers’ homes should be toured. We’re allowed to restrict dates and times, quickly edit availability and follow-up with anyone who’s viewed one of our listings, among other beneficial features. It also has a mobile companion app. 

Agent Finder

Another Compass-provided benefit, Agent Finder is a database of company colleagues around the country to which we can refer business. However, we use it to learn more about local agents who may be bringing us a buyer. Understanding the track record of fellow agents gives us a solid foundation from which to launch negotiations and predict how the deal may perform. 

Dotloop

This was one of the first fully digital deal management products on the market, and for good reason. It uses a graphical “loop” to define the pace of a transaction and identify milestones toward closing. The goal, of course, is to “close the loop,” or in other words, get you into your new home. It hosts an array of reminders, document libraries, task lists and other features to help transaction coordinators and agents stay on top of the many steps between contract and close. It makes things very easy, and we can access it from anywhere. You can also use it to electronically sign documents.  

A couple of other tools we use along the way include a CMA—comparative market analysis—system from Compass to help us sometimes examine properties for presenting listing strategies to clients. We also use a solution for making interactive floorplans, a great way for people to understand the layout of a home. 

We also try to use YouTube as often as we can to market homes, showcase client testimonials and talk about what’s happening in the South and Central New Jersey area. And, FlippingBook helps turn static PDF documents into interactive digital flipbooks. Here’s an example. 

Of course, like just about every other real estate agent working today, it would be rare sight to find us without our face in a mobile phone. It’s the nature of business today. From returning and sending emails to monitoring deal status and checking up on clients, today’s phones are simply too smart and too efficient to be without. 

As new products emerge, we do what we can to see what will help us help you. There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors out there, and sometimes trying to adopt new technologies can be time consuming and expensive. We look at everything through the eyes of our customers. 

We’d be happy to consult with you confidentially. You can email Allison at [email protected] to arrange a time to talk.

The Allison Ziefert Real Estate Group is a top producing real estate team based at Compass in Short Hills, NJ. We are local market experts, specializing in real estate and homes in Maplewood, South Orange, Millburn/Short Hills, Montclair, West Orange, NJ and the surrounding towns. We are driven by earning great testimonials and referral business from happy clients. You can read our testimonials here.