By Susan Doran
If you specialize in condo and townhouse sales, your life just got a whole lot easier.
Brokers and agents know that the documents required in a condo or townhouse sale can stack up and be time consuming to manage. This documentation, referred to by such names as status certificates, strata documents or estoppel certificates (depending on what part of the country you’re in), details the financial health of the building and can include the operating budget, financial statements, reserve fund studies, maintenance fees, insurance documentation, declarations and bylaws (such as whether dogs or satellite dishes are allowed), assessments, engineering reports, site surveys and more.
Using traditional methods, sales reps needing to obtain such documentation have to contact the condo management company and then either drive to the site or send a courier to pick up the paperwork – often hundreds of pages worth. Frequently, additional copies for buyers and lawyers must be made as well.
“The industry was paper heavy and very manual processed,” says Darryl Deen, president of D-Tech Consulting in Toronto, a leader in innovative condominium software development. “We saw it as an opportunity to provide property managers and Realtors with efficiency across the board.”
A select few other forward thinkers across the country also noted that the time was ripe for change, with the result that here and there, fully electronic condo certificate delivery systems have become available. D-Tech Consulting’s Conduit system was among the first, having been launched a couple of years ago.
There still aren’t many companies offering similar systems. But as a rule, where they’re available, such systems tend to be free to property management companies, while sales reps pay a small ‘convenience/administration’ fee per certificate on top of standard charges. To use Conduit, for example, sales reps in the Greater Toronto Area pay an additional $25 per certificate.
Deen tells sales reps that it’s probably cheaper in the long run than using the old method of sending a courier or taking time out of your day to drive to the management office. And it’s certainly more convenient.
“We’ve taken a seven-or eight-step process that might take days, down to minutes…Now you can receive the certificates electronically without leaving your desk,” says Deen. “That impacts not just the industry but the environment….I feel good that we’ve updated an antiquated process, and that we’ve saved thousands of trees, water and energy by eliminating the need for paper, printers and ink.”
He says that “close to 50 per cent” of condo management companies in the GTA have signed up to be on board with his firm’s electronic system, and the number is growing monthly.
“It makes things much easier for them too,” he says. For starters, there’s immediate savings in paper, printing and storage costs. And there’s no further need “to deal with cheques, deciphering handwriting, or people coming in the door,” since electronic transactions are paid for online by credit card.
“Real estate agents are becoming our unpaid sales force,” Deen says. “Once they use the system we find they’re pushing the management companies to come on board.”
Nevertheless, says Steven Martin of Re/Max Ocean Pacific Realty in Courtenay, B.C., “it’s a paradigm shift for condo management and there are those who are still reluctant to change their decades-old ways of operating. Some of them are very old school. They haven’t been forced to become tech savvy the way Realtors have.”
Martin, who a few months back launched the site StrataDocsNow.com to offer “access to a fast and secure” document delivery system, expects a six to 12 month acceptance curve.
“The site is robust to handle very large volume. Our mandate is to make sure it’s expandable,” he says.
Like Deen, he’s proud of the site’s environmental impact, which he says includes – along with saving trees – lessening the carbon footprint by eliminating the use of couriers and cars for documentation pick-up.
He also points out that “with our site, when a Realtor has a condo listed for, say, 10 months, the minute the strata uploads new documents the Realtor is notified. So they are on top of any new information the whole time they have the listing.”
Another advantage of the new electronic systems is that they provide Realtors with the assurance that all certificates will be delivered before deadline. And every document is saved onsite, ready to be retrieved if you misplace it and/or need it for future reference.
It’s definitely another wave of the future. Realtors (and property managers) may be well advised to jump in.
