Necessity, as the saying goes, is the mother of invention. The necessity: finding a way to provide consumers with transparency in multiple offer situations, and giving agents and their brokerages an easy and compliant way to provide that service.
DealDocket.com, an online workflow platform developed specifically for multiple offer situations, is the brainchild of co-founders Adam Brind and Drew Donaldson. Brind, broker of record at Core Assets Real Estate in Toronto, and mortgage broker Donaldson had talked about the idea for years. But when Brind couldn’t find out how many offers were on a house his clients were bidding on, it was the last straw.
The multiple offer process felt dishonest, Brind says. So he and Donaldson developed DealDocket.com.
On July 1, the same day DealDocket.com will officially launch, the Real Estate Council of Ontario (RECO) will adopt changes to REBBA 2002 (the Real Estate and Business Brokers Act), which require that real estate brokerages retain a copy of every offer for six years and every declined offer for one year in order to prevent phantom offers.
DealDocket.com will help agents comply by automatically storing and managing all offers after the offer presentation, Brind says. Offers can be withdrawn with the press of a button any time before they are presented.
The platform provides agents with tools they never had before and makes the process easier for the listing agent, buyers’ agents, consumers and brokerages, Brind says. Offers are submitted in real time, in the order in which they are received. Consumers and their agents can go online to see how many offers there are, when they were submitted and by which brokerage. For agents, working on the system means offers don’t have to be uploaded later, he says.
DealDocket.com also provides an automatic summary of offers, including all-important contact information.
To ensure that the system provides everything real estate professionals want, the co-founders talked to some of the biggest brokerages. The brokerages are providing three to five agents (including young tech-savvy agents) to help test and perfect the product, Brind says. The beta version will be available at the end of April. Testing will be done in May and June.
The co-founders also worked with RECO to ensure the process complies. (RECO enforces rules and regulations but does not endorse or partner with outside companies.)
DealDocket.com is not only for multiple offers. It’s equally useful for one-offer deals, simplifying the process for agents throughout Ontario, Brind says. Come July 1, brokerages will still have to store offers. One house could have 10 different sign-backs, which can otherwise be cumbersome to keep track of and store, Brind says.
Agents across the rest of country, as well as the United States, can also take advantage of DealDocket.com to streamline their process.
DealDocket.com is free for consumers and buyers’ agents. Until July 1, 2016, it is also being offered free to listing brokerages. After that date, a fee will apply to data storage only.
One hundred and fifty consumers have already signed up on the website and queries are received on a daily basis from agents. “We set out to change the industry and design a process agents will want to use. DealDocket.com is something agents and consumers want,” Brind says. “This is the future of real estate.”
Connie Adair is a contributing writer for REM.
