RE/MAX Alpine Realty in
I’m sharing with you today, our concept of the Virtual Office at our iREALTY office. You may find this helpful for your own office, or you may like what such a Brokerage offers you as an agent, and you want to find out more about this RE/MAX iREALTY office. Regardless, I hope it helps and I look forward to discussing it with you.
The Virtual Office is a new concept and requires some explaining. First, our Virtual Office does indeed have a physical office space. What makes it Virtual is that we have minimal office space. Agents can drop in to work, scan, meet clients and fill in and sign document paperlessly directly on our specially designed monitor. What our space is not, is a very large workplace with 1000’s of sq ft of space, with every agent claiming their own office or personal area. It seems wasteful and inefficient for agents to utilize their office 2 hours a day, and then remain empty and unused for the other 6 hours. Paying for empty space is hardly resourceful or good economics. When walking through any large real estate office, it is the norm to see less than 25% of the offices being utilized at any one time, which begs the question, is there not a more efficient and cost effective manner of operation?
When I ask such questions, I am told that the agents require their offices for the following reasons:
- -a place to get work done.
- -a place to meet clients.
- -a place to store their documents securely.
I have no problem with these answers as this helps my business tremendously ;-)
At iREALTY, agents work from wherever it is most convenient for them. At a clients house, a coffee shop, or at home. Some prefer to work from the office, and are welcome to work at the drop in centre in the office at their convenience. When they are not there, the space is utilized by other agents. Why not share the space? The very first thing I learned when I started in real estate 10 years ago was that ‘You can’t sell real estate in the office, so get out of it.” If this is was preached 10 years ago, why so many agents are still paying unnecessary fees for office space for themselves and their colleagues?
What else did we have? Oh right. How can agents meet with clients without their office? Again, how about where it is convenient for the client. At their house, their work, a coffee shop, the library, etc. Our clients can also be met at the office if it is convenient for them, and agents may utilize the office tools available, such as the “Write-on Monitor” that allows clients to mark up contracts, initial and sign paperlessly, directly on the screen.
The last reason stated for the requirement of agent offices, is the most antiquated of all. The need for secure document storage. It should be known by now, that paper documents are simply not secure, period. Paper can be temporarily misplaced or permanently lost. They can be burned in fires or harmed by sprinklers or smoke damage. Floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes all are causes of damage to buildings and documents stored inside.
More common dangers of paper documents are the accidental viewing by inappropriate eyes, the realization that the document is at a different location from where you are, and very common now days, theft. Personal information contained on many real estate documents help identity thieves build credible fake identification and is a very profitable business. Real Estate documents are in high demand.
For all of these reasons, real estate documents should not be stored on paper, but securely on servers that are dedicated specifically for the purpose of safe storage. Data is password protected, encrypted, and are stored on servers that have redundant back ups and is often behind bullet proof, fire proof and tamper proof barriers.
Plus a Bonus! Secure online data storage allows the convenience of accessibility by any authorized party, (agent, client, broker, and administrators) from anywhere, 24 hours, 7days a week. You’ll never be caught without a crucial document again.
RE/MAX Alpine Realty in
