The Blog

If you are a new agent or even if you have been a California real estate agent for a long time, you’ve probably experienced it: the homebuyer or home seller who believes that the life of a real estate agent is easy, and that we all drive fancy cars and barely do any work (insert ROFL emoji). The life of a real estate agent in California is hard; you are a buyer’s agent, a seller’s agent, sometimes a therapist and an accountant, a marketing specialist, a business manager, an errand boy or girl, and so much more.

With those thoughts in mind, we at Transaction 911, have put together this list of 5 tools that will make your real estate life just a little bit easier. Check ‘em out! You’ll be glad you did!

1. GSuite.  Did you know that Google will actually manage your domain for you? This means that you can actually transfer an existing domain to Gsuite and then check your email with your branded domain in Gmail. With Gsuite, you’ll also get the calendar, docs, sheets, slides, and photos among other apps. Quite using your @gmail, @yahoo, @hotmail, or @aol email and brand yourself within Gsuite. Not only will you have many great apps for desktop and mobile devices under one one roof, but you’ll also look more polished with a branded domain. If you don’t have a domain of your own yet, you can buy one here. 
2. Zipforms. If you are a single agent, you can access Zipforms, via car.org. But, if you are a broker or office manager, you may want to consider buying a membership to zipforms, whereby all of your agents access their contracts and documents under your account. This is great because not only does it create a more efficient experience for your agents, but it also helps administrative staff to have access to all files, without having to track down login information for individual agents. Also, if an agent flies the coop, you’ll have the files you need to be fully compliant.
3. Slack. This is my new crush. It took me a while to get on board, but once I took 5 minutes to set it up, I saw that there is a HUGE benefit to agents and small agent teams to using Slack for project and transaction management. Just create a separate channel for each property listing or for each client, and then invite team members to join channels in order to keep the transaction flowing quickly and efficiently without having to spend hours on the phone.
4. Dropbox. Yes, dropbox has been around for a long time. If you are not using it or another similar product, it might be time to get on board. At Transaction 911, because we are in California, we had always stated that we wanted to be able to work from home in a pinch if our brick-and-mortar office building burned to the ground. While we hope it never happens, we wanted to be able to pivot quickly. COVID-19 tested that for us, and with dropbox and other file storage systems, it didn’t really matter where we were or even if a computer got stolen, we could be up and running anywhere around the world.
5. Meet Edgar. If you are wondering, who is Edgar? Now might be the time to find out. Meet Edgar is a social media management and scheduling app that we just love. Of course, when working on your marketing calendar and social media scheduling, you do have choices. However, we’ve found MeetEdgar to be among the most easy to use and reliable. Plus, they have a super great newsletter with good tips and tools.

With COVID-19 causing us all to change how we work, we thought that California real estate agents might like to look at some new tools that may help increase efficiency during these unique and challenging times. If you or anyone you know needs a professional TC team, please feel free to contact our office!