Tag docusign transaction rooms | The Boutique Real Estate Group

September 14, 2017 by The Boutique Real Estate Group

How to Create a Tech-Enhanced Brokerage that Wins

By Raj Qsar, Principal | Owner The Boutique Real Estate Group

The real estate industry is changing. Hand-written offers, filing cabinets and printers are a thing of the past. Mobile offices, instantaneous responses, and data analytics are here to stay. For a brokerage to survive in this new digital age, their agents need to be equipped with state of the art tools at their fingertips.

Now that the days of drowning in paper are over, it seems like a new real estate technology pops up every day and it can be easy to get overwhelmed and lost in all the options. So how do you differentiate the useful from the useless and figure out which tools are right for you and your brokerage?

I spent a lot of time thinking about this very question for my team at The Boutique Real Estate Group. I started this brokerage with the primary objective of providing a world class experience for our clients. I have known from day one that in order to deliver on this goal my agents would need the right tech tools to do high quality work and provide a seamless experience to their clients.

I invest in technology that will improve the agent experience and the customer experience. I have developed these 5 “rules” for picking the right technology to develop a tech-centric brokerage:

1. Set a vision for your brokerage

Spend the time to brainstorm and define what kind of brokerage you want to be. What is important to you? What does your brokerage stand for? And how will technology help you achieve this? Clearly define it. Write it down. Memorize it. Now every time you look at a potential tool ask yourself if it fits into your tech framework and if not – pass!

2. Culture is everything

You’ve defined your vision, but how do you bring it to life? The answer is – culture. Don’t underestimate the power of culture to get everyone in your office to achieve your vision. It is up to you and your leadership team to develop a culture that embraces technology and values change.

3. Mobile first

Any technology that you consider for your brokerage MUST be mobile and tablet friendly. Agents, brokers and the modern customer need location independence – the freedom to work and sign on the fly. In the high speed world we live in nothing kills a deal like time.

4. Integrating gives you magic powers

The real secret to the getting the most out of your technology investment is integrations. When data is seamlessly shared from platform to platform, your agents or transactions coordinators don’t need to waste time on tedious data entry. This can improve accuracy and allow your agents to focus on their clients.

5. Pick a partner

In the end, when you select the technology provider – you are selecting a partner that will be with you for a long time. Make sure to pick a company that shares your values, that will answer the phone when you call and that is working to build the same future for real estate that you are. Don’t necessarily pick a company just for your needs today, but for your needs in 5, 10, 15 years…

With these rules in mind, I have built a tech-enhanced brokerage that is leading the way into real estate’s digital future and is fully armed to deliver high quality service. Now that I’ve shared my secrets, please add your own in the comments section below.

Congratulations! You’ve already taken the first step to properly preparing your brokerage for success in the digital age. Next up: navigating the hundreds of options out there – good luck!

Raj Qsar, Principal and Owner of The Boutique Real Estate Group, was named The Real Estate Influencer of the Year 2017 by Inman News. He has cracked the code for creating a tech-enhanced brokerage and The Boutique was named Most Innovative Brokerage. Find out more about what the Boutique Real Estate Group is doing by connecting with Raj on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.

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September 6, 2015 by The Boutique Real Estate Group

DocuSign for Real Estate with The Boutique Real Estate Group

The Boutique Real Estate Group

Corona del Mar, CA

“If you follow us around any real estate trade show, we spend a lot of time talking to vendors about their products. We constantly research better tools and technology to help us better serve clients. Our favorite part is taking a new listing that’s a little ugly and making it look amazing. That’s something we do really well.” THE MARKET – Many of The Boutique’s Orange County clients fall into the luxury market, but every client deserves luxury service and marketing. THE CULTURE – The Boutique spurs collaboration through technology and culture. THE MAN – “I don’t know how many hours I put in. It doesn’t feel like work. That’s one of the elements I’ve always enjoyed.”

Tech-Enhanced Service

The Boutique invests heavily in telling the story of every home, believing beautiful design evokes a connection between client, agent, and the home-buying process. The Boutique focuses on providing best-in-class service through a combination of great habits, great marketing, and bleeding-edge technology. Incredible service and marketing are key ingredients in the success of The Boutique. And a large amount of credit belongs to technology and systems that support: Convenience – “If you give clients a choice—do the paperwork now at the house, or wait and I’ll come by tomorrow? One hundred percent of my clients say right now. And they’re not all 30 years old.” Service – “It makes your job, your agent’s job, and your client’s life easier. You’ll never hear me say to a client, I don’t have that right now. When I’m at my office again, I’ll get back to you.” The Customer Experience – “Emailing back and forth—that’s not a great way to send documents to my clients. DocuSign transaction sharing tools do a much better job.” ROI – “People often hire me—and I get recommended to people—because the technology that we use makes the experience a lot easier.”

68% OF AGENTS PREDICT TRANSACTIONS WILL BECOME ENTIRELY MOBILE (BUT ONLY 61% OF THEIR BROKERAGES PROVIDE MOBILE TRANSACTION MANAGEMENT).

“If you’re not willing to invest in your business there’s plenty of your competitors out there that will.”

Top 4 Reasons to LOVE DocuSign

1. LEVEL OF SERVICE: “We just believe clients want what they want when they ask for it. So, if I have the ability to answer the phone and take their question, I should probably have access to a tool that allows me to find their answer or expedite a document right there on the spot.”

2. THE CLIENT EXPERIENCE: “I do everything possible to be accommodating and make the transaction smooth for my clients. That’s really the role that DocuSign plays. The Transaction Rooms collaboration tools and transparency make it easy and convenient for clients.”

3. THE AGENT EXPERIENCE: “DocuSign makes it easy for agents to do their job from anywhere, at anytime. If a broker is not focused on providing agents with convenient tools that help them be more productive—that’s a great way to lose them.”

4. LIABILITY: “Because DocuSign lets the broker manage the transaction from the back end, you’ve got the compliance issue covered.”

in Orange County Social Media / Orange County Technology / Random Orange County 0 comments

August 12, 2014 by The Boutique Real Estate Group

A Day in the Life of Raj Qsar | www.Realtor.com

By: Chrystal Caruthers

Raj Qsar is the principal owner of The Boutique Real Estate Group, an independent real estate brokerage that integrates mobile technology, brilliant design & creative storyboarding into their real estate transactions. His Southern California offices specialize in luxury homes and has expanded into the coastal region of Newport Beach. In his words, here is a peek into a day in his life.

Walk us through a typical day in your life.

My day typically starts at 5 a.m., sometimes a bit earlier. I just get up out of bed. No alarm. I grab my phone and head downstairs. I am totally a morning person. I make a protein shake and jump on my laptop and scroll through emails, Twitter, Instagram and then Facebook. I usually check analytics on our website and social channels, and look at ad campaign results.

On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, I am at the Crossfit gym by 6 a.m. After the gym, I am at home helping get the kiddos—Hannah, Emma, and Cooper—get ready for school. Breakfast, clothes, homework review, and they are off to school by 8:30 a.m., and I am off to one of our offices. At 8 p.m. or so, I start shutting down.

Phone / tablet / laptop / desktop of choice?

iPhone 5S, iPad Air, MacBook Pro with Retina Display, iMac 27″ on my desk. We are an Apple company.

Apps you can’t live without?

DocuSign, DocuSign Transaction Room, DropBox, Facebook, Instagram, and recently I have been using Refresh as I am meeting with so many people.

Emails sent per day? Received?

My Google app business account said I received 7,000 emails last month, and I sent out 1,400.

Tell us about your market.

We tend to market homes above $1 million. It was not intentional, but our services are considered luxury and tend to attract those types of buyers and sellers.

Real estate marketing has truly evolved over the last 10 years. We have developed a comprehensive strategy which showcases our client’s home through real-life video—actual movies—amazing photography, 360 HD V-tours, individual property websites for each home, staging and interior design, custom graphics and design, and a social media content strategy that reaches people on a global scale.

We have complete control over our designs, feel and strategy when marketing luxury real estate. When surfing the web for real estate, our listings stand out: they have a unique look and feel, and buyers recognize our listings as being “boutique-ivied”—and we believe every home has a story.

Total number of transactions you worked on last year? Expected this year?

I personally did about 40 transactions last year with an average sales price of about $2 million. I will do about the same this year, but our price point has moved up. Look for our new office in the beach city of Corona Del Mar in Newport Beach as we launch into the coastal Orange County real estate market.

What made you choose a career in real estate?

After watching an agent “sell” our first home, I knew there had to be a better way. I personally held the open houses, I printed the flyers, I wrote the content. That was all pre-social.

It was so massively complicated, and we were so in the dark the whole way through. I had an “Ah, ha!” moment back in 2008 as technology and social media found real estate. We knew there had to be a better way of not only marketing real estate but also of managing the mountain of paperwork and people involved in a real estate transaction.

So in a sense, our team has digitized the real estate experience. You will never find our clients running to a fax machine and most likely never even pick up a pen to sign anything. We are a paperless office, completely mobile and can run an entire real estate transaction from our iPads and phones. Our technology does not require our clients to be tech savvy—it only requires our agents to understand the benefits of technology and to implement that technology with our clients.

What’s the biggest challenge the real estate industry faces today?

One of the biggest challenges in real estate today is that everyone seems to be swimming in the same pool. There is no original creative. Nobody wants to tell a story. There is an old quote, “Those who tell the stories rule the world.” What I love is when I meet someone, and they just instantly pick up with a story. We believe this type of mindset is so needed in our industry.

What advice would you give to new agents?

The advice I would give to a new agent entering into the world of real estate would be to join an amazing team. And I do not just mean a busy team, but an amazing, highly-respected team where you can learn, experience and absorb everything and anything that is real estate. That includes not only all the “beautiful and shiny” things that real estate offers, but also all the challenges that real estate brings each and everyday: from contracts, lender guidelines and appraisals to staging, photography, pre- and post-processing of photos, editing video, print campaigns and the entire social media and web content strategy.

Who inspires you the most?

Jesus Christ because he changed my heart.

Link to original article.

Previous “A Day In The Life” articles:

Sarah Schnell Jones

Carol Wolfe

Tiffany Kjellander

Geeky Girl Laurie Davis

Sam DeBord

Bill Lublin

in Orange County Luxury Real Estate / Orange County Real Estate / Random Orange County 0 comments

May 29, 2014 by The Boutique Real Estate Group

Upgrading The Real Estate Experience | 3 Tech Tips from Raj Qsar

This week, we have a guest post from Raj Qsar, principal and owner of The Boutique Real Estate Group in Orange County, CA, a contributor for Inman News, and one of the Top 100 Most Influential Real Estate Leaders for 2013. His company is one of the most dominant real estate firms in Orange County. They focus heavily on utilizing technology to provide more complete and convenient service to all of their customers.

Digitize the Real Estate Experience

We had out “ah-ha” moment back in 2008 as technology and social media found Real Estate. We knew there had to be a better way of not only marketing residential real estate but there also had to be a better way of managing the mountain of paperwork and people involved in a real estate transaction. So in a sense our team has digitized the real estate experience.

Do not get me wrong….We are not robots. We still care, are empathetic and truly love our clients. And because of this love and passion for our clients you will never find our clients running to a fax machine and most likely never even pick up a pen to sign anything. We are a 99% paperless office. Our agents & staff are completely mobile and can run an entire real estate transaction from our iPads and iPhones.

Our technology does not require our clients to be tech savvy – it only requires our agents to understand the benefits of technology and to implement that technology with our clients. Our commitment to technology has even allowed us to bring in an in-house Chief Technology Officer, Jeremy Lehman, who can train our agents and enable them to provide this luxury service to our clients.

Connect More Intimately With Clients

The world is now on the web – advances in technology are changing the way businesses interact with clients and we understand this process. People are on their smartphones, heads down and focused. The next time you are in line at your local coffee shop just look around. Everyone will be head down and in their phone checking emails, scrolling through a news feed on a social platform or just listening to music. We know we need to be where our clients are, so we can be at the forefront of their minds, and more importantly, not forgotten.

Our clients are on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Linked In, Pinterest, Twitter and Four Square. However, the Facebook user is different than the Linked In user, who is totally different than the individual on Instagram.

Learn more about social media for real estate marketing here.

The Facebook user is more likely to be someone you know so the posts there are geared more like a friend to friend discussion and allows for a targeted ad campaign. The posts on Twitter are 140 characters so its “in & out” with a specific message to an audience. Instagram is one of our favorites and allows a more intimate connection. Newer platforms likeRESAAS allow us to engage with an international audience of real estate professionals. You will see that our content strategy is different depending on the platform, who we are trying to reach, and what message we are trying to push.

Streamline the Process

When it comes to in-transaction management the mountain of paperwork that needs to happen is insane. You have buyers, sellers, lender, escrow, title, transaction coordinators, home inspectors, termite inspectors and many others who are involved someway or somehow in your transaction. They all have their paperwork and it all needs to be reviewed, understood and communicated to everyone in the transaction.

How do we create our paperwork? What do we create it on? How do we eSign? How do we store this info? How do we share it with everyone? This is the beauty of technology: our ability to create a REAL estate experience like no other with our clients and co-operating brokers.

This is real estate’s new normal for communicating and engaging with our clients to create a streamlined, easy to use & understand process. It did not happen overnight but required dedication, time, and resources devoted to tech to make it happen.

Technology allows us to be a smart office, engage with our clients in positive manner and allow us to create an experience that is evergreen.

You can connect with us at www.theboutiquere.com.

If you’re interested in learning more about Raj, check out our From the Trenches interview with him.

You can find Raj on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, and Pinterest.

in Orange County Luxury Real Estate / Orange County Real Estate / Orange County Social Media / Orange County Technology / Random Orange County 0 comments