7 Questions Developers Ask About Digital Contracts
Spark’s Contracts Manager, Alison Sung, on the most common questions asked about making the switch to Digital Contracts.
As the Contracts Manager at Spark, I am a huge advocate of using digital contracts in real estate. Our Digital Contracts Feature is one of our users’ favourite features because it helps save time and creates a more environmentally friendly contract process for developers and brokers alike. When our clients have explored using digital contracts, a few common questions have come up around making the switch.
To shed some light on the topic and to help reduce even more paper waste, here are the 7 most common questions developers have asked when making the switch to digital contracts.
- Why should I switch from paper contracts to digital ones?
If you’ve ever written a real estate contract before then you’ll know how often mistakes can happen that need to be corrected, reprinted, rechecked and set back.
Digital contracts reduce the potential for error by ensuring that all properties are correctly filled out before allowing completion. By integrating them directly with your sales platform (like Spark), contract generation is streamlined and requires only a fraction of the time to populate compared to their paper-based ancestors.
In New Development, our customers are often managing several transactions at once so these problems can be compounded if you’re still writing your contracts with pen and paper.
2. How much time will I need to make this switch?
The night before your project launches is not the best time to implement digital contracts!
When making the switch over to our Digital Contracts Feature, we really want to make sure that you’re set up as well as possible to start using the program right away. Everyone learns at their own pace, but we recommend giving yourself at least a week or two prior to project launch to ensure you have more than enough time to learn the new system.
3. Are digital signatures legally equivalent to hard signatures? How can I verify the identity of the person using a digital signature?
Digital signatures have the same legal status as handwritten signatures in 180 countries, including the USA and Canada so that answer is almost certainly yes! We recommend that before using our Digital Signatures tool, check that the jurisdiction that your development will be selling in considers digital signatures to be at the same level as handwritten signatures.
4. But how can you guarantee the digital signature is coming from the right person?
Spark’s ID Verification feature adheres to KYC compliance standards and uses biometric technology to quickly vet purchasers and prevent potential fraud. Spark supports more than 3,500 ID types across 200 countries to allow your team to focus on the fundamental client experience and building meaningful relationships with your clients.
5. What’s the best way to manage digital contracts?
In my opinion, choosing someone to be the point person on your team to oversee the digital contract process is always a good idea. It allows for even more streamlined communication, especially during a busy high-volume sales launch. Many of our clients appoint an internal role sometimes called a ‘Verifier’ or ‘Contract Administrator’, particularly when there’s a larger sales team who are new to a fully digital sales process.
While our team is very hands-on throughout our entire process, we still encourage that our clients designate someone internally to provide even more sense of comfort for the rest of their internal team.
6. I currently use a paper process for contracts because I want to have control over what is mapped. How can I carry that over with digital contracts?
This is a really common question that we get and we hear your concerns.
Contrary to popular belief, you can still have the same level of control with digital contracts as you would with paper contracts. Spark’s Digital Contracts Feature allows the user to customize what is mapped into the contract, such as items like strata fees and storage lockers, and Spark’s system will be able to streamline that mapping process on behalf of the user.
Overall, you’ll still achieve the same level of thoroughness as paper contracts but with an increase in efficiency on top of that. As a bonus, you’ll save a ton on paper! (Hooray for the environment!)
7. Digital contracts are amazing! Why didn’t I make this switch earlier?
We’re not sure either, but we’re glad when companies do!
