2 Months Post Electronic Document Signing Has Come into Law – Are You More Paperless?

All good things come in time and as you likely known, Ontario has joined the rest of Canada amending the Electronic Commerce Act to allow for the electronic signing of documents in real estate. You can reference the Act here: Electronic Commerce Act, 2000, S.O. 2000, c. 17 | Ontario.ca http://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/00e17#s31s1.

In a nutshell, what this means is that if you work in real estate your clients can now sign documents, such as purchase and sale agreements, listing agreements, representation agreements and more, electronically. Many real estate documents involve offers and counter offers and so this change will make negotiating real estate contracts for easier and less user intensive.

Real estate processes and workflows have largely gone in the digital direction in recent years. So many activities, from property searches to performing due diligence, largely occur online and results are stored electronically. The real estate industry can now join the many others, like the mortgage industry, in a move towards paperless.

Now, instead of having to create paper files for customers and keep track of signed documents, you can ask your client to sign electronically and these documents can be stored on your computer along with other digital files you have associated to the client.

Some real estate sales professionals have commented in social groups that they enjoy their face-to-face interaction of meeting with clients and fear that electronic document signing could reduce this aspect of the real estate sales process. However, taking advantage of electronic signing of real estate documents doesn’t mean that you have to have them electronically signed by email.

When meeting a new client and collecting identification and other pertinent documents, you can use mobile apps for real estate like ViMO to review the documents together on your tablet with the client signing on the tablet, vs. having pre-prepared forms.

This change also makes it much easier to stay organized and put together records. You know that often when meeting a client and reviewing pre-prepared forms, clients will want to make changes and adjustments. Now you can simply apply those changes to the documents directly on your tablet vs. marking up all of the documents, turning them into a scribble pad.

While some real estate sales professionals are buzzing with excitement over the changes and are taking steps to go paperless, others are not even aware of the change to the law and all the potential benefits that it means.

Do you see the changes to the Electronic Commerce Act as a positive change for the real estate industry? Tweet us at @myvimo or comment on Facebook at www.facebook.com/myvimo.

Interested in signing documents electronically – find out about the ViMO mobile app for real estate by visiting www.myvimo.ca.