Archive for category: Real Estate

Calling all agents – we have a situation on our hands. A recent website, http://bidcomhomes.com/, has taken the real estate world by surprise, and is changing the structures of how you guys are making your commission.

Once upon a time, Giorgio Lupinacci asked some of his real estate agent friends if they’d lower their commission rate when he was looking at selling his property. To his surprise, none of them agreed to his proposition, so he took matters into his own hands and started bigcomhomes.com – a website where agents bid their commission rates on user-submitted listings in hopes to find an agent who’s willing to provide their clients with a more discounted rate than the standard format in BC: “seven per cent on the first $100,000 and 3.5 per cent on the remainder of the sale price”.

This website’s concept is raising some pulses in the real estate game, as it’s directly threatening the more or less monopolized MLS system, and the accustomed livelihood of many agents. Agents, we want to know what you think of this game changing website. Will only “certain types” of agents be using this service, or could this lead to the creation of an even more competitive market? Does this platform show potential for expansion? How would you feel about commission rates being more competitive altogether, should this concept catch on?

Let us know your answers on Twitter by using the hashtag #commissionproblems, or by commenting below. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

photo courtesy of CarbonNYC

Okay, so a month ago canadian mortgage laws were announced to be changed in a very drastic way. We even wrote a post about it –> http://www.realestateaccountingsoftware.ca/industry-news/buyers-beware/. Read it. You know you want to. Anyhow…when we originally wrote this post we did so in the form of a warning, with even the title being Buyers Beware. However, our warning, nor any other warnings, seem to be reaching the public on a large enough scale, which is a concerning notion.

The impending changes were announced June 20th, and when a survey took place between June 29th and July 4th, it unveiled that only 45% of Canadians are aware of the changes taking place. Not even half the country’s aware, which is quite upsetting…maybe the government needs to give our marketing guys a call to help get the word out when things this important happen. You’d think that there would be bigger efforts put forth to see that these changes were broadly understood…but apparently not.

To give you guys a re-cap, on July 9th, the maximum amortization length has been shortened from a 30 year maximum, to a 25 year maximum, with lenders also being limited to only providing home equity loans that cover 80% of the home’s value, as opposed to 85%. These little increments of 5 are a lot scarier than you’d think, especially for new home buyers, who are (those who know about these changes anyways) in relative awe at how much these changes will affect them. Not only do new buyers have to come up with an extra 5% for their down payment – which, if you were looking at purchasing a $500,000 home, your down payment down payment amount just increased from $75,000 to $100,000., and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it – but they also need to pay back this amount 5 years faster than before. The whole situation’s frankly sticky, especially since the government’s reason for doing this is to attempt home ownerships from being drawn out and to aid citizens in achieving their long-term goals…which is seemingly ironic, considering that these new laws will inhibit people from even beginning to reach their long term goals.

Feel free to share this article with fellow Canadians to ensure that the word is out about these changes to that buyers can be prepared. If you have any other comments we’d love to hear them, so join the conversation with us on Twitter.

Interview with Corinne Lyall
Broker/Owner of Calgary’s Royal LePage Benchmark

Why did you decide to switch transaction management providers?

We had been dissatisfied for quite some time with our original document management provider. The system had difficulties integrating with our transaction management/accounting software and we had to almost check every deal to ensure it was imported correctly. When we were told that our transaction management provider was selling the business and that we were going to have to switch systems anyway, we really thought we should research what other options were available.

What were you looking for in a transaction and document management provider?

Our office administration staff and I had some lengthy discussions about what we were looking for from our accounting system, and really it came down to efficiency, a good document management program, and a simple conveyancing system.  We wanted something that we didn’t have to hire someone else to manage, a system easy for the agents and office staff to use… and we really didn’t want to have to import from other systems or perform duplicate entry.

What differences have you experienced since you’ve “Made the Switch” to Enviromint?

We certainly have received many less complaints with the new system – if any – and we were impressed at how Marc and the team tried to make the actual conversion process as smooth as possible. They did a great job converting us and they really took the time to make sure everything was running smoothly with our administration team before we officially launched it to the agents.

Since the transition, it has been much easier to manage our transactions and we feel secure knowing that at the end of the day we weren’t going to lose sight of missing documents or commissions.

The level of customer service we experienced from the team over at Enviromint from the first day we did a walk through demo of their solution was very detailed and thorough.  I think the first demo was over 2 hours long mainly because they patiently answered all of our questions!  Comparatively from our previous experience with our transaction management software, we are able to get a hold of someone almost immediately when there is a problem.  That is appreciated since our transactions have to be dealt with in a timely manner.

Did your agents have a good experience making the switch?

Everyone knows how hard it can be to change. It’s not something anyone likes because naturally we get comfortable with doing things a certain way. It was a big concern of mine that not only would we have a lot to learn on the administration side, but we would also have a lot of training to do with the agents. Again, we were pleasantly surprised. The amount of positive feedback we had coming in was reassuring. We heard everything from it’s easy to use, to the document storage – and conveyancing notes – have saved my butt.

What advice do you have for other broker/owners who are thinking about switching providers?

If you’re thinking about switching providers for any reason…customer service, product limitations, whatever, it’s not in your head.  You probably can do it more efficiently and there are better service providers out there. Specifically, I have enjoyed how responsive the Enviromint team has been in responding and molding the system to our needs – each brokerage and industry community manages their transactions differently and it is important to us that it fits our individual requirements.  It seems like such a time consuming and arduous process, but I am very happy we made the transition.