Title Company Reinvents How to Collaborate with Real Estate Agents to Save Time

Dotloop’s unique cooperative features are allowing Michigan’s Transnation Title Agency to offer extra services to real estate agents at no extra charge.

It’s called “the network effect,” a computer science concept that says that every time you add someone to your network, the value of the network increases for everyone who’s already in it. This phenomenon is one of the reasons dotloop was designed to be a standardized platform.

Dotloop connects each party in a real estate transaction under a comprehensive, end-to-end system to get deals done quickly and accurately. Not only does this make it easy for agents, brokers, vendors, and clients to see what they need to be doing, but all parties can monitor the progress of the deal. The collaborative nature of the platform means that each new member increases the value of dotloop for every existing customer.

A real-life example of this is Transnation Title of West Michigan. For more than a year the company has been working to get more overall collaboration efficiency with real estate brokers and their agents using dotloop. That’s right. A title company working with real estate professionals using a transaction management platform to make for a seamless partnership. This connection has improved the transaction experience, so much so, that Transnation now offers certified dotloop training.

Technology Is Marketing

Real estate brokers and agents are aware that the image they project to clients can make the difference between getting high ratings online and personal referrals, and failing to make a positive impression. Every touchpoint with the client is marketing, including a brokerage’s digital technology. The look, the functionality, and the ease-of-use speak volumes to customers about their agent and his or her brokerage.

As agents vie to establish their value, providing technology that’s designed with the client in mind goes a long way toward giving white glove service.

According to Mashburn, being able to use dotloop was another benefit of working with an agent who was experienced, effective, and trustworthy.

A Collaboration That’s Creating Better Efficiency and Productivity

While title companies have an irreplaceable role in completing the sale of a house (ensuring legal ownership of a property and providing escrow), they have lagged behind brokerages in the use of technology. This was something the leadership at Transnation wanted to remedy.

When they began to explore how they could better use the latest transaction solutions to become a more proactive partner with real estate agents, they discovered the unique benefits of using dotloop. The comprehensive nature of the platform allowed for a smoother collaboration along with transaction efficiency.

The agents can utilize Transnation’s TransDirect services to clear the path from contract to close. TransDirect allows for early collaboration on the transaction and reduces the number of emails an agent receives, freeing up their time to aggressively market their listings and go after new business. With Transnation being a trusted vendor already in their loop, agents don’t need to worry about sharing client information (the title company already has it) and they have real time oversight at every step in the process.

Transnation soon found that those agents who were the most proficient at using dotloop turned out to be Transnation’s most efficient customers. So the logical next step was to offer that training themselves.

Why It Makes Sense For A Title Company To Teach Real Estate Agents To Use Dotloop

The idea for this unusual initiative came from Keria Shineldecker, a Transnation representative looking for ways to offer more services to agents. She had become familiar with the basic version of dotloop while working with agents to meet their title insurance needs. But she soon discovered that with the premium version of the platform she could take several time-consuming tasks off her agents’ plates.

These are tasks that agents are happy to turn over to a trusted partner, one who is already authorized to handle their clients’ most sensitive information.

Convinced of dotloop’s ability to enhance their business, Transnation went through the process to become a dotloop Trusted Service Provider (TSP). In this role, Shineldecker began to partner with more agents through the platform and soon realized that many of them were not taking full advantage of dotloop’s capabilities. They were using its basic functions but not getting the full benefit of its more advanced features.

In other words, they needed more training.

So Shineldecker took the classes to become a Certified Dotloop Trainer, an unusual role for someone working for a title company. But she immediately saw that it was a win-win situation. Agents who took her classes became much more effective at using the transaction platform. And when they did, they were able to work more closely with Transnation, allowing the title company to provide more services that took administrative tasks off their hands.

The Benefit Of An Outside Perspective

Shineldecker’s students soon discovered that there was an additional advantage to taking dotloop classes from her. Not being an agent, she was able to approach the transaction process from a purely systematic perspective.

Shineldecker has been in demand as a dotloop instructor, with a full class schedule in her company’s West Michigan region. But she’s also been filling requests to teach as far away as New England.

Only Dotloop Offers This Kind Of Collaboration

For real estate agents, the transaction process not only involves shepherding data and vendors through a tightly scheduled sequence, but they must also be sure they are completing all of it in a way that’s legally compliant.

A patchwork transaction solution (where data must be imported or reentered between multiple programs) not only requires more work, but allows inaccuracies to creep in at the “seams.” These are the points where, for example, information is imported into a document editor and then is exported to an e-sign platform. Each of them is an opportunity for data to be corrupted and the deal slowed down.

To make this process seamless from beginning to end (without the need to import, export or archive data), dotloop created the industry’s only collaborative platform. Each party to the real estate deal can complete their part of the transaction while seeing who-needs-to-do-what-next to keep to the schedule. The brokerage has complete oversight of the process and is fully protected by all documentation being created, edited, signed and stored in a legally compliant environment.

Brokers and their agents who use dotloop can minimize the amount of time devoted to administrative tasks, freeing up time to better serve their customers and build their business.

The Competitive Advantage Of Collaborative Technology

With real estate becoming increasingly competitive, professionals involved in all aspects of the industry are looking for ways to increase their efficiency and make themselves more competitive.

As Shineldecker and her clients have discovered, an essential component is a platform that contains the transaction from end-to-end, allowing for full collaboration by all parties involved.

But Shineldecker also points out that dotloop is giving home buyers and sellers what they want: transparency into their transactions and ease-of-use. A home sale or purchase is a huge disruption to life. People want to know exactly where their deal is, who’s working on it, and when it will be completed. Dotloop gives them that in a simple, mobile-first app.

Shineldecker already sees technology bringing big changes to the real estate business. Brokerages and title companies that don’t innovate will struggle to compete. But the companies that are willing to stay abreast of technology and use it to their advantage are the ones that will thrive.

It’s why she looked for new ways to use dotloop’s one-of-a-kind platform.