What is Realtair & What can it Do?

There is no question digital technology is transforming our industry. But what does that mean for your business?

Like so many of the world’s most innovative disruptors, real estate PropTech, Realtair was born out of challenge, frustration and opportunity. Founder and CEO of Realtair, Peter Matthews started in real estate at the age of 19 and during the past 29 years has served the industry and clients in a range of roles. The main impediments he saw to success were the escalating costs of administration to meet new consumer demand and human error at the Agency Agreement stage. So, the way he saw it, the key challenges were centred on compliance, time, money and effort.

The opportunity was for an agent to showcase a point of difference to competitors by becoming a digital agent with the ability to almost instantly produce and deliver brilliant information and resources to consumers who want answers quickly – not tomorrow or next week.

Peter developed a middleware platform made from a unique combination of software and off shore resources to create enormous efficiencies and value to real estate agents and businesses. The year was 2016 and that platform was called Realtair. Four years on and the revolutionary real estate software produced by Realtair has been thoroughly tried, tested and given a massive thumbs up by some of the industry’s most successful real estate professionals.

So what does Realtair’s digital platform actually do? And what are the benefits to you and your business?

Realtair’s primary focus is to provide real estate sales agents with powerful, easy to use tools they can use remotely and on the go. Importantly, each tool has been designed by real estate agents, meaning they understand the needs and wants of agents and consumers of real estate like only someone who has worked on the frontline could.

Evolving over time, the toolbox today consists of the following digital resources:

• Pitch
• Sign
• Home Passport
• Flow
• Web Books
• AuctionNow
• Agent Passport

Accessible with one login and password for all products, these resources are designed to help agents throughout the journey to a sale, from prospecting to listed to settled and to maintain the relationship with a buyer well beyond the date they receive the keys to their new property.

The Realtair advantage can be broken down into 10 key steps.

1. The Price Update

The price update is an excellent way to engage with consumers in your local community and business development area. A significant advantage we have as agents is the information we can share that can’t be drawn from data alone. We apply our own skills, techniques, understanding, experience and intuition to the data to provide consumers with far richer information than they could hope to receive from data alone. The only challenge has always been the time it takes to pull a comprehensive price update report together, with most agents who do them regularly, relying on administrative support.

This is where Realtair’s aptly named Pitch comes in. Pitch allows you to create a very comprehensive price update report in real-time within minutes, without administrative support. As a middleware platform, Realtair draws information from various sources, making it both reliable and current.

The Pitch price update is so quick and easy to create, that agents who use it provide every property owner in their community with an annual report, enabling them to build a solid pipeline of potential business and create a reason to call every owner, making cold calls a thing of the past.

As a business owner or sales manager of a larger team, an added bonus is quality control and consistency.

2. Pitching For The Business

Realtair’s Pitch takes the old paper-based pre-listing kit into the digital age. Custom branded with a choice of two modern design templates that can be further customised any way you choose, Pitch allows you to automatically populate a listing proposal, from marketing options, your commission terms and the sales process you adopt to comparable sales and your details as the agent representing them. Pitch uses real-time digital multimedia that let you create world-class proposals when pitching for the business. The difference to a standard proposal will be obvious to every property owner, creating a unique point of difference.

3. Securing The Business

At the push of a button, every agreed detail on the proposal can be transferred to an Agency Agreement for instant digital acceptance, securing the listing on the spot. The Realtair platform is integrated with REI Forms Live and various other Agency Agreement platforms ensuring full compliance.

Traditionally, compliance around the Agency Agreement is an area of challenge for most real estate businesses as agents, in their desire to secure the business, commonly make mistakes. Realtair makes the Agency Agreement process 100% foolproof.

The product used here is called Sign. Sign can also be used to secure the marketing budget for preparing a property for sale. By seamlessly integrating the product with a number of companies, including Campaign Agent, Sign makes this process seamless with every checkpoint completed electronically in real-time.

4. Home Passport (Vendor)

Home Passport was built to satisfy a vendor’s desire to be involved in the digital process from listed to sold. It is effectively a vendor dashboard showing every step that will take place during the course of the sale. It includes every document relevant to the sale, a marketing calendar, marketing budget approvals and reports.

Home Passport is also an excellent tool to engage the vendor in the sales process. For example, you could ask the vendor to highlight the key selling points of their property, including the hidden value not apparent at face value, like insulation, custom-designed wardrobes or underfloor heating. This gives them a sense of control in the knowledge that they are participating in and adding value to their own sale. This information is then used at open for inspections and for detailed reports to be sent to hot buyers for the property.

5. Managing Workflow

Realtair’s product, Flow was designed to manage workflow during the sales process. This innovative solution triggers the listed to settled process and automatically notifies all parties involved in the sale. Flow is the backend or engine of the Realtair suite of products that brings the entire digital sales transaction to life.

Traditionally, back office workflow lets many sales transactions down because it is reliant on people, meaning the success of the process is largely dictated by their attitude, experience, quality control and time management skills.

Flow resolves those issues by clarifying what happens next and who is responsible for what. Essentially task management software, Flow won’t allow the next step to be actioned until the previous one has been completed. It is a transparent process that allows everyone to see who is doing what, when, creating a level of accountability and certainty across the team, from marketing and finance to sales, administration and the leadership team.

Another important advantage of Flow is that it is a central, cloud-based portal for securely storing every document, contract, task and action relating to a property listing. Should, for whatever reason, the Office of Fair Trading request to view details of a past sale, you will be able to provide them with instant access, saving you countless hours in locating those documents and communication trails. It is the ultimate resource for compliance.

As an agent, you can log into Flow anywhere, any time to access files and see the current status of any listing.

Flow is also excellent from a people management point of view. It shows the rate at which tasks are completed by various people on the team, allowing management to assess individuals based on key performance indicators and determine who may need some additional training or on-the-job assistance etc. It is a totally transparent, objective system. The numbers don’t lie, giving leaders a true picture of whether or not they have the right resources on board and that individuals are working to their full potential.

As a middleware platform, Flow does not replace other software systems; it consolidates the best features of those systems into one place. In this way, Flow streamlines the process, gives it complete transparency and accountability and allows you to do what you do best: list, sell and connect with your community.

6. Web Books

Originally developed by Real Estate Academy, which is now part of the Realtair family, web books are state-of-the-art digital multimedia brochures. Each custom-designed web book combines video, photos, marketing copy, floor plans, contracts and more in one live link that can be emailed or sent via SMS to a customer and shared with the broader community via social media.

With people moving away from open for inspections for various reasons and towards direct selling techniques, web books have really come into their own. Importantly, a web book is also a powerful tool to tell the story and engage the emotions.

Web books can be used to market anything from a residential house or unit to a commercial shopping centre, rural property or a medium density off-the-plan apartment complex. It is an incredibly versatile tool and an excellent way to showcase real estate to the modern consumer.

7. AuctionNow/BuyNow

The acquisition in March of AuctionNow represented a major milestone in the evolution of Realtair. The brainchild of well-known auctioneer from The Block, Damian Cooley, AuctionNow is essentially a digital platform for transacting real estate, both auctions and private treaty sales, which is why it is sometimes referred to as BuyNow.

In an auction scenario, the AuctionNow platform allows registered bidders to research auctions and auctioneers, bid remotely and secure the sale, including legally binding remote execution of the contract for sale. Buyers can see who they are competing against and the same set of rules apply across the board, making it an equitable process for everyone. There are clear rules of engagement, but the agent still has control over the process.

Delivered as a digital timed auction platform, AuctionNow is as effective for private treaty sales as it is for auctions because it takes the transparency of the auction process and applies it to the private treaty sale. It gives all parties – vendor, buyer and auctioneer – full visibility and control over their part of the process.

8. One Trust

One Trust represents the future of trust accounting. It simplifies the trust accounting process, which is renowned for its complexity.

How does it work?

Put simply, the One Trust platform enables the aggregation of different sales trusts into the one fund. As an agent, you have complete transparency over where those funds are and who they are for, but without access to those funds or liability.

The One Trust system is independently audited monthly in accordance with the requirements of Fair Trading, providing peace of mind and security for all stakeholders – the business, the buyer and the seller. Importantly, One Trust’s security is also aligned with bank security, automatically adjusting if banks raise their security levels.

9. Home Passport (Buyer/New Owner)

When a vendor releases their property to the successful buyer there is no communication between them. The sole connection is with the agent. So the greatest gift an agent can give a buyer who has just purchased and moved into their new home is information about their new asset.

In the case of Home Passport, that information relates to the intrinsic value in the home they now own that they can start adding to over time. Furthermore, every document relating to the home now lives securely in the cloud for easy access any time through the Home Passport App. This includes the original marketing photos, the floor plan and the signed contract etc. creating a benchmark to capitalise on in the future. Over time, that information will be invaluable for the next owner too, much like selling a car with an up-to-date logbook is preferred to selling a car without a logbook.

10. Agent Passport

Agent Passport is the latest product to be added to the Realtair toolkit. It is like your own professional landing page or digital resume, containing everything from your licence details, CPD points and the training you have completed to your just listed and just sold properties, professional bio and career achievements.

If you are interested in learning more about Realtair’s digital platform and the benefits it could provide to you and your business, contact the team at Real Estate Academy on 1300 367 412