How real estate agencies can accept secure online payments

Key quotes:

• "Already, we are seeing new ways to pay for real estate that move beyond the traditional agent and financing model."
• "For example, online brokerages Redfin, Opendoor, and Purplebricks are offering a hybrid real estate transaction model that allows homeowners and homebuyers to become more involved while retaining the expertise of a real estate agent."
• "Some online real estate transaction companies, including Beycome, even forgo the traditional commission fees, offering more money for the seller and fewer upfront costs for the buyer."
• "companies like Share a Mortgage are offering unique ways for homebuyers to join the real estate market by allowing people to share the cost of a mortgage with trusted like-minded individuals."
• "A prime example is Marketplace Homes‘ nontraditional real estate model designed to reduce the inconvenience and costs related to selling a home in order to purchase a new-construction home."
• "Blockchain platform companies like ATLANT, for example, are exploring ways to tokenize real estate assets in order to facilitate group real estate purchases, allowing buyers to select the agreed-upon division of property ownership."

Key quotes:

• "The way a typical scam works is first the hacker gains access to the email of one of the involved parties — the buyer, seller, real estate agent, lender, attorney or title agent."
• "As the closing date approaches, the scammer poses as one of the other parties and sends new instructions for wiring funds."
• "The unsuspecting victim then mistakenly sends funds to the scammer and not the correct party."
• "Also, contact forms, title quote forms, and order forms on your website should also be secure to protect NPI data such as social security numbers and details about an individual or transaction."
• "Have a Written Agreement on How Funds Are To Be Transferred Make sure all parties know well before the closing how funds are to be transferred and that any changes to that will require another written agreement with signature."
• "TitleTap provides turn-key websites and marketing tools like Video, Social Media Management, and Email Marketing for Title Agents and Real Estate Attorneys."

Key quotes:

• "At the same time, these are the exact sites where buyers begin their home search and where sellers look to find the value of their current home."
• "At the time, I didn’t realize how the Zillow lead system worked."
• "So, I called this lead, ready to give them more information on the home, happy to help and excited to talk to a potential client."
• "For buyers: Many of the homes listed on Zillow may not be for sale."
• "Another way Zillow can provide inaccurate information is through the agent listed with the property."
• "And it gets worse because HALF the time Zillow Zestimates are off by a lot more than $14,000”.How can they be accurate when there are so many factors to determine how much a house is worth."

Key quotes:

• "We are in the early innings of what I call the “institutionalization of home buying and selling.” Unlike the last wave of real estate innovation pioneered by the likes of Zillow and Trulia (in full transparency, I was a founding team member of Trulia), this wave of transformation is not being powered by companies that have real estate agents as paying customers."
• "In a failed attempt to appease its real estate agent customers and keep them relevant to the home buying and selling experience, NAR restricted Homestore from displaying critical information on Realtor.com, including past and recently sold homes used to determine home prices."
• "Trulia launched in October 2005 as the first independent home search engine, basically “Google for Real Estate.” We went directly to brokers and agents to get their listings on Trulia.com to avoid the information restrictions NAR placed on Realtor.com."

Key quotes:

• "Propy makes real estate faster, easier, and more secure using blockchain technology."
• "Here are seven ways our revolutionary real estate platform made waves in 2018: Propy.com acquired almost 350,000 new website users in 2018."
• "In September, a real estate agent in Arizona used Propy, and respectively blockchain, to complete an online property sale there for the first time in history."
• "In October, the first ever blockchain-based real estate deal happened in the European Union when a French investor bought a property in Seville, Spain."
• "Thousands of agents from branded brokerages like Compass, Coldwell Banker, Intero, Barnes, JLL, and Century 21 listed their properties on propy.com too."
• "A platform that can handle real estate transactions all over the world has never been built before."