- The industry focuses heavily on home searching and marketing at the expense of mobile transaction management.
- A new contract-to-closing app integrates document signing, management, vendor services and critical timelines.
Have suggestions for products that you’d like to see reviewed by our real estate technology expert? Email Craig Rowe.
Preclose.co is contract-to-close management app.
Platform(s): iOS, Android
Ideal for: Any size team and individual agents
Top selling points
- Clean, orderly user interface
- In-app digital document signing
- Integration of all transaction stakeholders
Top concerns
- Maintaining traction among service providers
- Long-term archiving of closing data
What you should know
Preclose is on the list to present at next month’s Realogy’s FWD Innovation Summit.
The selection makes sense. There’s certainly innovation on display in this iOS and Android app, which deftly covers the critical steps of a home sale between contract and close.
Company founder and CEO Rebecca Guthrie, BoomTown’s fifth employee who later became its head of operations, told me the app grew out of a need to better address how agents worked with clients after they found and chose a property.
“There’s been such a focus on the home search experience,” she said during our demo.
Preclose uses a series of categorized workflows arranged by milestones to help agents and their buyers tap their way to a more organized closing.
An agent enters a “preclose” with names, addresses, dates and fundamental transaction details.
A preclose file is nicely summarized with an image, address, buyer name, document library and the menu of required activities, like Insurance, Mortgage, Termite, Appraisal and Inspection.
Tapping a category opens its subsequent task list for perusal and completion.
‘There’s been such a focus on the home search experience.’ -Rebecca Guthrie
Related documents can be uploaded and those that need interaction can be sent and signed in-app by the buyer and by the list of sale-related service providers when needed.
Finalized documents are quarantined to prevent version redundancy and errant editing. Document management partners include Dropbox, ZipLogix, DocuSign and a favorite of mine, HelloSign.
Fingerprint authorization is also included, a smart way to leverage the intrinsic capabilities of its mobile environment.
Preclose enables communications among parties, with or without the app. It’s expected the agent-user would encourage their client to install it. Emails are sent to service providers without it.
However, a built-in, post-close rating system is included to encourage an agent’s vendor team to jump onboard.
Fingerprint authorization is also included with preclose.
Team members within your office can be added to the preclose and a simple permissions toggle designates access rights during escrow.
A nice marketing touch in the form of an auto-generated alert reminds the agent to snap and share a picture of the new owners and tag others involved.
Meeting buyers at the point of engagement: the smartphone
There’s no arguing the time agents and buyers spend on their devices while searching and seeing homes. Why let the signing of a contract end the mobile experience?
Preclose is close to its true beta launch, expected to roll out in July. It’s tightening up a few features and securing relationships in the meantime.
This is the most simple and easy-to-grasp mobile tool I’ve come across this year, and its transaction stage target is spot on.
The last thing the industry needs is another home search app.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe.
