Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices makes it easy to buy a home with Adobe Acrobat Sign

Buying a home is often one of the biggest steps in life for anyone. Every year, home buyers across Southern California rely upon the experience of real estate agents from Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties to get into their dream home. Real estate agents work closely with both buyers and sellers to help them navigate complex legal requirements and paperwork involved in every home sale.

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices offices in California use electronic tools provided by the California Association of Realtors (C.A.R.) to generate and sign many of the key documents and agreements required during the homebuying process, including state and local forms. These documents can be signed electronically through applications in the C.A.R. system.

But home buying requires more signatures than just those that can be signed inside using C.A.R systems and Berkshire Hathaway wanted to make this experience as smooth as possible. One San Diego office with 20 employees felt that the C.A.R. integrated e-signature solutions did not offer an ideal customer experience, particularly as deals reached the final stretch. In some C.A.R. provided systems, home sellers and buyers had to create accounts and remember login information each time they signed a new document, adding time and complexity along the way. And for members of the real estate team, turning one-off documents into signable forms could be slow and cumbersome.

The Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices San Diego Downtown office wanted to make it faster and easier for buyers and sellers to complete second-stage real estate documents, such as offers and counteroffers, disclosure forms, and other general agreements, to keep everyone excited about and engaged in the home-buying process. The office chose and deployed Adobe Acrobat Sign for streamlined, easy to use electronic signatures.

“One of our marketers led the charge for an e-signature solution that anyone on the team could use,” says real estate agent Art Lewis. “Adobe Acrobat Sign is fast, highly secure, and incredibly easy for buyers, sellers, and other real estate agents to use. It’s just the right solution for handling documents, particularly in the second-phase of home-buying.”

More user-friendly e-signatures

One of the biggest reasons for choosing Acrobat Sign is ease of use, including simplifying steps for realtors as they prepare and send documents for signing. While other e-signature solutions require working with templates and adjusting signature fields, Acrobat Sign uses the artificial intelligence (AI) of Adobe Sensei, the AI and machine learning framework from Adobe, to automatically identify areas for signature and place signature boxes on the right lines. If a document needs multiple signers, such as if there are two buyers for a property, real estate agents can easily customize the workflow to send the document to multiple signers at once, or in sequence.

“The fact that people don’t need to create a unique account with Adobe Acrobat Sign is a big advantage for buyers and sellers,” says Lewis. “They don’t want to spend time creating usernames, keeping track of passwords, and having to enter that information every time they need to sign something. Remembering login information can be a hassle for people, but with Adobe Acrobat Sign, we just send them a link and they can quickly sign on any device.”

Acrobat Sign is highly secure, using certificates and audit trails to help maintain compliance with legal requirements. Signed documents can be stored safely as PDF documents in an office’s secure cloud environment. And because Acrobat Sign documents can be viewed and signed anywhere, agents and realtors can respond faster to incoming paperwork from buyers or sellers, making it faster and easier than ever to buy a home.

This accessibility has paid off during the COVID-19 pandemic when Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices needed to add a new type of form as part of client engagements — the Property Entry Advisory and Declaration (PEAD) form. This form includes a wellness check and informs signers about best-practices to maintain safety during the COVID-19 pandemic. The form needs to be signed by sellers, buyers, agents, inspectors, and anyone else entering a home. With Acrobat Sign the San Diego HomeServices real estate team processed hundreds of PEAD forms in the first nine months of the pandemic.

“With Adobe Acrobat Sign, I can send forms from the mobile app and sign it from any device. This makes it easy to be sure that all of our PEAD forms are signed and filed before someone enters a house,” says Lewis. “Adobe Acrobat Sign allows us to move more documents into readily accessible digital forms that streamline compliance, improve services, and accelerate the real estate process for buyers and sellers.”

The Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices San Diego Downtown uses Acrobat Sign for enhanced customer experiences. Learn more here.