Adapting to New NAR Rules: CINC’s Tools for Success

Transcript

​It's me, Jeff Walker. I'm here to represent the CINC product team, but I also am joined by a couple of our directors on product. We have JF and Eddie, who work on our CRM and consumer experiences, both of which have new features to support the changing needs with the NAR settlement. Sarah joins us as well. Sarah is a product manager on the CRM team, and she knows everything about the platform.

And so she'll be jumping in to help on the Q &A side as well, make sure that your questions get answered. And joining us from a SkySlope is Kiera Christensen, and she is a learning and development specialist. And she'll be walking us through some of the changes that we're making to support buyer agreements. And so we'll be getting to that in just a few minutes.

So I'm gonna go ahead, looks like we got a lot of folks on, so we'll get going and we'll start walking through this. So I don't wanna spend a ton of time on the aspects of the settlement, but it is good to just kind of level set on what the main three things are. But next, I think it's next week, but we have another webinar coming up with Alvaro, our CEO, and he'll be talking more about the changes in the market and how he sees the role of buyer's agent evolving over time.

And so we'll get more into the industry side of things in that webinar. We're gonna focus mostly on the product side of things here, but it is important just to note the changes that are happening since it is influencing what we're doing on the product side. So the big three things are that, and I'm sure everyone's familiar with this already now that you've been preparing for the past few months.

But number one is that sellers are not required to make an offer of compensation to the buyer's agent. Agents can no longer put an offer of compensation for the buyer's agent in the MLS and realtors are required to enter into written representation agreements before touring homes with a buyer. So diving just a tad deeper into each of those. Number one, of course, on that issue of sellers aren't required to make an offer of compensation as everybody in the industry knows, but maybe the media didn't know, was that this, course, is not new. Sellers have never been required to make an offer of compensation, except maybe a penny in the MLS. But there's good reasons that they should do it in order to attract buyers. But what's changing is that brokerages are making it more explicit in listing agreements that they are not required to make an offer.

Or in some cases, like in the EXPs new listing agreement, the offer of compensation is removed altogether from that listing agreement. Sellers can offer concessions as they have been able to offer in the past. And the big difference between concessions and buyer agent commissions is that while buyer agent commissions, as we'll see in the next slide, can no longer be syndicated via the MLS, concessions can continue to be syndicated and are taking a kind of a stronger representation in some MLSs than we've seen in the past. But I think what's most important, and I'm curious just to get y 'all's feedback on this too in terms of how this is changing for you, is that buyer commissions can be included in offers. That is that when you're writing an offer, you can request money for, the buyer agent commission that gets paid a closing and that does not count towards concession cap. So doesn't get treated like a concession. It can be rolled into loans and without impacting the limits that are available. And so that's probably the biggest relief that's come out since the whole NARS element was announced is that the major government agencies as well as the Mortgage Brokers Association have announced and reconfirmed that buyer agent commissions can continue to get rolled into the loan and they're excluded from limits on seller concessions. And so what this means is that you can write offers asking for the buyer agent commission. So if there is a listing agreement that says, 0 % for the buyer agency agreement or even 2 .5%. And you've contracted with your buyer for three, you can ask for the difference as part of your offer. And then that gets paid a closing just as buyer agency commissions do today. And that's why I personally think that this change is fairly inconsequential from that perspective, because you'll be agreeing with your buyer before you even tour home, what your commission is, and then no matter what the seller has put in the listing agreement, you can write an offer that's appropriate to ensure that that is continuing to get paid at closing.

But I would love to hear from you in the chat. How has this changed for you since the NARA settlement has been announced or has gone into effect? Is this something, did you ever prior to the NAR settlement happening. Did you ever ask for additional commission as part of your offer? And is that something that you're finding is more common for you now? So I love to see in the chat what you're hearing about this.

So we've had some say their buyers have paid.

Deborah has asked for more commission and then somebody said that they asked for commission, but the seller said no.

Steve says, I've seen two and a half and asked for three, not a big deal, just part of the negotiation.

And of course, the difference now is that you can incorporate that as part of the offer, meaning like theoretically, if the seller is not paying a buyer commission, they have more room than they would have in the past. So if you up the offer and ask for the money back as a commission, it could still be an attractive offer for the seller.

I'm just looking at all the comments here. I've had buyers pay, but the extra step of paperwork early is very alarming to people. No dating period before the wedding. Okay, we'll get into that when we get into the discussion around the buyer's agreement.

All right, so I'm gonna carry on here. So the second aspect of the settlement is that you can't put the offer of compensation in the MLS. And that's probably the big change here that as an agent, you can no longer see what the fire agency compensation is from other listings in the MLS. And of course you can't enter it on your own listings. The rules say that you can't facilitate any non -MLS mechanisms to aggregate offers of compensation. But that listing agents can let buyer and buyer agents know what the compensation is just not on the MLS, of course. You are allowed to show this information on your own listings. So you can publish, according to NAR's settlement, your buyer agency compensation on the listings that you show on your own website some brokerages disallow this. So we are finding that brokerages are adopting their own rules that are in some cases more stringent than the rules that have been proposed or settled upon by NAR.

And so it really depends upon your brokerage that you have to refer to as to whether or not you can continue to market the buyer agency compensation on the listings that you have we are seeing that more MLSs are adding fields around concessions. And so that's something that we're trying to make more flexible in our product. And so while compensation fields are going away, a number of MLSs are beefing up what they're offering in terms of listing entry with concessions data. And so this is an example with Bright MLS where they've added this new field.

where you can indicate whether seller concessions are being offered and then specify, is it a dollar amount or a percentage, or you can just leave it as yes, no, so that the buyer and the buyer's agent would know that there are concessions that they can inquire about. And these are now being syndicated via MLSs, which in many cases was not happening before. And so you'll see with the product as more and more MLSs start syndicating concessions data.

That's something which we are exposing on our own listing details page and we're making it possible for you to enter concession data on your own listings as well. We'll take a look at that in just a second. And of course, number three on the paperwork side is that you are now required to enter into these buyer agreements, these written representation agreements before touring homes with a buyer. And what is required in those agreements is that it needs to specify the amount of compensation that you're getting.

It has to be specific. can't be something like, whatever the seller is offering is what we'll take. So it has to be a specific dollar amount or percentage. You can't receive a greater amount than the rate that's agreed to in the buyer agreement. And you can't say the service is free, which of course would be a bad idea now anyway. And so this is the big change to your processes that, and we'll be looking at how we can help you with buyer agreements as well.

But of course, we see this as something which ultimately won't have a huge impact. There are several states that already had buyer agreements in place. And we've heard really good stories about this in that what NARA has provided is cover for you to ask for this confidently. And so in the past, we may have been like, yes, you don't want to ask for this until they get, you until you've gone.

You've met them a few times. You're out touring homes. You've really secured that relationship. And so while you lose that aspect of it, on the other side of it, you do get the ability to say, this is required by our rules, that this is something we have to do before you can see a home. And so you're able to ask for the agreement more confidently. Of course, it does require then that you are really prepared and versed to justify your value and to tell your value story early on.

so that you can secure those agreements. And again, we'll have another webinar where we're talking more about the impact to the industry. For now, we really wanna focus on how we're changing the product to help support you with these changes. So the key things that we're doing right now, as I mentioned, is you can now display concessions on the listing details page for any listing.

that it's coming from the MLS where that data is in the IDX feed. And so if we are getting that data in the IDX feed that yes, there's a concession or there's a concession that's a specific amount of percentage or a price, that is something that we will be showing on the listing details page so that buyers can see if concessions are available. You also, and so we've got about 10 MLSs so far that have started to do that. And there's a lot up in the air right now. We'll see how things go.

In the coming months, the MLSs are all making their new rules about how concessions can be entered and shared. But one thing we can say is if they make concessions available in the IDX, we will integrate that. We will activate that for your MLS and then show it on your CINC website. Even if your MLS isn't participating in that, you now have the ability to enter concessions on your own listings in the CRMs. We'll take a look at that in just a second so they can show on your website. And we have the new facility to create buyer agency agreements, launching that from your CRM using SkySlope's Forms product, which is free for CINC clients. So you do not need to be a user of SkySlope's Transaction Management Platform. So any CINC client can use these forms for free, which include digital signing.

We'll take a look at that in more depth in just a moment. But diving into how these features work, you may have noticed already, if not, you'll see it under your properties tab inside your CRM. So if you go to properties, the second item under there is now called concessions. So when you go into concessions, it shows you your own listings. And so it's going to show you the listings that you've got based upon your MLS ID, and you can enter your own concessions data associated with those listings to display on the front end of your website. So if you take a listing and you click on it to edit it, you'll get this window which allows you to specify the concession type. You can choose a dollar amount percentage, or you can just have a generic message display that you want to be contacted for additional information.

It will ask you to confirm it because this is something which will be shown on the website. So once make sure that you got it right. And then when you do that, it opens up this new section on the listing details page called seller concessions. And so in the seller concession section. It's going to show one of these values depending upon what you've entered. If you've entered a price, it will show you the total dollar amount being offered as a concession, the percentage for percentage or just the note.

the generic note if that's what you've entered. And so it kind of positions what concessions are to buyers that are browsing the listing and provides a way for the buyer to ask for more information. this call to action says, have questions about concessions. If a buyer clicks that, it creates an inquiry for you. And so it's gonna notify you of a property inquiry that the buyer is interested to learn more about concessions on that listing so that you can kick off a conversation with that buyer.

So right now, this section is only displaying on listings where we have some concessions data. So either we're receiving concessions information from the MLS or you've entered concessions data on your own listings. One of the questions we had for you guys is how you would feel about, cause this is also, I should mention, this is kind of our first step. We can add additional features as we learn more information about how things are gonna change in the market and go further with this.

So one of the questions we had for you is, and we're going to do a little poll real quick so you can answer this. This section here on the seller concessions section on the listing details page, we could display it even if there isn't any data just for the purpose of generating inquiries. So we could say, concessions may or may not be available, check with your agent for details, and then they could click this button to submit that inquiry. But we wanted to see, is that something that you'd feel that you would welcome or would that be something that you would find annoying and you get a bunch of inquiries that you'd have to respond to. So here's the poll. So dropping in the poll, you just let us know.

All right, this is interesting. A lot of yeses, about 80, 20 right now.

All right, if you are a, actually drop your thoughts in here too, because we're gonna have access to the full chat after the session. So if you're a no, we definitely wanna hear what you're concerned about that would be. And if you're a yes, just drop in why you think that would be valuable for you. The yeses definitely have it here. 85 % about said yes. If you don't want it, it's something that we could potentially make an option, a toggle that you can activate or deactivate on your site.

Is it possible to have that question available and it leads to a given answer instead of separate inquiries?

And keep in mind that this is concessions, right? So concessions are allowed to be shown and distributed.

Yeah, and so Peter says he says no because realistically don't know how this will fully develop over time. Yeah, and that's 100 % true like.

things are still in the very early forming stage and we're unsure like, is everything gonna move towards marketing of concessions? Will it just be typical for buyer agent commission still to be offered? And then it's really not a big deal. You don't really need to worry about advertising at all.

But with that level of interest, it's something that I think we can add and make a toggle. So we wouldn't force it on you, but that you could choose to add it if you're comfortable with it and it's not violating your own brokerage policies. All right, so someone asked where it is today.

So again, if you go back to that's result on the poll. If you go back to CRM under concessions, under the properties tab, there's a concession section. You can enter your concessions there. And if we are receiving them from the MLS, which we've got about 10 MLSs so far, but all the MLSs are kind of in the stage of determining how they're going to support this. If we can receive that data from the MLS, if they are sending it via IDX, we will show it for you too, and we'll automatically populate it here. So obviously, MLSs are not going to be sending it if it's not allowed to be shared. So if the MLS agrees that it can be shared, then we'll receive it and show it here on the listing details page, which shows up right underneath the property info on the listing details page.

All right. So want to see, do we have any pause here for a second based on what we've seen so far? Do we have any Q and A's that we need to address? Where's the Q and A section? We do, Jeff. There's a couple of them in there. so why don't you guys pick out a couple of ones that you've taken that you've seen so far that we should.

Yeah. So one thing I think you probably should, should, address this, Jeff is one person asked, can you describe more about the buyer commissions being added to the loan?

Sure. So basically, Mortgage Brokers Association and the government agencies have affirmed that as long as something is specified as a buyer agent commission in the closing documents, that it doesn't impact the loan. it doesn't count as like, there are concessions caps today, which basically say if you give over a certain amount of concessions, it can be rolled into a loan. Well, buyer agent commissions do not count against that cap because they're acknowledging that they've already been rolled into the loans in the past with the way it worked in the old model. And that will continue to work that way. if in the closing documents, if you have a buyer agency commission, which is specified, which of course can be defined in the listing agreement, or it can be defined in your offer and agreed upon as part of your offer, then that's not going to put the loan at risk.

We also have another question. If we are going to put instructions that this is not compensation rather concession. So showing the difference between a concession and a commission or compensation. Yeah, exactly. And so there is a blurb here, which comes basically straight from NAR about, let's see, about that describes it what this describes to the buyer what this is. Of course, the key difference between a concession and a buyer agency commission is that the concession goes to the buyer to use how they please. Now they can use it to pay for their buyer broker services, but they don't have to. So a seller could offer it as a concession. here's $5,000 towards your buyer agent commission. And the buyer can then use that as cash at closing in order to

compensate their agreement that they've established with their buyer agent. But of course, they can put it towards anything that they want as a concession. And so that little blurb is specified here ahead of the definition of what the amount is that's being offered. And of course, it's negotiable too. That's the other thing where a concession is not final until it's in the final purchase agreement.

And so it's something which can be negotiated.

There's another question, Jeff. It says, will there be a notification on our sites to the buyers about the new NAR ruling?

We haven't added like a page of it. We haven't added anything additional in terms of education about the NAR ruling. Obviously it's a, it's something which most buyers, even if you explained it, it's difficult to understand. We think it's best handled for the buyer agent to have that conversation with the buyer and explain how it impacts them and why a buyer agency agreement is needed.

But love to get your thoughts. I if you feel like something would be useful, of course you can always create a custom page on your own site. Where you want to, if you want to add more information about what this means, but if there's something that you feel like we could do that, that would help that we certainly could. But again, I think different brokerages, different agents are going to want to have that message displayed differently. It kind of wades into complex territory. If we were to make one blanket statement about what it means.

and make that available. And we do have the ability on the consumer site to display a banner of however you design it. So that's where you can get custom to your brokerage, to your MLS and say specifically announce it to the leads that are coming to your site. I'm sorry, there's a comment that I want to address real quick. Somebody asked, someone said this whole conversation has me on the edge, are you a real estate attorney? Where are you getting this information from? So yeah, this isn't legal advice. I'm not a real estate attorney. And so definitely defer to your own legal guidance, the guidance of your brokerage. This information is all publicly available though. if we go to, there's a lot of sourcing. For example, if we go back to here.

There's a lot of sourcing from NAR about what's changed here or the information from Fannie Mae Freddie Mac Mortgage Brokers Association about how seller or have a buyer agency commission can still be applied without impacting the lending. And so we can certainly follow up with a source articles that you can refer to.

But no, I'm not a real estate attorney and we don't have legal representation on this call. So we should definitely specify that any of the information that we're giving to you should be validated with your own attorney and your own brokerage. So going back to your question, Eddie, what was that?

I was just, it was, hold on, let me pull it up. Okay, if we put something in the concession section, is that considered our website and not the MLS since the information is coming into CINC via the LMS IDX feed? Yeah, for sure. This is considered your website. And so NAR has specified that you can display buyer agency commission or concession on your own website.

But again, like really you should defer to what your brokerage allows because even though NAR has said, yes, you can show buyer agent commission on your own listings on your own website. We have certain brokerages which are overriding that and being even more stringent and saying, no, you can't even put that information on your own website. So ultimately there's not going to be a blanket rule. It's going to be up to what your own brokerage says. But as far as NAR goes,

It's not a problem from NAR'sS perspective for you to show the commission on your own listings on your own website.

All right, what else?

We have one, Jeff, that says, since it's our website, why can't we add commissions in addition to concessions? So, absolutely. So you can. And so that is, again, you can depending upon if your brokerage allows it. And so that's something that we would be doing as a future feature. So right now we're offering concessions because that's what we could get syndicated from the MLSs. And so it was important to kind of make sure we had that covered first.

But we are looking at then here where you enter a concession, being able to choose whether you are inputting a concession or a commission on that listing. And then if it is a commission, that would also get marketed on those pages. And so that's not something which is in our first release here, but we are considering that for a follow -up release.

And so the solution to that right now especially if you want to market it to other agents would be to add a custom page where you just basically show, you know, here's a list of our listings and what buyer agency commission you're offering on those listings. But right now we've got concessions covered and buyer agent commissions will be added next.

What else we got?

We got one. Do we need to provide a buyer agents agreement to each buyer that inquires about a property through the site before we can engage with them? So the rule from NAR. So what is specified in the settlement is that you need to all it specifies is that you need to have a buyer agency agreement signed before touring a property. So based upon that rule, it would seem it would not require a buyer agency agreement to have conversations about a property or to respond to an inquiry, but only before you go physically tour a property again. That's how you stay clear in NAR's eyes. your brokerage may have a different rule about when you need a buyer agency agreement. And of course, states, if you were in a state which previously required by our agency agreement, then you defer to whatever the rules are for that state. And Jeff, there was two follow-ups to that question. What about rentals and what about open houses? Rentals, I don't know about. Didn't specifically call it out, I don't think. Yeah, it's an interesting question because, mean, obviously you're still, there's still come, I don't. I don't think personally rentals are included in this settlement at all. And in most cases, the seller is defining how much they're for that rental agreement to be signed. I don't know. I haven't seen a thing about rentals on this. that I would assume is excluded entirely. But that would be something that's worth double checking. And then open houses.

A listing agent doesn't need to get buyer agreements from people that are showing up at open houses. it's not something that, again, think NAR's done a video on this specifically where they've answered this question. So I can double check and make sure. But I recall seeing that there's no impact to open houses. As a listing agent, you can have an open house. Buyers can come up.

come to that open house and that doesn't require agency agreements for them to walk in the door of an open house.

Anything else?

All right, so a couple other things that I just wanted to call out. And so in some cases, you might want to be putting a link to the listing details page in the MLS if it's allowed by your brokerage. And again, different brokerages have different rules. But if you do need to put a link to the property because you want to show information about that property,

that's not shown in the MLS, you can grab the link from the properties tab inside your CRM and that link doesn't require registration. So it's a way to share a link to a property without that registration wall popping up so that anyone who accesses that link, including another agent, will be able to pull that listing up and see it without registration. So from the properties tab, there's this little share icon here and you can choose plain link and that will copy the link that you need into your clipboard that you can paste onto the MLS comments section if you're using that.

Similarly, you can grab that same link if you're on the front end of your website from the Share button. If you click Share and you do copy link, that also gives you a link that allows you to access that page without registration. And I think we had a Keller Williams agent mentioned to us that any type of concessions need to be two clicks away from the link that's shared in the MLS. So again, like different brokerages are gonna have different rules. So we have made a change here around that seller concession section so that if you're accessing the page directly, that section's collapsed by default. So you have to actually have a click to the page.

and then a click to open up the concession section to see it so it can comply with KW's rules. But I expect we're going to hear more rules coming out of the woodwork on this and different brokerages are going to handle it different ways. So if you have certain rules that you're aware of that you want to share with us to make sure that we're in compliance with your broker, just let us know and we'll try to make it as flexible as we can.

Just check out the comments. If there's anything else I need to address right now. So Jeff, there was one question and it's basically says the concessions is yes and no is legal in our MLS. No money. No money amounts are legal. It is a huge fine on our MLS. Would I or my broker be in jeopardy with this feature?

so the MLS is finding you to, again, I can't answer if you're going to be in jeopardy, right? So, so definitely check, with your own representation to see, if, if, if the MLS is sending yes or no, we're going to populate a note which says, actually says a little bit more like concession. If it says yes, it'll say concessions are available. Contact us for more details. So we'll just tell the buyer.

There are concessions you can ask us and we can get the information for you. If the MLS is saying that they're gonna fine you if you put in a dollar amount or percentage into your own website. mean, generally, and here's where it's a gray area. Generally, real estate agents have been allowed to do whatever you want when you're marketing your own listing.

because it's your data, it's your listing, that data is not coming from the MLS. When you override the information here, this message that's sourced from the MLS goes away. It's a source from you. And so again, though, like we're in a whole gray area. So I would ask the MLS, you know, if there's a question about it, ask them, hey, I wanna put this on my own listing just to show on my own website, is that cool? And see what they say. in this new world,

Different rules are applying and I would just double check to make sure that any anything you do about marketing concessions or commission is good with your broker and good with your MLS.

All right, so last thing on this front, and we'll get into the buyer agency agreement, is if you go to that concession section and you know you have listings, but no listings are displaying there because it's going to pull up your listings automatically, then it may be that your agent ID isn't defined in the agent settings. So you've got to enter your agent ID here to make sure we can match your listings with you. So if you don't have that, if you don't know what it is, you need help.

we can get that information for you and add it as well. But if you know your agent ID, your MLS ID, enter it here. If you need help, reach out to CINC Client Services and we can pull that information for you and add it there so that that way your listings will display when you're opening up the concessions tab or the properties tab. All right, I wanna make sure we have plenty of time to review buyer agreements. So I'm gonna kick that off right now. And any other questions?

will address. So in the CINC CRM, and we're going to turn this over to Kira, our SkySlope learning and development representative in just a second, but in your CINC CRM, when you go to Elite Details, there is now this new link underneath More. So you go to More, it says SkySlope forms. So when you go to More, SkySlope forms, that's what kicks off the new buyer agreement forms.

It's going to launch Sky Slopes page when the first time you see it, it's going to be asking you to create your account. So Kira is going to show us how everything works. The one thing I just wanted to make sure that you know, when you launch this is use the same email that you used for your CINC login to create your account because that way we can send the information to make sure that you're getting your forms account for free from Sky Slope. And if you ever have a problem with that, can...

let us know and we can make sure that you are on the free account as well. But we have an agreement with SkySlope so that you can get forms and digital signing at no charge. We will be matching up against your CINC account. But if you have any problems, just let us know. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Kiera and she's gonna walk you through exactly how to use the forms product to create and send and get signed the buyer agreements. Absolutely, thank you so much, Jeff, for that intro here.

So I'll pick up right where you just left off. As soon as you are clicking into Sky Slope Forms, it'll simply ask you if you'd like to create an account or if you would like to log in. So those of you, I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen here. Those of you that have brokerages that are already a part of Sky Slope, you're already in there as your property management tool, you are actually going to be able to access forms directly through your apps menu in addition to having that shortcut within your CINC dashboard.

So you'll use that same email address in order to lead you right into your own forms dashboard. Now today I'm going to use an account that's already in progress just to highlight some of our tools, our tips and tricks. So the first time you log into your own SkySlope forms tool, you're first going to go ahead, drop your name down up at the top right corner here. These two pieces of setup will be important to ensure that you have a nice successful workflow.

when we jump in and we take advantage of that start buyer agreement quick action button from our home screen. So the first thing we're going to do is click into our user profile. Because of that nice integration, a lot of your information will populate here. So you'll just want to confirm this is all set, ready to go. Very straightforward. You've got your personal information and then you're going to indicate what regions you serve. So this question, will actually ask you when you're first jumping into forms.

My multi -state agents, you can add in as many regions as you need and we'll talk about adding forms to your SkySlope or a library to your SkySlope forms account here in just a moment. Now, the reason I like to highlight this section first is this is a big time saver. A lot of the information pre -populates into these forms and we know what the buyer agreement workflow there, it is a lot of our personal information we're providing since we don't have property information running quite yet.

So you'll indicate that you've got your personal information and your brokerage information underneath user profile. You can pop right on over to My Team and provide out access to any of your collaborators.

And lastly, you have access to cater which libraries you're working with. So this is a key piece here to ensure that you've got access to the forms that you need to be successful. You can search for those libraries, add whatever you need access to. You can see here I've got quite a few, so you're not limited to the different associations that you can add underneath this account.

And my brokers and admin that are on today's training, if you've taken the time to customize your Sky Slope Forms tool already for your agents, you will not see your brokerage library in this list, but any brokerage forms that you would like to include will have a library built out for you. Your agents will have full access. So if you're looking to see a brokerage specific form from this dropdown menu, if you don't see it, that's okay. We'll actually have full access up here in our browse library section.

So I'd like to really cover that first, that key piece of setup just ensures that you have access to what you need. So back here within my main dashboard, I'm going to see all files, since that's including all of my collaborators, my current in progress files here, and I'll also have my archive. So even though we never delete anything in Sky Slope, you can always archive these property cards out. And anything done here within Sky Slope forms will automatically

be accessible through your transaction management dashboard. So for those of you who are already working with SkySlope through that transaction management, we'll wrap up our session there and we'll talk about that link so that anything sent out for signature using forms or digisign, which as mentioned, you guys have access to through that CINC benefit. You'll be able to send these right on out for signature and they'll automatically land within your SkySlope property files. So a great shortcut, effortlessly compliant,

ensuring that everything that you do here within your Sky Slope forms tool saves you that double data entry when you do go in to enter the information and for your admin team to review.

So I'll just take a quick pause here, take a look at the chat and Q &A, see if there are any Skyslope specific questions that we should address here before moving forward. yes, so we are recording. I believe, team, are you planning on sending this on out or posting it somewhere?

Yeah, so it will be available afterward. Awesome. So again, we'll have the slides brought up one more time. I saw the other question here. I can't find the link for SkySlope. So we'll bring those slides back up there and highlight where that drop down menu is for SkySlope forms.

Someone's asking, how does this integrate if we use SkySlope, but not SkySlope's forum? No problem. So here, this is the SkySlope forum's dashboard. So all the activity, all the progress we make here, I will be able to pull all of this information from within the transaction management dashboard. So we're always starting in forms since that integration works the best this way pulls all of that information in there for you. So starting out, we're going to use my start buyer agreement quick action button. And those of you who are already using our transaction management dashboard, you will actually see that buyer agreement quick action from that screen as well. So we'll highlight that for you here. We'll start in forms for those that are planning on just using the forms platform. And then we'll switch on over into that transaction management dashboard to familiarize those of you whose brokerage has already used that workflow.

Awesome, so let's go ahead and we'll dive in. So right here from my SkySlope Dash, this SkySlope Forms. Now, once again, we want to complete out that user profile, make sure that our libraries are all connected. Since that will allow us to use this shortcut, anyway, when I click Start Buyer Agreement, I'm going to see this filter is automatically applied. So this will work for both brokerage specific forms, state specific, regional specific.

And I can actually continue that filter here by dropping this menu down. And today I'm just going to work with my NAR documents.

I'll go ahead, continue in that filter and right away these four forms are going to be available for me. Now right away, don't panic. If you're not seeing a specific form that you want to use or that you're looking for, we can always remove these filters, no problem, to access any forms within that library. However, the idea of this, that quick action button, is to automatically land you to the one or two forms that you are going to need to start that relationship.

So right away, let's go ahead. I'll grab this top one right up here. I'll add, I can add in additional forms and it's going to create a little pancake stack down below. Just for demo purposes, let's say I also want to add in a brokerage specific form. Can drop my menu down here. I'll locate that brokerage library. And let's say I want to include a wire fraud disclosure.

So now I can see down at the bottom my little list. I've pancaked these two together.

I'll click next to move forward and you'll notice for those of you, you've used SkySlope forms in the past, it's not asking me for my client's information out the gate. It's not asking me for the address that we might be working on or anything of the sort. I'm just brought directly into my exclusive buyer agreement here. I can roll through and fill out any of these fields. I'm only focused on, again, those initial documents to get my workflow started.

So can click right on in, I can see this is going to be my buyer's information, so I'll get him ready to go.

Awesome, so actually going to go ahead and just get my email here for demo purposes.

There we go. Filling out this quick contact information again, this is just saving me from really needing to do an entire property file.

Instead, I'm filling out these blue fields. I'm going to mark their action out the gate as needs to sign. Those of you working with trust or any other entity here, you can update this field accordingly. But I'll simply save this contact right into this document here. I can see my brokerage is already coming through. And we'll provide out those terms. So this should be a very familiar workflow, those of you using any forms provider out there, these blue fillable fields we know we're going to roll through and fill these right on out. I'm entering in mock information as well just for demo purposes. We can roll right on through if I have this information, I'll complete it. And I also have markup tools available up at the top. So this is a very new process. If you would like to send this out to an admin team member to review what you've provided so far.

You can always choose to share by email. And this is a key functionality here we've added is the ability to email an editable PDF. So if you are filling this document out, if you have any questions, go ahead. can email that editable PDF to a co -agent, admin, team lead, whoever you look at as an advisor. They will be able to receive this with those blue fillable fields. So they can provide out that feedback and any guidance that you're looking for.

Additionally, I have markup tools have the ability to print or to download. So if you're looking to use Sky Slope Forms just to complete your broker agreement, you're more than welcome to. If you would like to download at this time to take to any other outside e -signature tool, you still have that full functionality. Of course, we hope you take full advantage of DigiSign since it is available to you. We'll do that in just a moment. But you'll see that this buyer agreement here, this brokerage form, or I should say this Florida Realtors form coming directly from that library. These blue fillable fields, this is what I'm focused on. There we are. Entering in my commission information, any additional fees. And when I click right on over, I see that SkySlope logo indicating that this wire fraud agreement is a brokerage form. Now this would also have blue fillable fields.

This one just has some signatures that we need to collect so I can skip over that. And effortlessly, all of my changes are saved. So even if I just begin to work on this, if I decide I need to bow out for any reason, maybe go discuss with my client a little bit further, I can always back out of this property file instead of sending for signature. All of my changes are going to be saved so all of these blue fields will remain filled.

So this looks good here so far. I do have that import MLS data not applicable at this time since we're just using that buyer rep, but I do want to highlight that feature. If you do choose to take part in Sky Slope forms, great opportunity if you're filling out a purchase contract. Import that MLS data saves you that time.

Now this is a key part of our workflow and that's the ability to rename this file. Now clicking on that broker or that buyer agency button from my home screen there within forms, I'm looking for quickness. I'm diving in, completing out those fields and sending out for signature. However, because we don't ask for a lot of information upfront, definitely take a moment to rename your file.

As a trainer who does this day in and day out, is substantially easier to find when you know what it's called because we will give you buyer agreement, date and time as a quick name so that you can keep moving. I will say this is Mr. Michaels.

And today's day is the 20th. All right, so we're just going to go ahead save that. Again, this is just going to make it a lot easier for me to locate this. And I can see I myself as a buyer's agent, I'm set up as no action here for signature, but my client Michael here needs to sign. Now I'm just doing this for demo purposes. Of course, I would typically sign this document myself, or maybe I might tag in a team lead or my broker to sign this as well.

But for today's demo, since everyone does this just a tad bit differently, we're going to have the buyer sign so we can follow that workflow.

Now clicking next this will lead us right into ditchy sign. That's our integrated e signature tool and the beauty of really using ditchy sign is I am not going to need to take the time to create or map out these forms. The sky slope has actually already done this for me. So I can see here I have my initials in place. Now if I had additional buyers or recipients, I would be able to include them.

It would also place any additional signature blocks, depending on how many we're working with. That signature date stamp is already in place. And same is going to go for any forms that are included within our brokerage library.

Now I have my two documents included. Once again, one that came directly from FAR, the Florida Association of Realtors, and one that came right on over from my brokerage library. So I have two sources for these forms. I have all of the bells and whistles across the top of my page in case I need to add anything. And I can cater my recipients before I send this out for signature. So I can see I've got Michael ready to go if I needed to add maybe an assistant of mine.

I'll go ahead add in Miss Ali agent let's say instead she needs to receive a copy.

It'll update on the right hand side and I'd also be able to now set up a signer group. So if I do have multiple contacts included and I'd like to send this out in a specific order, I have the ability to do so.

I can go ahead and save my changes. My recipients will reflect on the left -hand side. And I can choose to either edit my email or I can choose to edit my email upon clicking send.

So this is a great high level overview of DigiSign, but also keep in mind for SkySlobe forms and DigiSign included, I have full length webinars that are available both on demand or you can attend live. So anything I'm covering here today, we can dive in for best tips, best practices, tips and tricks within those webinars. So I'll wrap up with that for you. Yeah, I think what we could do is send out, when we send out the video for this session is like,

a schedule for the upcoming webinars for folks that are to be able to dive. Because I know some folks probably want to create their account first and then actually follow along and make sure they're getting their form set up properly as you go through it. yeah, that probably takes at least a full hour just to go through all that all by itself. Yes, I think our webinar is about 45 minutes or so, but you can pause it as you go. So if you would like to take your setup pieces one step at a time,

transition into learning about how to add in your forms libraries, best tips and tricks on sending out these envelopes successfully. We've got you covered. Okay, perfect. Jeff, there was a question. Jeff? I was going to address Mark's question real quick about using the email to match CINC. So he said the direction was that we had to use our email to match CINC. But when I tried to set up an account with my email, I was told I can't have my name in it. Is that a restriction of  in SkySlope account that you can't have your name and your email address? Not that I've ever come across. I would say to reach out if they have not already reached out to SkySlope support and it might be some sort of internal flag that's coming up that we could clear for you. I personally have Kiera@SkySlope and I've got Kiera@demo.com as my two email addresses for my demo accounts. okay. Yeah.

We'll have to get that fixed for you. And we're just saying, your email is whatever is associated in your profile on CINC. So when you go to the agent section, whatever you're using to log in to CINC. So it might be a Gmail or it might be a brokerage email address. It's probably not your domain at CINC. So it's whatever is associated that you see in your agent account inside CINC and how you're logging in, that's the email that we're trying to get you to match up. And if you need any assistance, if you've jumped in and you've worked on a forms account in the past and you already have some things in progress and it just is not synced up with your other SkySlope account, the other side for that transaction management, we can correct that through SkySlope support, no problem. We run into it all the time. So you'll click on that little health icon and you can jump right on over into SkySlope support.

So feel free to chat in with us at any time. They can remote in and see your screen, walk you through those questions hands -on and make sure that you're set up for success. If they already have Sky Slope transaction management, are they using the same account? Yes. User account? Okay. Yes. Go ahead and use that user account. You'll have your apps menu available that you can use to toggle between the different tools. And then same thing, if you want that direct integration through CINC, we'll just update that email address for you underneath that user profile.

So reach out to Sky Slope if we can combine those for you, bring everything all into one working account. And as a team leader or broker, do you have permissions to see all of the buyer agreements for the agents that are on your team? Yes, so as a broker, you will have an additional option up at the top here for buyer agreements. So you can conduct your review. We'll actually funnel them all into one location. So that's a specific brokerage broker feature.

that we can enable for you. You'll just have to reach out to support so we can grant you those permissions if you don't have them already. From a team lead perspective or an assistant, anything like that, that's looking to assist these outgoing envelopes, that's where you'll be able to add in your collaborators underneath my team. Great, perfect. Eddie, what was the other question? Did I capture that one or is there another one that I did? There was one about, we use .loop. to integrate CINC and dot loop?

Can we upload our buyer's agreement through that integration? Absolutely. So you do have the ability once again to download those forms, whether you'd like to send it out using a dot loop signature tool or whether you want to send it out using SkySlobe, you're more than welcome to complete that out in forms. We'll sign this document together here in just a moment. Also checking in on time. Am I okay to go ahead and sign these documents?

and show transaction management or should we leave those for the E -Webinars? Yeah, if folks need to drop off, of course they can drop off, but we can stay on. Perfect. We'll just wrap this little section here just to kind of fill in the blights for those that are currently using the transaction management dashboard on how these two are going to work together. Let's say as a client, I just received this envelope. So from the client perspective, signing out this form.

We'll click start. I'm just going to choose my signature style. Works very similar. Again, we know how e -signatures work in this world. Moving right on through, you'll notice down, have a counter. When I complete, I now have that blue finish signing. As a client, I can choose to download these documents. As an agent, I've also received this email. So for if you're choosing to use .loop, this is a good opportunity that you can download those documents at this time.

You'll also receive them in your email as a PDF attachment. So you can choose which workflow is best for you. Here in SkySlope forms, I'll now have that status marked as complete. Those documents will live in the Sign Documents tab for me here. I can choose to upload if I'd like to make this kind of an all -encompassing drop box for this representation.

And if I drop my apps menu down here, now this is specifically for those using our transaction management tool. Now if I hop on over into SkySlope, it'll reroute me here.

Now, this is familiar to you, part of your normal workflow with your brokerage. Now, when I jump in and I go to create this transaction here, I can indicate who I'm representing and I can choose if I have a pre -contract or if I'm currently under contract. So, if I have a buyer rep that I've signed, have taken care of, it's time for me to turn this in for review. I'm going to select pre -contract and then I'll actually be able to sync this with my existing forms file. So I'll select Michael, that buyer rep. When I click continue, it'll pre -fill a lot of this information. This is just simply because I'm in a demo account. There we go. But when I move on forward, it'll pull all of the buyer information from that buyer rep, submit those details into my admin team. And I can now be brought on over to my checklist where I'm only going to focus on those buyer agreement documents, which I can locate here in my Documents tab. So you'll notice I did not upload, I did not pull these from my inbox or anything of the sort. There's an effortless integration starting from CINC, leading you into SkySlope Forms, bringing you full circle right on over into that Documents list where your admin team can conduct their review.

So just as an ending note and a highlight again on SkySlope support because they're incredible, you can pop right on over everything that I just touched on, kind of at the same pace, is available for you here under Jumpstart Your Buyer Agreement. It'll break it down into individual steps and a nice little overview. So while we will include those full -length webinars for you at the end of that recorded session, as you mentioned, Jeff, this is also a great resource to take alongside. You can bookmark this page as you're getting started.

Great. And let's see. So Suzanne asked, said, Sky Slope said I have to purchase access through them in order for it to integrate with my account. If you're talking about just the forms product, if it is asking you to sign up for like $35 for DigiSign, just message your CINC Client Services and we can make sure we get that over to Sky Slope so that you get whitelisted to the free account. But we want to make sure everybody's on getting a free account here. If it is asking you, can fix that for you.

And you have an app too. People are asking if you We do, we do have an app. Yes, we have both Android and Apple. So it's SkySlobE Forms specifically is what you want to type in the full SkySlobE Forms. Our transaction management app is on the way, but it is not nearly as user friendly and honestly as perfect as the SkySlobE Forms app. So send out everything that you need, do your thing. SkySlobE transaction management users will have an app for you really soon, I promise.

All right, so we'll send out the webinar information so you can dive into this in more detail and start getting your forms uploaded in there, playing around with it, making sure you're all ready to go for sending these out for digit sign. And Jeff, do you want to just show quickly how they can access SkySlope from the good call out. So because I we've got a few questions on that, so making sure they see where the three dots are. Yeah, so just as a reminder. That is here.

If you go to lead details, just open up a lead and click on the three dots more and you can open up SkySlo forms there, but you don't need to act. Once you've got that URL, it's just, it's forms .skyslope .com and you'll keep, you can log in or create your account one time. Just go back to that URL directly. You don't need to keep accessing it from here. You can bookmark it and then just manage all your forms from there. If you, if you're trying just to get back to you, the forms product directly.

Okay, so just to wrap it up then in terms of potential future features. So we will look at adding the ability to input buyer agent commission in the CRM. So right now it's labeled as seller concessions. The NAR rules do allow you to add buyer agent commissions on your own listings, on your own website. And so that's a flag that we'll be adding so that you can do that. And then if this is something which

You know, where we see a lot of buyer incentives being populated either through concessions or through agents adding their own buyer agent commission. We might make this a search filter in the future for consumers so they can search for listings that are offering incentives. But we would only do that if this became something which was very popular and we see the industry heading in that direction. So we'll have a kind of a wait and see attitude on that one. And then if possible, we'd like to provide some ways so that you can label leads automatically based upon their status of the buyer agency agreement. And so that's something we'll be looking into in the future as well. Excuse me. But we're still open to your ideas about anything else that we can do to help you with the new world that we're in, just let us know. We can drop if you have an idea that you haven't shared yet, just drop it in the comments and we'll be sure to review it or message us as well. Ask your account manager and their feedback gets back to us as well so that we can make sure that we're doing everything we can to help you navigate all of the new rules in the new world. That's our content for now. Let's just do a last check. I should also reiterate for all those AIs that you guys have that are taking notes on this, I do want to reiterate that this isn't legal advice. Be sure to verify with your own counsel and your brokerage about any changes that you're gonna make in terms of how you're sharing concessions, by region commissions, documents, and all that stuff. So all you AIs who are taking notes, you heard me say it. And let's see, what else do we have? Any other questions we haven't addressed yet?

So Tom asked, can we cancel any of the documents signings we have since now you can get it through Sky Slope. Are there limitations, Kira, on what documents you can have signed with the DigiSign product? No, not at all. You actually have the ability. You can upload documents. If you have maybe a one -off and maybe Kiddo's got a field trip or something, you want to upload that document and send it out for signature. You're more than welcome to.

Really no limitations. If you want everything pre -mapped and set up, you'll just reach out to Sky Slope and we can initiate that process to build out that library for you. So a little bit more reserved for our brokers and admin to set up team libraries with those forms. We just simply need you to provide them to us. And same thing, we can apply any filters for you just like you have that buyer rep when you click.

from your home screen there. If you want it to fall under that buyer rep filter, we can have that included in that collection. So lots of capabilities, of customizations for you. Yeah, so I'd say give it a try and see if it's meeting your needs. And if you're finding that it's working for you and it's handling all your digital signing needs, then sure, switch off whatever else you've got that you're paying for on that front.

All right. One another question for you, Kira is Kelly asked, does SkySlo populate the information from the MLS? does. is also. go ahead. Sorry. It's the last time we tried, it would not populate the information to the forums. So there's two different things to keep an eye out for when importing MLS information. One is regional specific laws that we have to abide by data sharing between the platform. Sometimes a lot of that contact information or personal information from the other agency.

is a little bit more restricted on what we can pull in for you. So regional rules is one thing to note, and then secondary, the listing agent needs to fill out a lot of those fields in order for them to come over to begin with. But we have made a lot of improvements over the last six months on our MLS integrations and kind of revising a lot of those contracts. So definitely recommend, give it a try. Again, it's gonna be different depending on how much information pulls depending on the region. But if you're noticing a certain field is not pulling over,

reach out to Sky Slope support, we can let you know either exactly where our limitation lies, or we can bring that into conversation and hopefully apply it. So definitely looking to continue that, increasing that integration. And Billy asked, she said, she says Sky Slope is stating that forms are not available in Tennessee, but I know that it is. Any reason why you would.

Yeah, it's sometimes the NRDS IDs have a little bit of a restriction if you're trying to add in additional regions. Same thing, I would say reach out to Sky Slope Support. They can diagnose any issue or lead you sometimes those smaller regional libraries are absorbed by state libraries or by larger associations. So sometimes people look for a specific local board or local forms and it just happens to be underneath a different umbrella. So for the specific one, reach out to us.

And so inside the Sky Slope Forms product, is there a handy dandy link to ask questions to support? Definitely. That little help icon, click on that. And then if you click on support, you can call us, text, or email. And we're 24 hours. We're also all local in Sacramento, California. So you're not calling any call centers or overseas. We're actually trained in real estate first and then trained in Sky Slope second. So big value add for you.

And Winnie asked, does anything change for Canadian users? So are SkySlob forms available in Canada? We're currently available in Ontario. So we're fully working our way over to BC, but we're available in Ontario right now. With Fire Rep, you won't see that Fire Agreement button from your main home screen unless you have both the states and Canada added as provinces and regions.

So not a ton of changes on the Canadian side of SkySloat forms with all of the changes on the state front right now. And of course the NAR rules don't apply to Canada, but the concessions functionality in terms of being able to add a concession if you want to market it on a listing, you can do that if you're a Canadian client, if that's important to you, but we're not and if an MLS is providing concessions data, that is something that we can receive and syndicate on listings as well. But since the rules aren't really changing there, it's most likely going to be, I imagine, business as usual for the Canadian clients. Yes. Now we did just bring offers and that's a whole other training on its own, but shameless plug. We did just bring offers in for our trap users and a lot of our Ontario clients. So you actually have an additional feature available for you if you happen to be on that side.

All right, I think we've answered pretty much everything. Alex, had asked a question earlier about loan to value and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That's something we'd want to definitely get a specific answer on so we can answer it with 100 % confidence. So we'll retain that one and make sure we get that answered for you. But other than that, it looks like everything has been taken care of. So I think we can wrap it up.

This is complicated. Moving target will be changing and evolving as things grow here. So we're with you every step of the way. But it sounds like from what we're hearing, things are going pretty good. And we hope that you guys are very successful in the face of all the new rules and that this actually works in your favor with getting these buyer agreements and clients secured early on.