Broker launches program that will provide clarity around bidding wars

With regulations around bidding wars about to change, one broker has developed a program he believes will revolutionize the real estate industry and make the homebuying process much more transparent.

With regulations around bidding wars about to change, one broker has developed a program he believes will revolutionize the real estate industry and make the homebuying process much more transparent.

DealDocket allows real estate agents to upload and register every bid made on a property and the seller will be given access to each of the bids made to ensure a fair process.

“The buying agent and the consumer upload the offer, it’s time stamped and locks it in the system. Once the offers are done, the selling agent can sit with their sellers to discuss the offers,” Drew Donaldson, executive vice president of SafeBridge Financial and co-founder of DealDocket told MortgageBrokerNews.ca. “Afterward, everyone that registered an offer can actually have access to the system and see everything; they can see when it was opened and when [each offer] came in.”

Donaldson and Adam Brind, a Toronto-based real estate agent, conceived of the idea after seeing too many clients lose bidding wars.

“It wasn’t that they lost it was that they didn’t know what happened,” Donaldson said. “They didn’t know if it was fair; there was no real regulation on it – Realtors are emailing back and forth offers to purchase and there was a huge lack of transparency.”

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The technology was also a response to pending regulations.

“On July 1st, 2015, the Real Estate Council of Ontario will officially adopt changes to REBBA 2002 (the Real Estate and Business Brokers Act) which will require that real estate brokerages retain a copy of every offer on a property in order to prevent fake offers,” DealDocket explained in an official release.

The platform is set for launch in Ontario with plans to launch it Canada-wide within the next month. It boasts bank-level encryption and the eventual goal, according to Donaldson, is to have a DealDocket number on every MLS listing.

“It benefits everyone; the real estate agent, the buyer, the seller, the regulator,” Donaldson said. “There is more compliance and, honestly, it’s a win on every level.”

Some of the program’s features include:

•             Timestamps all incoming offers
•             Provides full disclosure in multiple representation situations
•             Creates an auto summary of all offers
•             Standardizes the multiple offer process