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It is common for a real estate business to deal with a variety of paperwork and documentation. For property transactions, record-keeping, and compliance, this is an inevitable part. Documents are required to be collected and stored in pile, for legal, financial and operational purposes. Though it sounds quite hectic for some, it can be made more efficient and streamlined, if you follow some best practices. Here are some noteworthy facts and practices you should follow to achieve this:

1. Collect Property Records
   Timely document or record collection is the primary step. Property records are the important ones among them. Make sure that all those property records, including titles, deeds, surveys, and tax documents are collected and stored at the right time. Also, ensure that these records are accurate, up-to-date, and legally compliant.
2. Maintain Transaction Records
   Financial as well as real estate transactions are recorded accurately and in a timely manner. Keep comprehensive records of all real estate transactions, including purchase agreements, contracts, and closing documents. Along with this, all payments, receipts, and other documents should be collected and stored. Regular audits should be conducted to ensure that the records are accurate and complete.
3. Ensure Legal Compliance
   Each state may have their own compliance laws and regulations. It’s essential to know the rules and laws about real estate in your area, state, and country. Ensure that your document collection practices comply with legal requirements when you gather information and documents.
4. Perform with Due Diligence
   Real estate, being a sensitive dealing, each and every step should be taken with careful consideration. Ensure that all required data is collected without potential issues. Due diligence should be maintained throughout. Collect documents from clients including relevant property documents, and conduct inspections to verify the property’s condition, legal status, or any other possible errors.
5. Prepare Property Inspection Reports
   You should have a clear picture of the before and after look of the property you are dealing with. In light of this, be mindful of collecting and maintaining property inspection reports, appraisals, and other documents which provide an overview of the property’s condition and value.
6. Maintain Financial Documents
   Maintain records of property transactions’ financial aspects, such as mortgage agreements, loan documents, and financial statements. This covers documents related to the property’s purchase, sale, and refinancing. Also, keep any documents related to property taxes and insurance, as well as, records of any rental income earned from the property.
7. Conduct Property Surveys
   Performing property survey will be an advantage to acquire accurate information about the property. Especially, the details of its boundaries, easements or any encroachment.
8. Verify Insurance Policies
   Verify that property insurance policies are up-to-date and adequate for the property’s value by maintaining records of the policies. This includes homeowner’s and property insurance policies.
9. Switch to Digital Document Management
   You must be sure of all those above-mentioned steps, but your current issue must be to organize all those hectic documentation process and manual paper works. To help with this, an automated document collection tool can work wonders. It can collect, store and organize any of your property related documents efficiently. Accessibility and paperwork will be simplified to a great extent.

Today, you can find a number of document collection software vendors out there. All you have to take care is to be more selective in choosing one. Vendors like DocuTick, FileInvite, PandaDoc are some among them which are trending. Always choose the one that are scalable to meet your business objectives and requirements, and are secure.