Is There a Real Estate App for That?

We all hate to face the fact, I suppose, that sometimes there is just not a real estate app for a Sacramento real estate agent. A conscientious real estate agent follows up, though, and never lets any sellers or buyers fall through the cracks, and that includes new business. For a long time, I had been guilty of letting new business fall by the wayside and die, even though I’m the kind of busy agent who is very detail oriented and pays attention the world around me. My solution for tracking business, staying on top of my files, was years ago to create systems, the kind of complicated systems with cross-checks.

You know how it goes in life, you’re driving along the freeway, for example, and somebody calls with information and, if there is note-taking involved, you might think: Oh, I’ll remember that, no problem. Except, of course, it is a problem because once other information finds its way to wiggle into your brain, the box that particular data was comfortably resting in gets shoved way to the back of the attic, where the dustballs reside. Phone rings again, dog>squirrel>gone.

My husband, a former journalist, has it engrained to carry a pen and pad, even though he no longer writes for a newspaper. That doesn’t do me any good, though, if he’s not sitting in the passenger seat. I’ve solved that problem, the need for a paper and pen, by a) printing map directions, even though I use GPS and b) tracking vehicle mileage in a book, with extra pages I can rip out. See, you can’t have a Plan A without a Plan B as backup. I always have something in the car to write on, and sometimes I end up writing on my car seat because I’m looking at the road. What was the last number? Oh, yeah, it’s here on the headrest, a number 9.

Now, of course, the trick is to get this information into a format where I won’t lose it. And this is where a third party is helpful. Yup, an actual real live person to keep track of this stuff and a system in which to do it. My particulars for selling Sacramento real estate are too specific for any one app to take care of what I need. Sometimes, what a busy agent needs is a virtual assistant utilizing an organized system to keep things from falling through the cracks.

I’ve already got a fabulous transaction coordinator on my team who handles the paperwork for my clients and makes sure every I is dotted and every T is crossed before we close escrow. But I needed a way to help me track my own business, and to assist my team members. I am really excited to have found a virtual assistant to close the cracks and make us all more productive and focused. Because some things, there’s just not an app for.