You are serving a relocation client who breezes into town for one mission-critical home-buying day. The buyer selects a home in a hot neighborhood, and you discuss terms while racing back to the airport. Before you leave the airport, you can have your client's offer populated into your offer/ transaction manager (TM.) Supported by digital signature software, your online business system is also linked to lenders and loan products you have shown the buyer. Your client reviews the offer details from the family Palm VII at the concourse and on the way to boarding the flight, signs the offer with a digital signature. Meanwhile the seller and his/her agent reviews the offer in a transparent, secured window of your TM, and makes their counter-offer. Your e-mail alerts the buyer's Palm VII that an counter offer has been made, and while the plane lands and taxis to the gate, the buyer accepts the offer, and digitally signs off on a loan product application.

Does that scenario sound too futuristic to be true? According to David Luna, iLumin's director of corporate strategic development over real estate, digital signatures are not only here today, but the technology can save up to half the costs of closing (among cooperating service providers who can pass the savings along to consumers.) "Think no more paper, no more faxes, no more image transferring," says Luna.

You've heard of ASPs - application service providers. Well, iLumin is an ASP, too, but it really doesn't fit the definition of a typical app provider. So let's annoint it with a new appellation - AIP, an application infrastructure provider. An AIP, like other open standard platforms, enables other software applications such as transaction, client and offer management systems as well as lender platforms to work together. In this case, AIP iLumin enables legal signatures to be populated to other ASP documents in a Web-based environment for quicker, hassle-free closings.

Digital signatures have been around since 1995, when Utah passed the first digital legislation, and then other states followed suit. State commissioners quickly realized that a hodgepodge of digital legislations wouldn't serve consumers as well as a uniform presentation, so they created the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act ( UETA.) The federal government overlaid its regulations with the passage of the e-Sign bill. Now, with a state and federal foundation upon which the states can modify their legislative adaptations, 47 out of 50 states have enacted some sort of digital legislation.

What does that mean to Realtors? While digital signatures have been available for years, there wasn't a means of delivery, until iLumin introduced the Digital Handshake Server, a Web-based system that eliminates the inefficiencies of paper. Using DHS's many applications, financial institutions such as Bank of America and mortgage companies such as GMAC Mortgage can make the online experience easier for customers and more cost-effective for companies by streamlining the documentation process. Instead of initiating products and services online, only to have them printed out to be signed and then have the data re-entered into their database systems, they can automate the procedures on their Web sites and integrate with their back-end IT infrastructure.

Integration partners such as Deloitte & Touche and Encore Development will use Digital Handshake Servers to offer their customers a complete eBusiness solution. Customers can access a secure Online Signing Room at their Web site that ties the information securely and privately into their existing infrastructure.

According to iLumin, government agencies are under increasing pressure to do more work with smaller budgets. Utah County (Utah) and Essex County in Massachusetts plan to use Digital Handshake Servers to record property deeds while saving participants time and money, and ultimately, saving the home purchaser and taxpayer money.

Companies such as Center 7 will use Digital Handshake Server to process human resource information and compliance filings, eliminating the time and costs associated with manual processing.

Boasting a client list that includes Century 21, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, the Digital Signature Trust (DST), ATM Corporation, Bank of America, Hughes, H&R Block Mortgage Corporation, Kennecott Copper, Stewart Title, Trans Union LLC, and the United States General Services Administration (GSA), among many others, iLumin is working on additional alliances in the real estate industry, but is unable to disclose new agreements at this time.

"It's like everyone is standing on the side of the road along the information superhighway, and waving their private keys and wanting to get on but they don't have a car," explains Luna. "We supply the public key infrastructure (PKI) which is the digital signature technology. iLumin has built the application for the cars to allow a legally binding transaction to occur. It delivers the technology necessary to accelerate the closure of business, which removes the hassle. Humanizes technology."

What do digital signatures look like? You can use any combination of symbols, text and numbers, a sound, or all. In fact, it is the infinity of combinations that make digital signatures safer than handwriting. "We are not in a paper world and we have to think of paper as not existing," suggests Luna. "The law says it can be a symbol and whatever the two parties agree to. They can agree on a sound of a bell. It has to be legally binding, so you have to think in terms of what mortgage lenders might honor. Each state has to determine what the requirements will be. But move away from the idea of a signature. It is a click, and the signor clicks a button that says "sign." A digital signature can be a series of letters or numbers, but whatever you choose it to be, it is more difficult to forge than a hand signature. That makes it fun."

The PKI ability allows the consumer to receive a number of documents online, such as truth in lending disclosures. The documents can be prepared and put in the online signing room. "In the past there has been a paper introduced or through a fax or through an image or picture of a paper, but in the electronic world that doesn't happen," says Luna. "And it should save costs. We no longer have to work with paper, ink, toner, and we don't have to reenter data. Clerical costs will go down and there will be no courier fees. You are shortening the time between opening the transaction and closing. Errors are reduced. People will adopt online signature technology because it saves money and time. How much savings? "We are visiting our partners and there will be about a 50 percent reduction in costs to consumers," says Luna confidently. iLumin's technology is patented, and is available through licensing arrangements. While anyone can use the service, Realtors may decide that it is worth it to get a loan closed faster to initiate the digital signature technology on a transaction basis, which is priced to cost less than one courier fee in most markets.

Published: November 20, 2000

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Blanche is a renowned author of five real estate books. Her newest, Bubbles, Booms and Busts: Make Money In Any Real Estate Market, McGraw-Hill, was rave-reviewed by The New York Times. She was also selected from hundreds of real estate experts to contribute to Donald Trump's book, Trump: The Best Real Estate Advice I Ever Received: 100 Top Experts Share Their Strategies, Rutledge Hill Press, and is featured on page 68. Order Now Review - Honors In 2006, Blanche was selected among scores of candidates to author two consumer real estate guidebooks for the National Association of Realtors: The NAR Guide to Home Buying, and The NAR Guide to Home Selling, Wiley & Sons. She is currently planning two new books for the NAR and its members.       Known for her keen insight into real estate industry issues and for her ability to make complex subjects easy to understand, Blanche is a sought-after keynote and continuing education speaker. Real estate organizations from MLSs, to brokerages, to franchisors, to associations hire her to provide up-to-the-minute analysis of real estate industry news and advice on how to improve revenues. Her passionate delivery, peppered with stinging wit, is a huge hit with audiences and fans. Don Klein, CEO Greater Nashville Association of Realtors, Blanche Evans, Richard Courtney, president 2007, GRAR "The GNAR membership meeting last week featured Blanche Evans as the keynote speaker. Her comments and insights resonated extremely well with those in attendance and we have had many requests for copies of her PowerPoint Presentation. She was a terrific part of the membership meeting and convention program!" - Don Klein, CEO Greater Nashville Association of Realtors Coverage from WSMV, Nashville - 8-14-2007 That Interview Guy - Get Inside The Head Of Today's Generation 2007 AE Institute Session - To purchase 2006 AE Institute Session - Parts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 HouseValues Mastermind call - Parts 1 2 Blanche's fireside chat with Jeremy Conaway, HAR - Click here. For more articles by Blanche, click here.