Top Technology Tools For Real Estate Agents

As a new real estate agent, you may be so focused on finding clients and making deals that you’ve forgotten the importance and benefits of technology in your daily activities. There are several tools that can help real estate agents stay organized, automate your tasks, streamline your workflow, and help grow your business. 

Tools for real estate agents are plentiful so before you commit your time and money to a specific set of tools, make sure to read this guide on some of the top technology tools for real estate agents.  

Client Relationship Management 

As you know by now, as your clientele grows, it can be a challenge to keep track of your clients’ names and information. This is where a CRM or client relationship management tool can be beneficial. CRMs are used in several industries and are essential for real estate agents. They not only help keep client information in order, but they also score and classify leads and generate reports that demonstrate trends amongst your clientele that help you identify what your clients respond to the most. 

Zillow Premiere Agent CRM is a free CRM built specifically for real estate agents and has a mobile app for when you need to conduct business while away from your office. The CRM also offers the ability to upgrade to a premium account with the price dependent upon zip code.  

HubSpot CRM is known for its full suite of tools and offers a basic set of tools free of charge that will help track deals and manage prospects among other features. An upgraded set of features is also available with a paid subscription.  

Streak CRM for Real Estate was built specifically for real estate agents and allows you to keep track of your leads inside Gmail. Since Gmail is a generally ubiquitous service, this tool could be a good choice if you’re already familiar with the Google Suite. Similar to HubSpot, Streak has a basic set of tools free of charge and offers premium tools with a paid subscription. 

Agile CRM is a popular tool that real estate agents can use to manage their clientele. It offers free tools and a more advanced tier for a $15 per month subscription.  

Software For Your Team 

Being able to keep in contact with your team is equally as important as keeping your client management in order. There are various real estate agent tools that can assist you with your team’s internal communications using messaging systems. One of the best features about these tools is that they all have mobile apps that can be used while you’re on the go.  

Slack is a popular tool that offers chat, voice, and video capabilities. The basic package is free and for $7.25 per user per month, you can have access to other features on the platform such as unlimited integrations with other apps.  

Google Chat, a part of the Google suite of products that include Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Drive, also offers a full set of workspace tools for $6 per month per user. 

Microsoft Teams is a good tool for both chatting and conducting meetings. Although the basic package has certain limitations, for $4.00 per user per month, you can access the first tier of the paid service that offers upgraded features.  

Mattermost offers features similar to the aforementioned tools and is free for up to ten users.  

Marketing and Design Technology 

Marketing is an important part of growing any business, especially real estate. From advertising to lead generation, your marketing strategy will likely involve diverse methods to attract business including email marketing, social media marketing, and creative projects on video-based social platforms. Thankfully, there are tools for real estate agents that will help you design attention-grabbing sales collateral even if you're a marketing novice.  

MagicPlan is an app that is great for real estate agents because it allows you to create 2D and 3D floorplans. It also integrates with apps such as Slack and Google Drive so that you can share your designs with others. A subscription starts at $9.99 per month per user.   

Adobe is known for its full suite of design apps called the Creative Cloud. This includes the popular Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. These tools allow you to create, beautify, and even animate images to give your marketing materials optimal appeal. For $9.99 per month per user, you can utilize the photo editing package or pay $52.99 per user per month to access the full Creative Cloud package.  

Buffer will take your social media marketing efforts to the next level. It allows you to collaborate and plan social campaigns. You can schedule when campaigns will post to various social media platforms. This tool also allows you to keep track of important marketing metrics and engage your followers more quickly. Buffer offers several service tiers at their own cost, but users can access ten social media posts across three platforms per month for free. 

Task Management  

Task management systems are a good tool for real estate agents to have because they help keep track of projects and make it easier to gain insight into the progress of all the tasks that your team has in motion. These tools for real estate agents all share similar features and can help manage the workflows to make sure all team members are up to speed. 

Trello offers a free package, but for $10 per month per user, you can access premium features including a dashboard and workplace templates for larger teams.  

Monday.com has a free trial for you to determine if it’s a fit for your real estate business. For $10 per user per month, you can subscribe to a package that includes customizable automations and Gantt charts to track progress against deadlines. 

Asana has a 30-day trial and a free tier for teams who are just beginning the project management journey. For teams that are actively involved in creating projects, the Premium plan offers everything they need for $10.99 per month per user.  

Basecamp offers an all-inclusive package for $11 per month per user. Prospective subscribers can even visit the website for realistic views of the user interface.  

Electronic Signature Services 

Contracts are a big part of real estate and the ability to have your clients sign them from the location of their choice is an asset. In this case, these tools for real estate agents are beneficial because they allow you to get the most important parts of the deals done in a convenient and time-saving way. It should be noted that certain states may require physical signatures and it is important to know if you do business in one of those states. However, in locations where online signatures are legally binding, document signing apps are a great way to expedite crucial client communications. 

DocuSign is the National Association of Realtors (NAR) official electronic signature service. They offer a Real Estate Starter package that costs $10 per month and allows the user to send five documents per month. If you are just getting started in real estate, this could be a wise choice. 

PandaDoc offers a $19 per month plan that includes document analysis and pricing tables. However, new users can also check out the free tier that includes a payment feature.  

As a real estate agent, you will ultimately decide the best way to organize your business. You will also determine which methods of communication between you and your clients and team are most effective. However, these tools were developed to help make all of your tasks more seamless while offering a better experience for your clients. Take advantage of the free trials and free tiers to get a feel for what is most feasible for your needs.