We’ve all seen the commercials, BUNDLE AND SAVE! When it comes to insurance bundling is a great way to save a few dollars and get what you need but not all bundles are created equal. If that insurance company offering home and auto bundles decided to not include collision coverage and didn’t tell you until it was too late, you certainly would want to change to a different insurance company ASAP! Unfortunately in our industry that is exactly what bundling can do.
When it comes to the resale document industry some are selling the idea of bundling as a way to make more money for the management company and make the customer feel like they are saving money, It's a win-win right?
Wrong.
In fact, it is so wrong that the state of California went as far as to make the bundling of curtain documents ILLEGAL
CIVIL CODE SECTION 4525-4545 4530.(b)(5)
Any documents not expressly required by Section 4525 to be provided to a prospective purchaser by the seller shall not be included in the document disclosure required by this section. Bundling of documents required to be provided pursuant to this section with other documents relating to the transaction is prohibited.
With bundling being an option you must offer the converse, each individual document on its own. This means that the document buyer, can choose to NOT purchase the bundle and therefore, there is the potential to not buy all required documents. In trying to save money and cut the allowed corner, the document buyer will create an issue that WILL become the management company’s issue by not providing the new home buyer with all the necessary information, which is the entire purpose of the resale documents package. The other option given to the document buyer is that they may skip this document set altogether, which means the management company both loses any revenue it should have gotten and has to deal with the new homeowner who didn’t get the required documents.
As the management company when offering this type of bundling option, you open yourself up to two major issues:
First, by not ensuring that all necessary documents are purchased you open yourself up to customer service issues. This can come from both the home seller and the new home buyer expecting certain documents that should have been handled by your document provider causing a home buyer not to receive the proper information. By choosing to use bundling you have created an unnecessary customer service issue that is inevitably costing your team’s time.
Secondly, you are losing revenue every time someone does not take the bundling option. This is a simple concept really, if you’re being promised more money from customers buying bundles and the customer chooses NOT to buy the bundle YOU are losing out on revenue. This is also assuming that bundling is actually making you more revenue in the first place. If bundling IS NOT actually increasing your revenue to begin with this issue will only further compound the lost revenue caused by the false promises of bundling.
So how do we do what is best for both the document buyer and the management company without bundling?
GetDocsNow was designed to follow the real estate sales process. By doing this, we sell all of the necessary documents as they are needed through the process. In order to complete an order with GetDocsNow a document buyer must purchase ALL of the required documents and must do so within the legal time frame. This ensures that the home buyer gets all of the proper documents and the home seller isn't forced to come back and make additional purchases, or isn’t allowed to forgo purchasing them in the first place. Most important to us is eliminating the extra customer service issues and eliminating any missed opportunity to make the proper amount your company deserves for providing resale documents.
Although selling “bundles” sounds exciting and rewarding and like it could make your company a lot of money, it’s all based on the hope that the document buyer will choose to utilize this option. We believe it is a better business practice to build a system that provides what is needed when it is required assuring nothing is missed, and maximizes your profit for each turnover. This way we are not leaving your fate up to the document buyer.
If you’re interested in discussing this further or learning more about how we at GetDocsNow handle this issue please reach out. I can be reached at bgreene@getdocsnow.com or to schedule a conversation click here.