Tools Of The Trade: Scanner

In real estate investing, if you are finding your own deals, you will be sending out offers. Many, many offers; hundreds. If you invest like I do; most of those offers will not be face to face with a realtor in your home town. So these offers will be done over e-mail.

Most of the time, offers gets sent, then the other party will change something and send it back. Then you will initial the changes and send it back. Over a fax machine, the final copy of the purchase contract is almost unable to be read. I much prefer the use of a scanner, not only can you read the document clearly  but it looks a lot more professional.

When I was selecting my scanner; one of the feature I really wanted was that it could scan multiple paged into one document. I have had a realtor that must be using a printer top scanner. He would send me the copy of the purchase contract one page at a time. There would be eight documents for the eight pages he sent me. It was king of annoying having to deal with all the different documents to go over the contract, even more when one was out a sequence.

The scanner can be of more use in your real estate business. When preparing your bookkeeping you can scan all your receipts and send them to your accountant over email avoiding having to schedule a meeting just for droping those off. If you take the time to sort them before scanning them as well, your accountant will be very grateful, making his work load lower and diminishing your accounting fees.

Also in the event of a joint venture, you would be able to provide all partners with copies of leases, contracts, statements and bills as well as any other pertinent documentations that may be relevant to your combined business.

The first deal I closed on was in Nova Scotia. I live in Alberta. It wasn't possible for me to sign off on all the documents face to face with my lawyer who was in Nova Scotia. What he did was email me the paperwork. I printed everything off and met with a local lawyer to notarise them. My local lawyer warned me this deal would not close on time with all the paperwork being in Alberta. So, I scanned every documents, signed and notarised and sent them the PDF copy. I shipped the paperwork express post and scanned and emailed them the copy of the shipping confirmation. I closed on time at the agreed date.

Maybe more so then my printer, my scanner as become the most important tools in my office. I'm not telling you to run off and get a scanner right now. But if your budget permits, I think it is a sound investment.