Your seller is waiting in her living room to e-sign a listing contract, but iOS 9 on your iPad has you befuddled.
For the tech headaches like this and the thousands of others that crop up for real estate brokers and agents, there’s Tech Helpline, a phone, email and live chat service covering North America and run by Florida Realtors.
Over 70 Realtor associations, MLSs and brokerages — representing nearly 400,000 agents in the U.S. and Canada — pay a per-member, monthly fee for the service. Realtor associations make up a bulk of those contracts, including eight state associations: Florida, South Carolina, West Virginia, Arkansas, Kansas, North Dakota, Wyoming and Washington.
“Think of us as the Genius Bar for real estate with one huge advantage.” -Tricia Stamper, director of technology products, Florida Realtors.
With the service, agents have unlimited access to help with no time limit, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern time, and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday. All guidance comes from the 40 full-time employees who work out of Florida Realtors’ Orlando headquarters.
Agents can’t currently purchase the service for themselves; they must go through their association, MLS or brokerage.
With technology proliferating in life and real estate, Tech Helpline offers one way brokers and agents can keep it under control.
Although it’s run by a state association and exclusively serves real estate agents, Tech Helpline supports just a handful of real estate-focused tech: the electronic form-filling software Form Simplicity (also owned by Florida Realtors) and Win Forms. It does not support the immensely popular zipForm.
It’s focus centers on general tech such as computer operating systems, smartphones, USB cards, scanners, Web browsers, email applications, and financial and security apps. See a full list of covered tech here.
Tricia Stamper
“Think of us as the Genius Bar for real estate with one huge advantage: Our team are experts at understanding not just the technology real estate agents and brokers use; they also understand the real estate business,” said Tricia Stamper, director of technology products at Florida Realtors, in a statement.
Pricing for the service varies by an organization’s size, Stamper said. Currently, no contracts involve revenue sharing, but Florida Realtors is open to it.
Tech Helpline launched in 2001 as a service for Florida Realtors, but it began to spread across North America as other associations became aware of it, she added.
