It sure is easy to get buried in paperwork as a real estate investor. Whether you are buying, selling, or renting property, it seems like there is a TON of paperwork involved…
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Have you seen how much paperwork a bank requires to close a loan these days?
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How about realtor purchase agreements – did you realize how much you needed to disclose?
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Have you noticed how leases and background checks just keep growing and growing?
We were supposed to have a paperless society by now – remember those claims? Apparently the people making those claims were not real estate investors.
Fight the Paper
If only there was a way to fight the paperwork deluge. Something to organize documents, edit them, and share them with other business associates.
Well I think we may have found a one-stop shop that comes close. It’s called the PDF Expert 5. It. Is. Awesome.
Click the link here to see a great video that illustrates the power of PDF Expert 5.
You can purchase PDF Expert 5 in the Apple App Store for just $9.99. Less than 10 bucks, people! This app will let you do almost everything Adobe Acrobat Pro does and a whole lot more at about 1/20th of the price.
What PDF Expert 5 can do for you
Let me go over a few awesome things that PDF Expert 5 can do for your real estate business:
First of all it can read, add text, and edit existing text in a PDF document.
So let’s say you picked up a killer lease from another investor, but it was only in paper format… like this one below.
You can scan it into your computer, but you can’t fill in the blanks. Your only other option is to type the lease in by hand. Who wants to do that?
And even then it is not a usable PDF form. You have to put it in Word – and then, after all that, finally everything in the document is editable!
Well, that was then…
After you download PDF Expert 5, you’ll be able to fill in the blanks, sign the lease, edit it to make it customized for you, share it with your investor buddies to make it even better, and track changes on it so everyone can see what changed.
PDF Expert 5 has a similar feature to the Track Changes tool on Microsoft Word. You can also add notes to your documents to explain certain sections and even add images to spruce them up to improve marketing materials.
Once you start using this app, you will think printing documents is so 2013! You just share them electronically.
Think of all the uses for this in the real estate world:
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Marking up purchase agreements and signing them when you and your realtor are not close by.
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Having prospective tenants fill out rental applications right on your iPad and sign them. Then you are ready to fax or email them straight to prior landlords or employers.
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Have tenants sign leases and other paperwork right on the iPad.
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Fill out receipts for Craigslist purchases and sales of stuff you find in houses or need for your rentals.
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Easily create vacation rental documents.
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Collaborate on marketing material design with real estate investors that might be on the other side of the country.
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Send out a blast of purchase agreements with low-ball offers to see if any of them will stick.
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Put notes on tax documents to explain to your CPA why you made so much money and why it should not be taxed.
There are all sorts of uses for a good PDF editor for real estate investors, but we also need some way to organize all those documents…
If you Like your Cloud Service, you can Keep it
As investors, you’ve likely noticed that we have a lot of options on where to store documents.
For sure you know of these:
The types of document cloud storage we can use is really helpful. But it is very tempting to use multiple services. Especially if you want to take advantage of the free storage and not have to pay for one when you fill it up.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have all your documents – from all your cloud services, documents on your iPad and any folders you are sharing with others – all in one spot?
PDF Expert 5 can do that for you. Not only is it a document editor but it’s also a document organizer.
With PDF Expert 5, you can see all your folders in one location, whether they are on a Cloud, on your iPad or on some other network that your iPad has access to. Think of it as the ‘My Computer’ folder on your desktop.
And it will show you all formats of documents – from Microsoft Office docs to videos. You can actually watch your videos through PDF Expert 5 (no video editing just yet, sorry).
With apps like PDF Expert 5, people with tablets are getting closer and closer to having the full functionality of a laptop. This app can really help your real estate investing and bring you closer and closer to that paperless world that was once a fantasy.
What do you Think
Have you had experience with this super-cool app? Tell us how it’s made doing business easier for you (and more Earth friendly, too). We’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.
Get Organized – Whether you use PDF Expert 5 or other software, put a system in place to organize all your documents. The last thing you want to happen in front of a potential renter, buyer or seller is to look disorganized like you don’t know what you’re doing.
Go Paperless – Being able to access all your documents in one spot, sharing them remotely with business partners and backing them all up will dramatically increase your investing productivity.
Research Best Practices – Scour RealEstateMogul.com for documents you can use for your business. Look on other REI forums to see what others are using. Then use some kind of editor to customize them to your business. Make sure you get a legal review of any forms you download to make sure they will work in your state or area.
JP Moses
is a real estate investor in Memphis, TN, with experience ranging from land lording to note buying, rehabbing, and wholesaling. However, wholesaling is the area that he enjoys most and where he bring the most experience and expertise to his students.