Electronic Signature Legality for Client Information for Real Estate

How to eSign a document: electronic signature legality for Client Information for Real Estate

hi I'm Annie Fitzsimmons I'm your Washington Realtors Legal Hotline lawyer and in this modern era where we all use electronic signatures we are experiencing a phenomenon in our industry that is potentially dangerous to you as brokers and here is the phenomenon we have two parties who sign using electronic signatures and only one email address if two parties are signing using electronic signatures and only one email address does that necessarily mean that there's forgery happening no not necessarily but certainly that's the risk diving a little deeper into that same question if the electronic signature document is set up through only one access point in other words two people can sign at the same time on a document as opposed to at least a document being sent even to the same email address twice to at least create the illusion that two different people are logging on and accessing that document and signing it is that better or is that different and the answer is yes that is better and that is different the Department of Licensing recommendation on this topic is that anytime you're going to utilize electronic signatures to collect signatures from your buyer or your seller that you have in your transaction folder your firm's transaction folder written authorization from your client with a wet signature instructing you as to the email address you should use for that client so if you have a two party a two person buyer for example I don't care whether they're married or not but let's say there's two people who make up your buying team it's fine if they both want to use the same email address but you should have a wet signature from both of them in your transaction folder where each of them separately by their own wet signature instructs you to use that email dress and then when you deliver the document to them for delivery deliver it as two separate documents they each need to go into the what email system access their document click on the authorization language and sign the document that's a completely different scenario from both signatures coming to them with a single click to open the document and one person uses the mouse and clicks on both of them putting two different names there if you have questions on this topic or any other send an email to me Legal Hotline at waa realtor.org thank you for being a washington realtors member