FAQ
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WHAT IS CATALYST CLOSINGS?
Catalyst Closings is a “concierge” service providing contract-to-close administrative support to buyers and sellers. Catalyst Concierge will manage your contract from the time it goes under contract until it closes by facilitating communications between parties, coordinating inspections and appraisals, and ensuring all paperwork is complete and submitted to your compliance department.
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WHEN AM I READY FOR A CONCIERGE SERVICE?
We believe that if you are doing about two (2) deals a month, you will benefit from using Catalyst. Newer agents can benefit if they are highly motivated to use their time well. The key is leverage! If you are unable to delegate tasks and rely on experienced and capable help, it may be that using a transaction coordination service is not for you!
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CAN YOU HELP ME GROW MY BUSINESS?
Everything we do is designed around that one goal—how we help grow your business! Using Catalyst frees up your time to focus on income-producing opportunities. We have seen that lower production agents are able to quickly double and even triple their production once they start taking full advantage of leverage systems.
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WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF USING CATALYST CLOSINGS?
No matter the size of your real estate business, every real estate agent can benefit from using our Concierge service. Our goal is to free up your time by removing the burden of paperwork and logistics after contracting, so you can get back to what you do best—prospecting and following income-producing opportunities, along with helping support your work-life balance. Based on our research, on average, you would save approximately 15 hours per transaction by working with concierge support. We’ve spent over 7 years perfecting our systems to ensure no detail is missed and each transaction is managed exceptionally. After onboarding, our team takes care of everything you need in terms of management platform, client education, and transactional systems.
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HOW HANDS ON WILL I NEED TO BE DURING THE CONTRACT?
Your input is always important throughout the transaction. We are going to manage and coordinate, but your obligations don’t stop just because you are under contract! We hope you will continue to check your email on a daily basis, and it is our goal to limit the amount of active work you have to do in terms of response and input. We want to make your life easier! We will keep you in the loop and, of course, make sure you keep your hands on all negotiations. Our job is to make you look great!
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WHY SHOULDN'T I JUST HIRE AN IN-HOUSE TRANSACTION COORDINATOR? WOULDN'T IT BE CHEAPER?
As it turns out, hiring and recruiting excellent and knowledgeable people is hard! We see a wide range of issues with agents that use their own in-house help, including difficulty keeping good help on-staff, serious resource challenges when it comes to developing scalable processes, and the constant need to train and re-train administrative help. And what happens when your administrative help needs to take a week for vacation? By offering a better base of resources, and having a turnkey system, with all checklists, email templates, staff, etc. already in place, we are able to help you leverage without spending all of your time managing human capital.
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HOW DO YOU GET PAID?
The best part is that our service is offered as part of the attorney’s offering. This means that you aren’t contractually responsible for fees—so you get the benefit of the service without the cost! Since we are a service offered by Atlas Orange, our fee is a concierge service billed to the buyer/seller and is outlined in our engagement letter. Should you choose to cover this fee, just let us know! We have the ability to bill you separately or deduct from your commission at closing.
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CAN YOU USE MY SYSTEMS?
We have a proprietary system that we use to manage the transaction, just to make sure we have consistency for our agents and concierge team. That said, we certainly will make sure we link up with your compliance system, brokerage system, and document creation/generation processes.
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DO YOU KNOW HOW TO USE MY BROKER'S SYSTEM?
We have experience with every system (that we know of) in the real estate world. Part of our role is to make sure your brokerage’s compliance system stays current and has all necessary documents uploaded. Systems we have extensive training on include: Dotloop, Skyslope, Docusign, Command, ZipForms, TransactionDesk, and more! If we don’t already know it, then we will learn it.
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WHAT TYPES OF FILES/REAL ESTATE TRANSACTIONS DO YOU MANAGE?
We manage all types of files, including residential, investors, private, short sales, REOs, land, commercial, condos, multi-family, and 1031 exchanges. You name it, we have done it!
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HOW MANY FILES CAN YOU HANDLE?
We have built an efficient and scalable system, which keeps us from putting caps on our capacity. Since we work primarily with top producers, we are ready to hire additional people as we expand. In fact, it’s one thing that Atlas is known for!
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WHAT HAPPENS IF A DEAL DOESN'T CLOSE?
We do not charge a fee for cancellations to our agents. Once a file dies, we cannot continue working on the transaction for liability reasons. We do not draft termination paperwork or follow up on the release of earnest money on the Catalyst side of things.
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DO YOU PREPARE OFFERS OR LISTINGS?
At this time, we do not prepare offers, listing/buyer agreements, or listings for our agents. We know that part of the biggest value agents provide includes timely offer and contract writing for their clients, and that is the best opportunity for our agents to shine by negotiating and advising their buyers and sellers! Especially since that kind of preparation is time sensitive, we do not offer those pre-contract services through Catalyst.
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WHAT IS THE ONBOARDING PROCESS?
We have a straightforward onboarding process. We send you an information request via link where you can securely share your login info, preferred vendors, and passwords with us. Once you complete the form, we add you to our system and are ready to accept your contracts!
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IS THERE ANYTHING YOU CAN'T DO?
We avoid negotiating the terms of the deal—the agent will always be responsible for all negotiations, including repairs. That said, we can certainly help draft all post-contract documents for you and help obtain signatures to keep the transaction moving.
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WHAT ARE YOUR HOURS OF OPERATION
In general, your Concierge will be available Mon-Fri, 9-5. Our office is closed for all federal holidays.
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WHICH BROKERAGES DO YOU WORK WITH?
We are not affiliated with any one brokerage and work with agents from a wide range of backgrounds and firms
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DO I NEED TO SIGN A CONTRACT?
No. Our service agreements are outlined with your homebuyer or seller.
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IS THERE AN ONBOARDING FEE?
No.