For real estate agents
PDF tools for real estate agents
Property paperwork is heavy in two senses: a listing pack is a dozen documents from a dozen sources, and photo brochures are the files most likely to bounce off an email limit. Both are browser jobs, and the documents carry client financial details that should not be uploaded anywhere.
By Suprabhat Updated How we write these
What tends to go wrong
- A listing or completion pack arrives as separate files from surveyors, solicitors and the seller, and has to go out as one document.
- Photo brochures are tens of megabytes and bounce off the email limits agents email into every day.
- Offers and applications carry income details, bank information and identity documents.
- Documents get scanned in whatever orientation the feeder grabbed them, and arrive sideways.
The workflow
Every one of these works today, and runs on your own device.
- 1
Assemble the pack in one document
Floor plans, the energy certificate, the survey, the title documents and the brochure into a single file in a sensible order. Each source file’s bookmarks are kept, so a long pack can be navigated rather than scrolled.
Merge PDF - 2
Get a photo brochure small enough to email
Brochures are mostly photographs, which is exactly what compresses well — 80 to 95 per cent is normal. Aim under 18 MB for a 25 MB limit, because attachments grow by about a third in transit.
Compress PDF - 3
Remove financial details before sharing an offer
An offer or mortgage document passed to a vendor rarely needs the buyer’s account numbers and salary. Redaction removes the text rather than covering it, so it cannot be selected back out further down the chain.
Redact PDF - 4
Straighten a scanned pack
Scanned title documents and plans come back sideways or upside down. Rotating writes the orientation into the file, so it is right for everyone rather than just in the viewer where you turned it.
Rotate PDF - 5
Turn property photos into a document
A set of photographs becomes one PDF in the order you choose — useful for condition reports, inventories and check-in records.
Images to PDF - 6
Send only the pages that were asked for
Pull the floor plan and the energy certificate out of a ninety-page pack rather than emailing the lot to someone who wanted two pages.
Extract PDF Pages
What an inventory or condition report needs to survive a dispute
A condition report is only useful later if it can be shown to be the one made at the time, and that comes down to two things that are easy to get right and easy to skip.
Where the report is evidence in a deposit dispute, a fingerprint of the file taken when it was signed is worth recording — any later change produces a completely different value.
- Order and date the photographs. Combine them into one PDF in the order taken, room by room, rather than leaving a folder whose order depends on the file names.
- Fix the orientation before it is signed, not after — a rotation applied later changes the file, and a changed file is a weaker record.
Questions
Why does a 22 MB brochure bounce off a 25 MB limit?
Attachments are encoded for transit, which adds roughly a third to the size. Compress to about 18 MB for a 25 MB cap and it will go.
Will compressing a brochure make the property photographs look bad?
Not at sensible targets. Photographs carry far more detail than a screen or an email preview shows. Check the result on your most detailed image — a wide exterior shot — before sending a brochure to a client list.
Is it safe to handle a buyer’s bank documents with this?
The documents stay in your browser and are never uploaded, which is the right handling for someone else’s financial and identity papers. Redact what the next person in the chain does not need to see.
Can I combine files that are different page sizes?
Yes. A PDF records the size per page, so A4 documents, Letter-sized scans and a landscape floor plan all keep their own dimensions in one pack. Resize them to one standard only if the whole pack has to print uniformly.
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