As some of you are probably aware, Victorian state law has changed the Estate Agent Act 1980 to protect consumers from underquoting. Victorian real estate agents now need to supply a Statement of Information with their online advertising to ensure the advertised value of a property is correct. Luckily - we’d already had a solution to the problem in the backlog. We were just waiting for the right time to develop it. Well, for obvious reasons, we rushed it to priority number one. Introducing public documents.
Public documents
There’s a problem with storing data on the cloud. How do we know what to share and what not to? Some information needs to be private. You obviously don’t want your signed sales contracts broadcasted out across the internet. But some documents (Section 32 vendor statements, offer templates, and now, Statements of Information) need to be shared freely across the internet. Historically, we’ve just kept all your data under lock and key. Just to be safe, you know? But today we’re happy to roll out two new fields in the Documents tab of your listing records that will allow you to decide whether the document you’ve just uploaded should be classified or viral. (well, maybe not quite viral - but they’ll be displayed by default on public pages like e-brochures you generate for the listing or Siteloft websites). Simply upload any documents to your listing record as normal, then click Edit in the dropdown menu. You’ll be greeted by a fancy new dialog.
Here you have the ability to customise your document type, and decide who can access it. Private is the default setting. Just as before, your document will be kept safe and sound in Rex. No-one will be able to view them without your password and username. Public - a fancy new libertarian setting - will show your document by default on any e-brochures you generate for the listing, or when you push your listing to a Siteloft website.
Customising document types for easy categorisation
To give you a quick overview of all your documents at a glance, we’ve also given you the ability to customise and change the document ‘type’. This will no doubt help you keep all the many documents in your life in some sort of order.We’ve given you a few default document types, but you also have the option to create your own in the Custom values settings page (if your system permissions allow it).
Statements of Information (Victoria only)
To keep your system as simple as possible, only our Victorian users will have access to this for now. Though we’ll roll it out across any state that changes their consumer law in a similar way. Once you’ve uploaded your Statement of Information PDF, click Edit in the drop down and you’ll be greeted with the same dialog as above. This time though, you’ll notice a ‘Statement of Information’ option in the Type field.
Simply select this, then set your document access to ‘Public’. You must ensure it is set to 'Public' if you want it to upload to the portal.Once that's finished, run your portal upload as per usual. Your Statement of Information will be automatically included. It’s that easy.
