The following practice tips are provided for brokers using electronic delivery of documents in residential real estate transactions or other transactions involving consumers. These pointers walk you through the process of obtaining consumer consent electronically and explain the use of Addendum D for agency agreements and with offers to purchase. The Consent for Use of Electronic Documents and Signatures in Consumer Real Estate Transactions (Consent) and Addendum D – Electronic Document Delivery needed in this process are available on the Wisconsin REALTORS^® Association E-Commerce Resource page (www.wra.org/ecommerce) and on zipForm^®.

To implement email delivery of documents and the use of electronic documents as well as electronic signatures in transactions involving consumers, the following must occur:

• Consumer consent must be obtained electronically. The electronic consent allows consumers to demonstrate they can receive, save and send documents electronically and to consent to the use of electronic documents, electronic signatures and email delivery.
• The parties authorize electronic delivery and identify the email address(es) for use in Addendum D.

Using the consumer Consent form electronically and using Addendum D with the contracts will satisfy these requirements. Once electronic consent has been obtained from the consumer, the listing, buyer agency agreement or offer may be modified via Addendum D to allow electronic delivery.

Why must consumer consent be obtained electronically? 

The consent form contains various consumer protections mandated by federal law and advises consumers of their rights if they choose to receive, via email, documents that are otherwise required by law to be in writing. Consumers are advised their rights to ask for paper documents instead. Consumers are also asked to verify that they can receive, open and save, for example, PDF documents on their computers. Finally, by completing and returning the Consent by email, consumers are consenting to the use of electronic documents (like PDFs), email delivery and electronic signatures.

How does a REALTOR^® send the Consent to the party? 

The agent should complete the broker’s contact information on the consent and save it so it is ready to send to clients and customers. The agent may send the consent by email as a PDF or a Word document attachment, or send the consent language as text in an email.

• PDF: If the agent sends the consumer a PDF consent document as an attachment, the consumer must print the consent, complete it and scan it in so that it can be saved on the consumer’s computer and returned to the listing agent as an attachment to an email. 
• Word attachment: If the agent sends the consumer a Word document consent as an attachment, the consumer can complete the consent, save it on his or her computer and return it to the listing agent as an attachment. Note: Just because a Word document consent is used does not mean that the party is not consenting to the delivery of PDF documents. Rather, it depends upon the language within the consent. 
• Copy form into email as text: The easiest way for an agent to obtain electronic consent is to copy and paste the consent language into the body of an email and send it to the party. The party must then click on “reply,” type in the party’s name and email address, and send it back to the agent.

What is the purpose of Addendum D? 

Once consent has been completed electronically, Addendum D is used to state the parties’ agreement in writing that email delivery is acceptable and to identify the email address(es) that may be used. Addendum D contains a lot of blank lines, but not all lines are used each time the Addendum D is completed.

Listing: If Addendum D is used with the listing contract, “offer to purchase” and “buyer agency” are stricken from the first line. The agent must then fill in the date of the listing and the property address. On the bottom of the form, the sections for the buyer and the cooperating broker are irrelevant and may be crossed out. This is a listing, so there are only a seller and a listing broker.