Case Study . Real Estate Fintech

DrBroker: Cutting Real Estate Transaction Time by 40%

How ZAPTA helped a US-based real estate fintech replace fragmented spreadsheets and disconnected tools with a unified, audit-ready transaction platform — onboarding 2,000 users and processing 5,000+ transactions in the first phase.

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Industry

Real Estate Fintech

Project type

Custom Web App

Plateform

Web · Cloud

Duration

6 Months

Engagement

Fixed Scope

Region

USA

Project snapshot

Engagement at a Glance

DrBroker is a US-based real estate fintech founded by Terry Peterson to solve a problem every broker, agent, and buyer recognises — transactions that get stuck because the people running them are working in different tools that don’t talk to each other.

Before ZAPTA was engaged, transaction data lived across spreadsheets, email threads, scattered cloud folders, and independent point tools. Checklists were managed manually. Contracts were tracked in inboxes. Audit trails had to be reconstructed by hand at closing. The result was avoidable delays, document errors, and compliance friction at exactly the moments brokers could least afford them.

ZAPTA delivered a fixed-scope web platform in six months with a dedicated team of five — two engineers, one UX designer, one QA engineer, and one project manager. The platform unified the list-side, buy-side, and Super Admin workflows into a single auditable system, with role-based access, integrated checklist and contract management, and automated activity logging built in from day one.

40% faster

Faster transaction closing

99% fewer

Reduction in document errors

5K+ processed

Transactions processed

The challenge

What DrBroker Came to Us With

Three structural problems holding back transaction velocity — each rooted in fragmented tooling rather than a lack of effort from the team.

Data Spread Across Spreadsheets
Fragmented tooling

Sellers, buyers, and Super Admins now share a single transaction record with role-based access. Status changes, checklist progress, and contract updates flow to every relevant stakeholder in real time.

No Checklist or Contract Control
Manual oversight

Checklists were maintained by hand. Contracts were tracked through email. Brokers and admins had no reliable way to see who had completed what — or what was overdue.

Compliance Reconstructed at Closing
Audit friction

Audit trails had to be assembled manually for each closing. Document errors were common, costly to fix, and visible only after the fact.

The solution

A Unified Transaction Platform, Built Audit-Ready

Four architectural decisions that turned a manual operation into a measurable one.

List-Side, Buy-Side, and Admin in One System
Fragmented tooling

Sellers, buyers, and Super Admins now share a single transaction record with role-based access. Status changes, checklist progress, and contract updates flow to every relevant stakeholder in real time.

Configurable Templates, Permissioned Sharing
Manual oversight

Brokers can create, edit, and share transaction checklists with granular access permissions. Notifications surface critical activities automatically — no chasing, no missed deadlines.

System-Wide Visibility from Day One
Manual oversight

A dedicated Super Admin dashboard provides full control over user accounts, transaction monitoring, contract review, and FAQ management — with every action captured in the audit log.

Google OAuth + Role-Based Permissions
Audit friction

Users can sign up via traditional registration or Google. Profile and password management is self-service. Permission boundaries are enforced at the API layer, not just the UI.

Client voices

What Terry Said

Key features build

What Shipped in Six Months

Six product capabilities delivered as part of the fixed-scope engagement — each tied to a measurable workflow improvement.

1
Active & Closed Transaction View
A single dashboard surfaces every active and closed transaction. Filters by status, party, deadline, and document state — replacing four separate spreadsheets in production.
2
Templated, Shareable, Permissioned
Brokers create and reuse checklist templates across deals. Sharing is permissioned per stakeholder. Completion state is captured automatically — no manual status updates.
3
Centralised Contract Workflow
Contracts live in the platform, not in inboxes. Versioning, party assignment, and review status are tracked centrally. The audit trail builds itself.
4
Transaction-Linked Date Tracking
Every critical date — inspection, financing contingency, closing — is linked to its transaction. Notifications fire at the right point for the right party.
5
User, Transaction & FAQ Control
Super Admins manage user accounts, monitor live transactions, oversee contracts, and maintain a structured FAQ knowledge base — all from one dashboard.
6
Real-Time Alerts, Permanent Trail
Stakeholders receive timely alerts on actions that affect them. Every action — view, edit, approval, share — is captured in an immutable audit log ready for compliance review.

Results delivered

The Numbers That Mattered

Four outcomes delivered across the first six months of production — measured against DrBroker’s pre-platform manual baseline.

40% faster

With checklists, contracts, and notifications in one system, transactions stop stalling on missing handoffs. Closing cycle time dropped 30–40% against the manual baseline.

99% down

Single source of truth, version control, and automated validation eliminated the rework loop. Errors that used to surface at closing now get caught before they exist.

5,000+ live

The platform processed over 5,000 transactions in the first phase — a volume the previous spreadsheet workflow could not have absorbed without breaking.

2,000+ onboarded

Active users onboarded

Ready by default

Every action lives in an immutable audit log. Compliance evidence is now produced as a continuous output of the platform — not assembled by hand at closing.

Six month

Fixed-scope delivery with a dedicated team of five. Weekly demos, no scope creep, and zero-downtime cutover from the legacy spreadsheet workflow.

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Stack

The DrBroker Technology Stack

Modern, fintech-ready tools selected for transaction integrity, audit traceability, and rapid iteration.

AWS
AWS
GCP
GCP
PostgreSQL
MongoDB
Azure
Vercel
Netlify
Terraform
GitHub Actions
Docker

How we worked

Our Three-Phase Delivery Process

The same process ZAPTA applies to every engagement — adapted to DrBroker’s six-month, fixed-scope timeline.

Phase 1

Consult and Align

Discovery, strategy, planning, requirement gathering, roadmap alignment.

Phase 2

Design and Engineer

UI/UX, architecture, development, testing, iteration.

Phase 3

Deploy and Maintain

Launch, monitoring, support, optimization, scaling.

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