How to Find and Use a Real Estate Virtual Assistant Like a Pro

If you’re like most successful real estate agents, you’re busy. You’re likely struggling to find free time for family and the things you enjoy. This doesn’t have to be the case. As your workload increases, you should consider finding outside help. The perfect solution to your woes may just be hiring a real estate virtual assistant.

In today’s world, finding the perfect real estate virtual assistant has never been easier. With popular freelance platforms that are loaded with help, to agencies that specialize in finding assistance for over-burdened agents such as yourself, the options are continually expanding.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the reasons to opt for an assistant, the tasks they should cover, what goes into hiring them, how to determine their value, and where to locate the perfect help. So stop wasting your valuable time on activities that can be outsourced, and start focusing on maximizing your profits!

Why You Should Consider a Real Estate Virtual Assistant

Properly managing your time is one of the crucial steps to successfully growing your real estate business. If you spend too much time on the remedial tasks that could easily be delegated elsewhere, you won’t be left with enough to spend on the business growing activities you should be focused on.

Once you have a proper procedure in place for any regular business activity, assigning that repeatable process to a trusted assistant is easy.

While you may be tempted into thinking that doing it yourself is cheaper, in the long run, this isn’t usually the case. You may save the money you would be spending on an assistant, you’re missing out on the time you could spend on more valuable tasks, which could hurt your growth and your profits.

The time you save can be spent on following up on promising leads, closing business deals, and finding new opportunities. Afternoons spent organizing paperwork, scheduling meetings, and updating listings can — and should — be handled by a real estate virtual assistant while you take care of the heavy lifting of growing your business.

This is why all the most successful agents use real estate virtual assistants. In fact, it’s pretty hard to reach a 7 or 8 figure income without one. However, there are some tricks to hiring and utilizing your real estate virtual assistant services correctly, which we’ll cover in the subsequent sections.

What Your Real Estate Virtual Assistant Can Help You With

While an ISA can offer some invaluable skills to your organization, they’re not necessarily what we’re talking about when we say real estate virtual assistant. Even though inbound sales associates are excellent at generating new leads , converting leads into appointments, and servicing inbound leads, their job description is a bit more specific than the type of assistant we’re talking about.

So while having a qualified ISA on your team is important, when it comes to a VA, you’re looking for someone who can effectively take all the small, time-consuming tasks off of your plate. Someone who can help to lighten your workload so you can focus on the high-impact activities that help bring in additional revenue to your real estate business.

As your business grows, you can slowly expand the role your VA takes, and hire someone capable of taking on a bigger position in your organization.

Below, we’ll go over some of the things that you can have your real estate virtual assistant help you out with:

Operations Related Activities:

• Coordinate and update activities
• Manage your transactions
• Update your CRM with new lead notes
• Track your I&E and P&L
• List presentations
• Conduct research on buyer and seller leads
• Perform data entry
• Collect client and team feedback

Marketing Related Activities:

• Organize, schedule, and write blog posts
• Handle necessary SEO updates
• Create powerpoints and buyer’s packets
• Perform Graphic design on your print and digital media
• Write social media posts
• Update and advertise social media posts
• Create your email schedule
• Email relevant individuals in your sphere of influence
• Help with direct mail marketing activities

Administration Related Activities:

• Respond to backed-up emails
• Set meetings with clients/leads
• Manage your calendar
• Deal with personal administration — organizing family events, birthday and holiday cards, etc.

Sales Related Activities

• Handle lead follow-ups
• Help with inbound sales calls
• Cold call potential leads

How to Hire and Manage Your Real Estate Personal Assistant

Before getting your money involved and actually hiring your Real Estate Personal Assistant, you need to consider a few things. First, ask yourself if you’re legitimately ready for a VA? And If so, which VA would make the best choice? Once you’ve narrowed down the VA you’d like to use, how will you know they’re actually working all those hours they’re billing you for?

Make sure that you spend the time necessary to give yourself an honest answer to these questions. To determine if your VA is worth the money, ask to see some examples of past work or to give you a case study as to how they helped a past client.

When it comes to honesty with billing, look into the results of their work. If their deliverables match up with the amount of time their spending on them, you’re likely in good hands. If you still have some doubts in regards to how your VA is using their time, have them use one of the many time tracking tools available online, such as Clockify . There are also plenty of outsourcing tools available that include a time tracking component, such as Upwork’s tracker.

When you begin working with a new VA, you’ll want to start by determining the areas in your business where work often gets backed up. Next, find a process that can easily be delegated to another person that would help to streamline this work and to get things running smoothly again.

Do this across your business, assigning all possible work to your VA to help alleviate any bottlenecks. Include a summary of these roles in the job description you first use to locate your real estate virtual assistant, that way they’ll know what to expect from day one.

Contracts and Agreements with Your Real Estate Virtual Assistant

It’s fairly standard that you have your VA agree to a few things and possibly sign a contract or two. The first document you’re going to want to consider is an independent contractor agreement. This agreement will be signed by both parties and will help to protect you and your VA by laying out some basic information regarding their role in your company. It should officially stipulate what the expectations for your contractor are so there aren’t any misunderstandings.

The second document you should consider having your real estate virtual assistant sign is a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). This document will ensure, under legal obligation, that your new VA won’t spill any company secrets or go blabbing about your leads to competing realtors.

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Real Estate Personal Assistant Pricing

How much your real estate personal assistant is going to cost you is all dependant on a number of factors. Sure, it’s possible to find incredibly cheap personal assistant on Fiverr, but when looking for help to grow your business, it pays to remember the old adage “you get what you pay for.” Just because you can find a cheap real estate virtual assistant doesn’t mean that you should.

However, there are ways to save when looking for your new VA. From hiring overseas help to looking for someone trying to build experience, you can find cheap real estate virtual assistants if you know how to look.

Next, we’ll cover the things you should consider when looking into real estate virtual assistant pricing:

The Experience Level of Your Real Estate Virtual Assistant

Depending on what your needs are, you may want to hire someone who’s an expert in a variety of trades, or you may require someone who’s a bit more specialized for a specific type of work. While a specialist may cost you a bit more, many real estate virtual assistant companies can help you find someone with the right experience to handle just about any job you could throw at them, making it worth the cost.

A good way to figure out what type of help would suit you best is to start out with a real estate virtual assistant who is more of a generalist. Someone who’s not incredibly specialized, but has the knowledge to handle most tasks that you give them. It’s good to start with a single project, and if they perform well, move on to set hours and a monthly agreement. If there are certain tasks that are too advanced for them to handle, you may be better off with a specialist.

However, if you’ve been in the real estate game for a long time and you know exactly what you need, then you may as well just go with an expert. This may cost a bit more, but it will help you to grow your business and increase your revenue quicker in the long run. Experts are also able to help you generate ideas that can help you expand your business even further.

Real Estate Virtual Assistants based in the US vs Overseas

While overseas virtual assistants often get a bad rap, you’d be surprised how effective and affordable hiring from abroad can be. Just because someone lives in another country doesn’t mean that they don’t know about running a business or how to provide positive results. And seeing as the living expenses in countries like India and China are so much less, they’re often a lot easier on the wallet.

However, there are some caveats. Depending on your needs, a local assistant may be 100% necessary. This is especially true for client-facing work. In this case, you want someone who is familiar with the local landscape, can speak perfect English, and has a clearer idea of local client expectations. If you need help with stuff like open houses and arranging cleaners, a local VA may be necessary as well.

The Scope of Work Expected

Before hiring anybody, you need to figure out which tasks you need help with, and, realistically, how much work you have to outsource. A good way to determine this is to track your time as you perform the tasks you intend to outsource. After a couple of weeks, you should have a decent idea as to how much work you really have.

Also, pay attention to those tasks that pull you away from the important revenue-building activities that you’d rather be doing. These are areas where you could also use a bit of assistance. The complexity of these tasks is another aspect to pay attention to, as it can help you determine the level of help you may need.

Any task that is incredibly time consuming but can easily be delegated elsewhere is a task you could have your real estate virtual assistant take care of.

The Schedule of Your Real Estate Virtual Assistant

When you hire your real estate virtual assistant, you can choose to schedule them in one of three ways:

• Part-time help
• Project-based help
• Full-time help

Deciding which is best for you will depend both on your budget and your needs. Project-based help can be found for relatively cheap and is a great place to start as you figure out what your needs are. This is also a good way to test out a new hire to make sure they can handle the work you give them. If everything works out with the projects you give your VA, you may want to consider offering them a long-term contract.

If you really like your VA but you don’t want to go all-in just yet, offer them a part-time contract. This way they’re dedicated to you, but you don’t have to pay full-time wages. As your workload — and profits — grow, consider extending to full-time.

The Best Places to Find Your Real Estate Personal Assistant

There are tons of great resources available online for narrowing down your perfect real estate personal assistant. However, the resource that’s best suited for you is all dependant on what you’re looking for. Do you need good help but have a strict budget? Is money not an issue, and you’re looking for a top-of-the-line expert?

Just keep in mind that writing a clear job description and having knowledge of the tasks you need to be performed is paramount. While the resource you use to find your VA is important, without a clear idea of what you’re looking for you may struggle.

However, no matter what your precise needs are, one of the following resources should help you find an ideal candidate:

Fiverr – Great for Low Priced Help

This is a great place to turn if budget is your primary concern. On Fiverr, it’s possible to find quality help that will handle tasks for a little as $5. However, Fiverr doesn’t just have cheap real estate virtual assistants. There are seasoned professionals here as well, but their prices reflect their experience so don’t expect them to be cheap.

Upwork – Easy to Use For Quick Help

As the biggest name in the world of freelancing, you’ve likely heard of Upwork once or twice in the past. This website offers freelancers to handle just about any task you can imagine, including those who specialize as real estate personal assistants. These VAs are often independent, but there are agencies on the site as well. Help on Upwork isn’t unaffordable, but it isn’t necessarily the cheapest either.

MyOutDesk – the Place to Go When Budget Isn’t an Issue

If you’re looking for the best possible help but don’t want to spend a ton of time searching for it, MyOutDesk is a great option. The company trains all its VAs to cover any real estate task you may have. They even offer assistants that specialize in the real estate industry. Their real estate virtual assistant services aren’t cheap, but if budget isn’t a concern, this is an excellent resource.

Timeetc – Loads of US-Based Help

Timeetc is an excellent place to find a U.S. based virtual assistant that can help you with just about any task imaginable. Unlike Upwork and Fiverr, the team at Timeetc will help match you with a qualified candidate. The process they use to find your assistant is the same one used by Richard Branson’s executive assistant, so you know it’s reliable.

MyTasker – Quality Help From Abroad

With affordable help based out of India, MyTasker’s team of virtual assistants are a great place to look if your organization is still fairly small and budget is a concern. Their virtual assistants can handle nearly any task, including accounting, writing, administrative, and digital marketing.

Hiring the Right Real Estate Virtual Assistant

The perfect real estate virtual assistant for you is out there, but to find them, you’re going to want to consider a few things. Firstly, how much work do you have and how advanced is it? You want to consider someone with an advanced enough skill set to be able to manage the tasks you intend to outsource. You also need to figure out how long your work will take, and if it requires project-based, part-time, or full-time help.

Once you know what you’re looking for, figure out which resources are best suited for finding it. If budget is your main concern, consider Fiverr or MyTasker. However, if you need someone who is an expert, MyOutDesk or Upwork are good choices. Every realtor is different, so first, determine your needs, develop a process for handling them, and use the right resources, and you’ll find the perfect help for you.