Table of Contents
- What Is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant?
- What Can a Real Estate Virtual Assistant Do for You?
- How to Hire a Real Estate Virtual Assistant
Thinking about possibly hiring a real estate virtual assistant?
Many top-selling agents leverage virtual assistants to help them manage transactions, freeing up valuable time to secure more clients.
If you’re like most high-producing real estate agents, you’re busy. Any seasoned agent knows that working on more than 2 transactions a month is time-consuming and any more than that can be overwhelming.
In this post, we’ll share what a real estate virtual assistant (VA) is, what they do, and how you can hire one.
So first, let’s explore what is a virtual assistant for real estate.
What Is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant?
A real estate virtual assistant (VA) is a business admin who performs a variety of business services remotely.
Virtual assistants can be hired full-time, part-time, or even on a project basis. Many real estate sales professionals contract with a VA in an ongoing, part-time arrangement, adding more hours when things get busier.
Hiring a VA is basically hiring an assistant to help you with time-consuming and monotonous things, such as social media posting, basic admin functions, data entry, client and market research, schedule planning, and assisting you in other things.
In addition, an experienced and skilled VA can also manage diverse tasks such as lead generation, database management, or even marketing.
If you want to dig deeper on this topic, please read, the value of a virtual assistant to a real estate agent.
Now, let’s take a closer look at what a real estate virtual assistant can do for your business.
What Can a Real Estate Virtual Assistant Do for You?
Many successful real estate sales professionals have accepted the myth that it’s easier, or more cost-effective, to “just do it myself” handling all the minutiae of every transaction.
What these agents fail to realize is that their time is better-spent onboarding new clients instead of talking through the details with title offices, mortgage lenders, and others involved in getting transactions closed.
That being the case, using a VA helps you win back your time so you can focus on the high-impact work that brings in revenue for your real estate business.
Next, here are some of the many things a great virtual assistant can do to help you expand your real estate business.
1. Marketing Outreach
Firstly, marketing is a vital part of your real estate business — but it can also be time-consuming.
A virtual assistant can handle many of the day-to-day marketing tasks leaving you more time to do the things that only you can do.
For example, here are just a few marketing tasks a VA can help with:
- Create buyer’s packets and presentation PowerPoints
- Prepare and send mailers to your spheres of influence
- Provide graphic design for digital and print assets
- Schedule (or even write) blog posts and content for social media
- Update your website and maintain SEO
- Create and launch email marketing campaigns
- And even track marketing analytics
Think about how valuable the above marketing tasks are and you begin to realize how valuable a real estate virtual assistant truly is.
2. Operations Support
Further, using a virtual assistant to help with day-to-day real estate operations can be of tremendous benefit — especially if you hire one who’s familiar with the real estate industry.
A real estate VA can help keep your office running smoothly, handling things such as:
- Data entry
- Preparing listing presentations
- Collecting feedback from your clients and answering their questions
- Basic bookkeeping and paying bills
- Preparing sales and performance reports
- Managing contracts, agreements, and other documents
- Also, new agent recruiting and onboarding
3. Sales Support & Lead Generation
Don’t underestimate the skills of a VA just because they’re virtual — you’d be surprised how many sales tasks a virtual assistant can help you with:
- Research buyer and seller leads
- Manage and update your CRM with notes on leads
- Prospecting and cold calling
- Following up with leads
- Setting appointments and scheduling showings
- Update sellers on weekly progress
The list of sales support tasks an experienced real estate virtual assistant can help with is almost endless!
4. Administrative Functions
Lastly, there are also the standard virtual assistant tasks — the types of responsibilities you’d give to a secretary or personal assistant:
- Respond to emails and/or perform inbox triage
- Schedule meetings
- Handle receptionist duties such as answering incoming calls
- Take and keep meeting minutes
- Manage your calendar
- Help with personal tasks such as holiday cards, organizing social events, and so on
A good real estate virtual assistant will more than pay for themselves. In fact, many expert VAs will even have experience and ideas that can create revenue opportunities for your business that you might never have thought of.
And, just in case you’re wondering about prices for such services, you can read virtual assistants for real estate: how much do they cost?
Great, so now that we understand the functions and value of a real estate virtual assistant, how do you go about hiring one?
How to Hire a Real Estate Virtual Assistant
The key to success when hiring a VA is to clearly define the tasks and outcomes you are looking for.
Therefore, before you go out and start vetting VAs, it’s imperative first to get your house in order so you know what your needs are and can set clear expectations from the beginning.
First, start by getting your own business system and process in place, then assess where the key obstacles are and outline the tasks and outcomes that would help remove those and get more deals flowing in.
Second, write up a job description with clear duties and tasks and an idea of what success looks like in this role. Also, keep in mind, that the job description should contain the specific tasks you’ve identified in step one.
Third, go out and find a talented real estate virtual assistant. But where do you look? Experienced sales agents will tell you to never underestimate the talent you can find overseas.
Not only is overseas outsourcing more affordable, but there are talented VAs all over the globe, who are skilled at various aspects of running a real estate business and more than comfortable working across time zones.
Let PhotoUp Help!
For a decade PhotoUp has specialized in building virtual teams in the Philippines. With a staff of hundreds of virtual assistants, we have the size and experience to connect you with the perfect virtual personal assistant.
PhotoUp will match you with a VA who has the right educational background, skill set, and level of experience for your specific needs.
For more details, check out our virtual assistant demo video:
So, why not take the first step today? You won’t regret it!
Schedule a free consultation to learn more about PhotoUp’s virtual assistants and how they can make a noticeable and positive difference to the way you work.
We hope this post helped you better understand what a real estate virtual assistant is and how to hire one to help ease your workload and make you more productive.
If you enjoyed reading this blog post, you may also want to check out the following resources:
- Grow Your Business With a Real Estate Virtual Assistant
- The Value of a Virtual Assistant to a Real Estate Agent
- Are You Making the Most of Your Virtual Assistant’s Services?
- Where, How, and When Should You Hire a Real Estate Virtual Assistant?
- Real Estate Photo Editing Philippines (Best & Most Affordable Service)
