Real Estate Virtual Assistant – What does it mean?
Real estate virtual assistants offer a wide range of real estate services from a distinct location; usually a remote office.
Their services include:
- Managing property details
- Data entry
- Generating leads and sales reports
- Scheduling appointments
- Keeping business records
- Updating property databases
Real Estate Virtual Assistant Vs Real Estate Agent
When it comes to outsourcing administrative duties, a real estate virtual assistant can do the same things an agent does but from their own office. If you’re in a location that does not support telecommunication, you will still benefit from hiring a VA. Most will work from home offices that do have internet connections or by phone or email basis. In addition, they are not limited to the tasks that real estate agents can perform. Many virtual assistants provide general services such as booking rooms, handling mail, and handling phone inquiries and so much more.
Benefits of Hiring a Real Estate VA
The advantages of hiring a virtual assistant are fairly obvious. For example, they only charge for tasked services or billable hours they provide for you. Many other benefits of hiring a real estate VA are given below:
1. Increase Business Profitability
Real estate is a business that demands a lot of hard work. You may find its daily activities very difficult and time-consuming. By doing these tasks for you, virtual assistants will save your time so that you can focus on other important tasks leads, and revenue. A perfectly trained virtual assistant will help your business to succeed and be profitable.
2. Increase business range
Another great benefit of hiring a virtual assistant is that they can use technology and the internet to help you advertise your real estate business. You can post videos and articles online, put up flyers, or start holding open houses. All these things will help you increase the number of people who are aware of your company. The more people who know about you and your services, the more successful you will be.
3. Minimum cost, maximum benefit
Hiring a real estate virtual assistant can be a very cost-effective way for you to handle the day-to-day tasks associated with the property market. The great thing about these types of services is that you can get help at any time of the week but we advise you to hire a VA that is in your time zone.
4. Less training expenses
Real estate virtual assistants can significantly reduce your training costs. This is because most real estate virtual assistants have excellent real estate experience. They already know how to manage your work and therefore require minimum training. Furthermore, if you assign them tasks according to their skills, then they will not need to be trained which can reduce the training costs to zero! Virtual Assist Us doesn’t charge for time having to be spent on something we are needing to be trained on.
5. Get your work done at any time
Another key benefit of hiring a real estate virtual assistant is that if they are local your assistant could meet with a potential buyer that you are unable to meet on time, they can still do other work around the house while your buyer gets ready to visit. If you have something special in mind but are unable to fulfill it until a specific time, you can just send your assistant an email or give them a quick call to see if they can help. They can even help you plan out what you are going to do on a particular weekend; open houses, meet and greets, etc.
What You Need to Know?
I believe we have established that hiring a virtual assistant is a great idea for any real estate business. They are often inexpensive when compared to hiring other employees and they can be used to handle so many tasks that would otherwise be left up to the staff member. If you have several jobs to do in a single day, hiring a VA can free up a lot of your time and allow you to focus on your main tasks.
Here are some other main things to consider while hiring a real estate virtual assistant:
1. Know your exact requirements
Before hiring a real estate virtual assistant, it’s important to know your exact working requirements. After that, you can find a virtual assistant according to those requirements. To begin, you should consider what their skills are. As you might know, there are a variety of different real estate virtual assistant services available to choose from. Choose the one who can fulfill all your needs.
2. From where to hire?
You can hire a real estate virtual assistant either from a VA agency or from a freelancing platform.
● Hiring from a VA agency
If you don’t know whether you should hire a real estate VA or not, then a VA agency as Virtual Assist Us can be helpful. VA agencies provide budget virtual assistants. What that means is if you are just starting out you can be assigned a VA to help you with that certain project.
● Hiring from a freelancing platform
Most expert realtors and investors prefer finding a real estate VA through some freelancing platforms and websites like Linkedin which is where we have met many of our clients. Although most believe freelancers cost a lot that is not true of Virtual Assist Us. Here you would be able to see, their portfolio, experience, referrals, etc.
Some best freelancer platforms to hire a real estate VA are and Virtual Assist Us are on all three platforms:
3. What to look for?
One of the most important things you will have to look for in a real estate virtual assistant is his/her experience. As a real estate agent and or investor, you might face tough questions from those who are highly professional in this area. So, it’s better to hire a real estate virtual assistant who has worked in real estate for years and understands all the ins and outs of this business and this is also not hard to impart into a VA that is willing to learn more as well. Such a VA can answer those questions and resolve them which will make your job easier and save you valuable time as well. Moreover, you should hire someone who is reliable, trustworthy, good at communication skills. Virtual Assist Us has the experience you would require.
4. Make Sure They Understand Social Media
Nowadays, many real estate businesses are succeeding through social media. People provide details of their property to retailers who sell them on these platforms. If you are running a real estate business that doesn’t have anything online then it’s very important to create its online presence. For this purpose, your real estate virtual assistance should be skilled enough to create and manage all your business visibility on social media as well as on your official website. Virtual Assist Us is partnered with KJONGSSYS.com Keith Gallagher who assists VAU establish all their clients and get them up and running.
5. Make Sure They Understand Your Target Audience
In order to target a specific audience through your website or social media platform, you will need someone who can understand your audience, or at least can try to improve the knowledge regarding that audience.
6. Access all, choose one
A good assistant can make a big difference in the success of your real estate business. However, you have to make sure that you get the right assistant for your needs. Do some research on the internet and talk to as many candidates as you can. Access all of them and choose the one you think is best skilled, trustworthy, honest, and always ready to work for you.
7. Conduct Interviews
For knowing your prospective candidates in a better way, you can conduct an interview. Telecommunications applications like Skype or Zoom can be used for this purpose as it allows people to chat, make calls, and send files without any charges. Before the interview, you can create a list of questions while during the interview, ask those questions to candidates and analyze their responses. Questions can be like:
- What’s your work environment?
- What’s your availability?
- Have you already worked in real estate? If yes then what’s your experience?
- What are your skills in real estate?
- What’s your desired rate?
8. Do contract
Contracts are important for virtual assistants as they make sure that the VA has understood all your terms and conditions and Virtual Assist Us also has its own contract as well. A contract ensures that a VA has all the skills required to do your work. So if both parties sign a contract you can get more accurate work.
9. Start with a Small Project
No matter how good the virtual assistant performs during the interview, it’s imperative that you understand the daily operations that you need the VA to undertake for you. It’s a good idea to give him/her a single project at a time. After hiring a virtual assistant, start with a small project, and with the passage of time, you can increase the workload. If trained in an effective way, your VA will soon be turned into a key part of your business. However, if you think your VA is not doing well and needs a lot of training, the beauty of hiring a VA versus an employee is you do not have to worry about letting go and suffer any backlash for unemployment. You just simply look for that suitable person to work with you.
10. Don’t spend too much time
You must consider how much time you are willing to spend on hiring someone. Here are a few questions that you should ask yourself for hiring a virtual assistant in less time:
- Is it just a one-time thing or are you hoping to find a full-time assistant?
If it’s for a single time then just visit a VA agency as Virtual Assist Us and hire VA keeping all the above-mentioned tips in mind. Maybe you want a full-time VA who could assist you? You will find VAU has the experience in helping you organize and communicate also to employees you may already have. Or you are just beginning your business and you need a little guidance? We can help you get you up and running and full of resources that we have established.
Final Words
Finding a good virtual assistant is not very difficult because you found us Virtual Assist Us. Yet we just want to make sure you do your research before you hire anyone.
Be sure to find out their experience level, and what kind of technology they are familiar with. A great assistant will make your life easier, help you run your business more efficiently, and give you better results.
Keep these things in mind when hiring a virtual assistant to help you run your business. A virtual assistant can be an invaluable part of your business if you are willing to consider all of the benefits they offer. If you are considering hiring a virtual assistant, it’s important to consider all of these factors before making a final decision and we look forward to working with you.