Feeling that you can do more as a real estate investor or agent with a helping hand? Why not hire a real estate virtual assistant? You’ve probably heard about them from a colleague.

With these online freelancers, you’ll have more time to spend for attracting new clients, focusing on physical advertising, and managing your personal affairs. Virtual assistants are also more cost-effective than an in-house secretary.

But what exactly can real estate VAs do? Are there more benefits from hiring one? Read on to find out!

What Is A Real Estate VA?

A real estate VA is a person who renders administrative services required in a real estate business from a remote setting. Think of it as your personal assistant or secretary. But instead of them being in your office or by your side at most times, they are working remotely from their homes.

The Benefits Of Hiring A Real Estate VA

1. Better work-life balance

Since having a VA reduces your workload as a real estate investor, you’ll have more time pursuing your responsibilities and interests such as family, travel, or leisure.

2. Increased business productivity

Handling all your real estate tasks without any assistance can lead to mistakes. Sometimes you just don’t have the time to do them all. Meanwhile, hiring a VA to share the workload can help you get everything done.

3. Save money on training and hiring costs

VAs are already skilled in what they do, requiring very little to no training. Hiring a VA is also different from hiring a full-time secretary or assistant. VAs may be working for other clients, making their employment with you part-time. That means you don’t have to pay a full salary.

4. Staffing on demand

There are times when you aren’t busy and there are times you are. If the workload you handle suddenly increases, you can always hire a VA on a whim for a helping hand.

5. Hiring is fast

As easy as it is to find a VA online, so is the process of hiring them. The simplest way is to do so is to negotiate their salary first. Next, give them instructions and a deadline.

What Tasks Can A Real Estate VA Do?

1. Manage listings

This entails designing, posting, and maintaining listings to make sure they’re up to date on sites.

2. Setup appointments with buyers and sellers

Calendar and time management are essential for you to transition from task to task smoothly. A VA can do that for you once you give them your daily schedule.

3. Property search

Searching for a property that’s on sale or could need an agent’s representation is the most tedious task of them all. You can hire VA to browse listing sites for this task.

4. Administrative tasks

You’ll have less time to spend in front of a computer as your VA will work on spreadsheets or any other forms of data entry.

5. Bookkeeping

Handling all the real estate documents, receipts, and other paperwork eats up a lot of your time. These tasks will be part of your VA’s job description.

6. Cold Calling

This involves calling individuals who have expressed interest in your services but didn’t complete a deal. Give your VA a list of contacts and they will call all these leads as a follow-up effort.

7. Managing social media

The easiest way for potential clients to contact you other than your phone number is through your personal or business’s social media. It will be part of your VA’s job to respond to these direct messages (DMs).

When nothing else needs to be done, you can also ask your VA to create adverts in a form of status updates.

8. Tracing and comparing

Another two time-consuming tasks that can be given to your VA are skip tracing and comparing. Skip tracing is locating the owner of the property that has the potential for selling well on the market. Comparing is determining the price of a property using the data of the neighboring homes.

9. Creating letters or emails

Email marketing or sending letters directly to homeowners is still the best way to generate leads. Although it’s quite doable compared to the other tasks on this list, an employer can still delegate this work to a VA.

For most real estate professionals who handle a lot of clients or represent multiple properties, hiring a VA is the best decision they can. However, your choice should depend on your circumstances. If you can handle the work, then by all means keep a contact list of people you may hire in the future. Otherwise, browse websites to pick the best virtual assistant for your needs.

Discover more tips for real estate professionals here:

• 5 Real Estate Video Ideas That Work
• Real Estate Agent Tips: How to Become a Neighborhood Expert
• 4 Tips for Long-Distance Real Estate Investing
• 9 Habits of Highly Effective Real Estate Investors
• 8 Marketing Ideas for Real Estate Agents