How To Grow Your Business By Using A Real Estate Virtual Assistant?

If you own a small real estate business catering to a couple of clients each month, you can easily handle all aspects of your work. But if you are rapidly scaling up, signing new people, and building a company, you might feel overstretched with all the non-core tasks. 

However, it is not always possible that you are earning enough to hire full-time employees yet. In such cases, getting in touch with a virtual assistant might be your best bet. 

In this article, you will read in detail about all the benefits of hiring a virtual assistant and what tasks they can handle for you. So, keep reading! 

What is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant?

A real estate virtual assistant (VA) is someone you hire online to act as your right hand for all kinds of business tasks. From attending a client meeting to sorting your books, you can hire a VA to handle different kinds of work for you. 

Working with a virtual assistant will allow you to focus on the actual real estate business instead of spending time doing administrative or secretarial tasks. This means you can sign new clients, work on different projects, and focus on the overall company growth. 

Why Should You Hire a Real Estate Virtual Assistant?

Handling repetitive tasks day after day can tire you out, mentally and physically. So, why not practice work delegation and focus all your energy on doing something you enjoy? Hiring a VA can be a game-changing decision for your organization. Here are a few reasons why!

1. Flexible & Affordable Help When You Need

When you are a part of a cutthroat industry like real estate, you must always stay at the top of your game! It also means you need to work outside of regular hours, travel long distances to meet clients, and push forward other crucial tasks at hand. 

Running a company as a one-person army can only be beneficial in the initial stages. After that, you need someone who can achieve your work goals quickly and efficiently. 

A virtual assistant will offer you flexible work hours and lower prices, considering you don’t have to pay employee benefits or miscellaneous bonuses. 

2. Only Focus On Your Key Tasks

Running an organization on your own leaves behind a vast work trail. You must manage social media, reply to emails, catch up on pending accounting tasks, and juggle many other responsibilities. Amongst this chaos, you can often find yourself contributing more time to non-billable tasks. 

Hiring a virtual assistant will allow you to focus solely on the real estate business. Based on your requirements, the VA can handle various tasks while giving you the freedom to chase your professional goals. 

3. Boost Your Business Productivity 

Repetitive tasks lead to exhaustion, and exhaustion leads to reduced business productivity. Getting stuck in this cumbersome loop can be one of the biggest challenges for any real estate business person. You can hire a virtual assistant to break this monotony and increase your organization’s efficiency. 

These days, VAs bring their hardware and software and use high-quality technical tools to attain business goals. For example, the usage of time trackers helps them achieve set goals within a set timeframe. 

Needless to say, you get the benefit of scaling your business quickly without investing time and effort in training a full-time assistant. 

4. Their Experience In Growing Your Business

Diversifying your work team can contribute a lot to your company’s success. If this is your first stint in the real estate market, working with an assistant who has previously gained experience in other firms can benefit you immensely. 

A virtual assistant can help bring a different perspective to the table and improvise your customer success or social media management strategies. Eventually, you will be able to utilize their experience for the organization’s overall benefit. 

5. Increase Your Income

To make more sales, you need to convert prospective leads into your clients. In the real estate business, time is of the essence. 

So, you must speed up the work process after receiving potential leads. A virtual assistant can help you prepare or deliver a sales pitch to increase your chances of success. 

A VA can send follow-up emails if you don’t receive a positive response. Repeating such tasks regularly can help you bag more customers, thus increasing your overall income.

Signs Of When You Need A Real Estate Virtual Assistant?

Any devoted business person is always looking for ways to optimize their results and build a stable workforce gradually. However, that can’t be possible if you refuse to delegate tasks or hire other people. 

If you don’t have enough budget for a full-timer, you can hire a virtual assistant. Here are 5 signs of when you need to get in touch with a real estate VA. 

• Your Business Needs Other Skills That You Don’t Have

You can be an excellent real estate agent but still, be a mediocre business person. To run your company, you need a plethora of skills like marketing, accounting, social media management, CRM management etc. Hiring a VA will allow you to expand further in various departments. 

• You Spend More Time on Simple Tasks

Surviving in the ever-changing and fast-paced real estate industry is as complicated as it gets. So, you might find yourself wasting time on simple tasks. A virtual assistant will take over a massive chunk of the workload from your shoulders, allowing you to focus entirely on business growth. 

• You Are Ready to Scale Up Your Business

At one point, you will realize how far you have come in your journey, and now you can gradually expand your company’s services. However, that’s impossible without a right hand to lean on. 

• You Spend Plenty of Time Managing Your Social Media

These days, not utilizing social media for your professional benefit can be a huge mistake. But you also can’t always create content or engage with relevant industry leaders online. In such cases, a VA can take over your social media accounts and represent you online. 

• You Don’t Have Time for Yourself Anymore

Facing work burnout is a real thing. Most people don’t realize they have overworked themselves till it starts affecting their mental health or overall productivity. You can avoid such a condition by delegating work to a VA and spending more time focusing on your personal growth. 

Which Tasks Should You Assign to a Real Estate Assistant?

The key to a successful professional relationship with your VA is pre-defining the kind of tasks they will handle. You cannot expect a single assistant to take over all work responsibilities successfully. Some of the tasks you can delegate to a VA are mentioned below. 

Administrative Tasks

For your company to succeed, you need an active administrative department that handles all day-to-day tasks like writing performance reports or booking appointments. In short, all computerized tasks that prevent you from client interactions fall in the admin category. Some of them are: 

Inbox Management

With plenty of emails pouring in, it can be hard to differentiate between beneficial and spam messages. A VA can help sort through your inbox and immediately respond to client emails. 

Property Research

 The real estate industry fluctuates with the economy, thus making property research a crucial element for your business organization. A virtual assistant can help you research nearby establishments, their deed or ownership type, and compare prices. 

Property Data Entry

Having a proper database is crucial for any business. But entering all the relevant details like property listings, sales, property valuations, commission information, etc., can be highly time-taking. Working with a real estate data management helper will allow you to save crucial billable hours. 

Calendar Management

You need to strictly check your daily calendar to ensure all tasks and client meetings happen on time. It can be gruesome to make multiple changes throughout the day. A real estate virtual estate agent will help schedule client meetings and ensure all your commitments are correctly marked in one place. 

Social Media Management

The target audience for any real estate agent primarily consists of millennials. Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and other sites have now emerged as research tools for people worldwide. So, you must update your marketing strategies and stay active on multiple social media platforms. According to NAR research, 56% realtors are now using LinkedIn actively to expand their network. 

However, staying up to date with all the trends and regularly posting relevant stuff online can be a tough task. You must also update recent sales, post property images, and answer all the messages or comments making inquiries about your business. In such cases, teaming up with a virtual assistant will allow you to work smoothly without lag.

Maintain & Manage Your Listings 

Spreadsheets and real estate businesses go hand in hand. You cannot run a successful organization without properly storing all your data in one place and regularly updating it. From time to time, you will be required to access old information and compare it with the current one. 

To accomplish the data-related tasks, you must ensure that all listings are correctly managed. A virtual assistant will use the latest tools to keep your information secure and managed while allowing you to access it whenever needed. 

Skip Tracing or Contact Tracing

Skip tracing is the process where a real estate agent locates the owner of a property and contacts them regarding a potential sale. Here, you need a detailed dossier containing the property owner’s name, current address, phone number, email id, etc.

Skip tracing is useful when you spot an abandoned property that might be ideal for one of your clients. You then contact the owner, motivate them to sell, and earn profit while you are at it. 

It is not always possible to constantly stay in touch with the owners and wait for their response. A virtual assistant can help you find details and follow up with them. 

Property Lead Follow-up

Businesses are all about generating leads and turning them into prospective customers, regardless of the industry you are operating in. However, in the real estate market, you need to get in touch with potential customers fast, or you might lose the account entirely. 

The first step in this process is compiling all the leads. Here, you need to list all the messengers and commentators on social media and reach out to people who have contacted your reception desk. 

You can delegate this task to your virtual assistant, who will keep a list of all property leads and help you work on the case that requires urgent assistance. 

Cold Calling

Cold calling is the process of randomly contacting strangers and offering them your real estate services. Pitching your idea to a wide audience will allow you to receive more relevant information from home sellers and buyers.

For an up-and-coming business person, staying on calls and pitching services to the other party is impossible. In such cases, having a virtual assistant will come in handy. These people have excellent communication skills and can benefit your business greatly. 

Website SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is the process of garnering more organic views on your website. Following proper SEO protocols can help increase your website’s visibility in the competitive real estate industry. 

To gain organic viewers, you must start blogging and add relevant backlinks to your site content. Additionally, adding image captions, title tags, user-friendly URLs, etc., can help increase the SERP rank of your site. 

Handling SEO without having prior knowledge or experience is a challenging task. So, outsourcing SEO services from a VA will help you achieve the desired results.

Benefits Of Having A Real Estate Virtual Assistant

The right assistant can help make or break your business! If you depend on a reliable individual, you are bound to notice betterment in your performance. But if you start working with someone unsuitable for the real estate industry, you might face trouble achieving the set goals. 

So, you must always look for the below-mentioned qualities in a real estate virtual assistant. 

1. Communication Skills

The real estate industry is pretty customer-oriented, and you will need the VA to get in touch with prospective leads often. Hiring someone with solid communication skills will ensure your organization’s message is clearly conveyed to the other party. 

2. Interpersonal Skills

People skills are one of the top things to look for in an ideal virtual assistant. Working with an aggressive person can deter most clients and lead to negative responses. So, jump on a video call with the prospective candidate and check their interpersonal skills before finalizing your decision. If needed, consider enrolling them in interpersonal skills training to enhance their ability to communicate and collaborate effectively.

3. Time Management Skills

In the real estate industry, time is vitally important. If you don’t get in touch with the client soon, you risk losing their account permanently. A competent VA can find a proper work balance and get plenty of work done in minimal time. 

4. Strong Organizational Skills

If all your company data is unorganized, you will often waste a lot of time and resources digging up old information. Hiring a VA with strong organizational skills will allow you to save the time and effort needed in data management. 

5. Ability to Multitask

As the founder of a fast-growing company, it is crucial to work with someone who can handle multiple tasks simultaneously. You will often find yourself in a situation where work gets overwhelming. In such cases, having a reliable assistant will help lessen the load. 

6. Attention to Detail

Before hiring a virtual assistant, always give them tasks with specific instructions to follow. It will allow you to check if the candidate is detail oriented or not. Someone with a keen eye for detail will always carry out their work responsibly, without leaving much room for mistakes. 

Some Qualities to Look for in a Real Estate Virtual Assistant

Best Places to Hire Real Estate Virtual Assistants

Once you have decided to hire a real estate virtual assistant for your company’s growth, you need to get in touch with respective candidates. There are multiple online platforms where you can post the job requirements and get in touch with qualified individuals. Some of them are as follows: 

• YesAssistant

Intending to help professionals worldwide reduce their workload, YesAssistant works to provide its customers with excellent virtual assistant services. You can get customized tools and employee support to help your business grow beyond bounds. 

• Fiverr

Fiverr is an online marketplace where you can reach out to freelancers for long-term projects or one-time gigs. Here, you will find all kinds of candidates, from beginners to experienced individuals. Based on your requirements, you can get in touch with the person who falls under your budget. 

• Freelancer

Freelancer is a digital marketplace that helps connect employees with employers. It allows you to post work requirements for the site members, and interested candidates will place a bid on the job. Considering your budget, you can find the best person for the job. This site also organizes regular contests to give cash prizes to the participants. 

• Upwork 

One of the best freelancing sites operating worldwide, Upwork allows you to hire all kinds of virtual assistants on a contract basis. Here, you can onboard talent from different countries after checking their detailed project catalog. In case you want to hire the same person as an employee, you can use the Upwork payroll setup process.

• Toptal

Toptal is a globally operating freelancing company that helps you find talent to tackle all sorts of work, ranging from administrative work to database entry. Here, you can find the top 3% of the world’s freelancers available on a single platform. 

Conclusion

Have you found yourself slipping through the cracks and missing important meetings due to improper scheduling? Or maybe you are facing trouble keeping up with all the mails or property follow-ups?

All these situations describe the sign of work burnout and how thinly your time is stretched. If you have reached such a stage in your business, it is time to expand your workforce and devote more hours to billable tasks. 

If you don’t have enough budget to hire full-time employees, you can contact real estate virtual assistants who work remotely and are capable of handling all your tasks. From administrative work to social media management, you can depend on them for anything!