The real estate industry is fast-paced and constantly evolving, with property managers, real estate agents, investors, and brokers managing multiple clients, properties, and transactions at once. This leaves little time for administrative tasks, which can take up a significant portion of an agent's day. This is where virtual assistants come in, providing support to real estate professionals and helping them manage their workload more efficiently.
If you're new to the idea of virtual contractors, this blog is for you! Today we explore how virtual assistants can help your real estate business, how to determine if you need one, and how to onboard and work with a remote team effectively.
Learn What Virtual Assistants Can Do For Your Real Estate Business
Have you ever thought about what virtual team members can do for your company? Virtual assistants can provide a wide range of services to real estate professionals, including transaction coordination, listings management, marketing, maintenance coordination, and calendar management.
Here are some of the key tasks that a virtual assistant can help you with.
Transaction Coordination
Transaction coordination is a critical part of any real estate transaction. Virtual assistants can assist with preparing and reviewing contracts, ensuring all parties meet their deadlines and obligations, and keeping track of important documents.
Listings Management
Listing management is another essential task in the real estate industry. Virtual assistants can help with everything from inputting property information into the MLS system, coordinating showings, and handling inquiries from potential buyers.
Business Marketing
Marketing your business is a critical component of real estate success. Virtual team members can help with various aspects of marketing, including creating property flyers, social media posts, and email marketing campaigns.
Maintenance Coordination
Maintenance coordination is another time-consuming task that virtual assistants can handle from remote locations. While they can't physically perform maintenance on a property or home renovation during a fix-and-flip project, they can help schedule appointments with contractors, obtain quotes, and ensure that all necessary repairs and maintenance are completed on time.
Calendar Management
Real estate professionals have a lot of appointments, including property showings, meetings with clients, and contract deadlines. Remote assistants are ideal for helping manage your calendar, schedule appointments, and ensure you're always on top of your game.
Administrative Tasks
In addition to real-estate-specific tasks, virtual contractors can handle the administrative aspects of running your business. From answering calls and emails to ordering supplies for your office or property showings, a virtual assistant for real estate can help!
Determine Why You Need One
With an understanding of what a VA "can" do for your business, the next step is to determine why you need one specifically for your business.
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Are you struggling to keep up with administrative tasks?
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Do you need help managing your listings or coordinating transactions?
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Do your employees need help with low-level tasks so they can focus more on client relationships?
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Do you want to focus more on lead generation and marketing?
Determining your needs helps you map out the role you need to fill and find the best virtual assistant to help you manage your workload more efficiently.
Review Your Payroll Budget
Adding team members to your workforce can be expensive. So, before choosing your next team member, reviewing your payroll budget is essential.
It's important to compare the costs of hiring a W2 employee versus a virtual contractor. How much can you afford to pay a virtual assistant? Keep in mind that hiring a virtual assistant may save you money on benefits, taxes, and office space.
For property managers and others in the real estate industry, choosing virtual talent to handle the tasks and roles we've mentioned helps them add quality team members and improve productivity while lowering payroll costs.
Create Virtual Real Estate Assistant Jobs and Descriptions
Once you've determined why you need a virtual assistant and reviewed your payroll budget, it's time to create virtual real estate assistant jobs and descriptions.
Each job description should outline the tasks and responsibilities of the virtual assistant, as well as the qualifications required. With a detailed job description, you'll find the best candidates more quickly. You'll also have a guide to help train your new VA during onboarding.
Talk to Your Best Candidates
Virtual assistants are real people! Make sure you schedule time with your top candidates for video meetings to get to know them better before choosing the best one for the role.
You can find virtual assistants through online job boards, social media, or by working with a virtual assistant platform like VPM Solutions. Once you've identified your top candidates, it's essential to interview them to ensure that they're the right fit for your business.
Understand How to Work With a Remote Team
Working with a remote team can be challenging and quite different than working with your in-house team. However, it can be highly effective with the right tools and processes. Here are some tips for working with a remote team.
Incorporate Them into Your Full Team
Your virtual assistant is an integral part of your team, so it's essential to incorporate them into your full team. This means including them in team meetings, introducing them to other team members, and ensuring that they feel like they're a part of the team.
Provide Tools for Communication, Task Management, and More
To work effectively with a remote team, you must provide the right tools for communication, task management, and collaboration. This includes tools like Zoom for video conferencing, Asana for task management, and Slack for team messaging.
Commit to a Virtual Assistant Onboarding Process
Onboarding virtual assistant team members is a critical step in understanding their roles and responsibilities. This should include providing training on your business processes and systems, setting clear expectations, and establishing communication channels.
What is VPM Solutions?
VPM Solutions is an online virtual assistant platform connecting real estate businesses to industry-trained virtual team members. We provide free in-platform training for VAs to help you build effective teams more quickly for real estate roles.
Our platform provides virtual contractors experienced in a range of services, including transaction coordination, listings management, marketing, maintenance coordination, and calendar management.
As the only online virtual assistant platform connecting real estate businesses to industry-trained virtual team members, VPM Solutions is dedicated to providing the best virtual assistance services to the property management and real estate industries.
Start Your Virtual Assistant Team With VPM Solutions
Virtual assistants can provide invaluable support to real estate professionals, helping them manage their workload more efficiently and focus on growing their businesses. If you're ready to get started with VAs, VPM Solutions makes finding and managing a virtual assistant team easy and cost-effective. Get started with a Free Company Profile!
