A virtual assistant can help with things like office work, managing schedules, making travel plans, and more. But what if you work in real estate and need someone who knows your field well? If you hire someone with a background in real estate, what skills and experience should you expect?

If you’re not sure what you’ll get from a real estate virtual assistant, we’ve put together a short guide on what they are, how they can help, and what it might be like if you hire one:

What a Real Estate Virtual Assistant Does

Say you’re a real estate agent and things are going well for you. You have a long list of regular clients who keep you busy all the time. But you also realize you can’t be in two places at once, which makes it harder to run your business. Sometimes it seems like there aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything, like enter data, follow up, and talk to other realtors.

What do you do? The quickest way to grow is to hire a real estate virtual assistant who has dealt with these kinds of problems before. Not only will they free up your time by taking care of your most tedious and time-consuming tasks, but they’ll do it with skill and experience that you can’t get from just any virtual assistant. 

And what can they really do? Let’s take a look at some of their unique skills:

• Real estate marketing. Marketing real estate is a skill in and of itself. Putting together buyer’s packets, powerpoints, mailers, doing graphic design with sites like Canva, and scheduling blog posts all require different sets of skills. This is why it’s important to hire someone with real estate experience.
• Dealing with real estate. A real estate virtual assistant should know how to help you with everything from managing transactions to entering the data that comes with each listing. This way, you don’t have to keep asking how to do everything.
• Find out. How well can a virtual assistant with a wider range of skills do research? If they have enough time, they might figure it out. But it’s much easier to hire a real estate virtual assistant who knows how to add new notes to your CRM, handle client feedback, find new leads for buyers and sellers, and access everything online. 
• Following up with leads. This is a common task for most virtual assistants, but in real estate, it means following up with leads who are spending a lot of their hard-earned money on these big deals. To do this well, you need a virtual assistant who understands that and everything else that goes along with it.

What it’s like to have a virtual real estate assistant

You’ve probably noticed in your real estate business that there are a few things you do especially well. You may also notice that some of your most important tasks, like showings, give you the most leads and interest. If you’re stuck at the office doing research, marketing materials, and other things, you have less time.

And what if you find that you don’t have enough time to do some important work, like research on the MLS? You can only grow by adding someone to your team. Hiring a real estate virtual assistant with reasonable hourly rates is a great way to test the waters of growing your team without committing to a full-time employee.

Here’s what your life might be like if you work in real estate and have a virtual assistant:

• More ability to get things done. No matter how hard you work, you only have twenty-four hours in a day, just like everyone else. When you add a real estate assistant to your team, you can do the work of two people at once. This lets you get more done every day.
• Getting other people to do the things you don’t like doing. Let’s say you’ve always liked helping your customers, but you’ve never liked marketing and prospecting. If you hire a real estate assistant, someone else can do the things you never liked doing in the first place. This makes sure that tasks like prospecting and marketing not only get done, but also get done well without you having to do anything. 
• Automate your daily life. Let’s say that you used to have to spend up to an hour a day just managing your own social media. Or what about keeping the books? Some of the things you do every day may be things you’ve always wanted to automate but never did because you were afraid you’d have to train someone with little experience. A real estate assistant can help change that.

Do you need a virtual assistant for real estate? Here are some of the main benefits

Still not sure if you need a virtual assistant for your real estate business? Even if you think there are talented and skilled assistants out there, it can be hard to see how hiring one will affect your bottom line. Let’s look at some numbers and benefits that show why you might need an assistant:

Productivity: How to do administrative tasks better

Admin tasks aren’t always your favorite parts of the day, admit it. If you work in real estate, you probably got into it because you love the business, are good with people, or a mix of the two. The daily administrative tasks of a real estate business, on the other hand, are a different beast.

The good news is that hiring a real estate assistant can mean giving the work to someone who is just as good at it as you are, or even better. “Remote workers are more productive because they have more control over their time and spend less time traveling to the office.

Any efficiency that your virtual assistant can bring to the table makes your own real estate business more efficient. If they are better at entering data than you are, it will be less profitable for you to do it yourself. If they’re better at researching your market, it doesn’t make sense for you to do your own MLS research after a certain point. 

The surprising truth about virtual assistants’ prices

If you ask someone who has never hired a virtual assistant before how much it costs to add someone, they will probably be skeptical. It’s just a part of growing up. After all, someone who has worked in real estate might be hesitant to give their regular tasks to someone else. They haven’t seen it before. If you’re good at email marketing, for example, why should you think a real estate assistant will be just as good?

Cost is also a big deal for a lot of these people. They don’t believe that a virtual assistant will be worth the hourly rate it costs to keep them working. Even a part-time virtual assistant can be hard for a business owner who has never grown their business before.

But what the numbers show might surprise you. Cost is not only not as important when hiring virtual assistants as it is when hiring someone full-time, but it’s also a big plus. A virtual assistant can cut costs by up to 78% over the course of a year. When it comes to hiring a skilled virtual assistant, the question is often not whether you can afford one or not, but whether you can afford not to.

How to start looking for a real estate assistant

Are you still not sure? Then it’s time to figure out how to get your own virtual assistant up and running with your business as quickly as possible.

You should have a better idea of how you want your business to look. You might even think about sitting down with someone new to your business and explaining how you do things like real estate prospecting. But keep in mind that if you do it right, you’ll be adding someone to your team who already knows about real estate.

Here are the steps you need to take:

• Come join us. This step is the simplest and quickest. Now that you have an account, you are ready to:
• Get in touch with the person in charge of your customer success. We want to make sure you have everything you need to be successful with your new virtual real estate assistant. That means a member of our staff will work with you to make sure that the skills and background of the assistant you hire are a good match for your needs.
• Select your virtual assistant. It might seem easy to match your needs with the skills of a virtual assistant, but you should still take some time to make sure you do it right. If you make the right choice here, it can have a big effect on how well you can do your work in the future.
• Make a plan and include your virtual assistant in your business. What kinds of jobs do you need to be done right away? Which ones do you want to do in the long run but don’t need right now? Set a priority list for your VA’s first tasks and make sure they have everything they need to start.

FAQ: What Do Real Estate Assistants Do?

Don’t worry if you still have questions about what real estate assistants do and how they can help you. Here are some of the most common questions we get asked:

How can a virtual assistant help me with my real estate needs?

If you hire the right assistant, you’ll find that they can do a lot. A real estate assistant should be able to do everything that helps your real estate business grow but doesn’t require them to be there. This includes researching on the MLS and managing your schedule. 

How do I know which virtual assistant to hire?

This is not an easy question to answer, because everyone has a different answer. We’ve learned that putting real estate agents and business owners in touch with a customer success manager helps them find the right person for their needs. In real estate, this could mean figuring out what kind of independent contractors a small real estate business needs, how to find a good researcher who knows the MLS, or how to do market research when the business owner doesn’t have time.

Do virtual assistants really make good real estate helpers?

Not every single one. Other VAs, like legal virtual assistants, social media social assistants, and so on, might focus on a different area. It’s important to look for people with knowledge and experience in this area. It will not only make things easier for you, but it will also be much more valuable for your business than hiring a generalist virtual assistant who is new to the field.