A Real Estate Virtual Assistant provides administrative, operational, and logistical support to realtors and real estate agents, leading to business streamlining and increased productivity.
The Virtual Assistant market is growing exponentially, and VA hiring has rapidly increased due to cost-effectiveness, increased efficiency and productivity, and flexibility and scalability.
By 2026, the projected market size of Virtual Assistant Hiring will grow to $30 billion. This massive growth can be attributed to the effectiveness of VAs in streamlining businesses.
In this article, we will break down what is a VA in real estate, and what does a real estate virtual assistant do. Additionally, we will talk about the benefits of hiring a real estate VA, and how to choose the right one.
What is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant?
A Real Estate Virtual Assistant is a professional independent contractor hired by real estate agents who can handle administrative tasks, scheduling, marketing, and other tasks on behalf of the client who hires them.
This gives the realtors or agents the time to focus on their clients and growing their business.
Real Estate Virtual Assistants are industry experts who provide valuable support to realtors by maximizing efficiency, productivity, and massively streamlining operations.
They provide customized services specifically for the client, thus assisting real estate agents in reaching their business goals.
What Does a Real Estate Virtual Assistant Do?
Real estate virtual assistant duties are numerous. Whether you want to streamline organizing and managing real estate databases or with client and customer support, your virtual real estate agent can take care of everything for you.
Administrative tasks, listing and client management, coordinating transactions, and even monotonous tasks that take away from productivity, like email management, are all tasks you can hand over to your realtor virtual assistant to scale up your business.
Let’s take a look at some of the common real estate virtual assistant duties and responsibilities:
1. Administrative Tasks
A real estate agent deals with a variety of administrative tasks that can be easily offloaded to a reliable third party. That is where your realtor virtual assistant comes in. So, what does a real estate virtual assistant do to handle your administrative tasks?
Managing email and correspondence management are monotonous tasks that are not always important. Real estate agents don’t always have the time to personally respond to every email or build up correspondence with every stakeholder.
This is where VAs come in. You will need someone who can efficiently manage your inbox, clear out junk mail, and keep an ongoing correspondence with all clients.
Scheduling all appointments and meetings by yourself can be a hassle, which takes up time from other, more productive work you could be doing. Your VA can keep track of your Google calendar, schedule meetings, and send out appointment reminders.
Your VA will also handle all documentation; from property listings to client databases, there are lots of important documents that you have to maintain daily. Your real estate virtual assistant can handle document management.
From data entry, and management to data organization; VAs will take care of everything. They will ensure that your listings are updated and organized, so you can access them whenever convenient.
2. Client and Lead Management
Having excellent customer service is crucial for any business looking to expand. You can trust your VA to take care of client communication, resulting in active and excellent customer service.
Additionally, you alone can’t be vigilant and try to entice future clients; you have to entrust someone with lead generation and management. Your VA is going to be your best friend in this regard.
Your VA can assist in lead generation and conversation strategies, which will entice future customers towards your company, and they can also maintain and update client databases as you get new clients.
Not to mention, persistently following up with leads and clients is something you can’t do alone, and your VA will play a pivotal role in lead generation and follow-up.
3. Marketing Support
What does a real estate virtual assistant do for your marketing? Marketing is key for expanding a business; especially if you’re looking to exponentially increase and attract new leads.
There can’t be any lead generation if you don’t have top-notch marketing. You can’t do all the marketing alone; outsourcing the marketing to your virtual assistant will result in new and innovative marketing campaigns.
The power of using social media as a marketing tool cannot be underestimated in the 21st century. With its potential to tap into millions of potential clients, having an organized social media strategy is key: which your VA can do for you!
Virtual real estate assistants can also design and send out email marketing campaigns to clients and stakeholders on your mailing list. These lucrative marketing campaigns, newsletters, and advertisements lay out the best deals, and other attractive packages, to attract the most clients.
You don’t have to make your listing presentations by yourself anymore. Your real estate listing assistant can prepare all marketing materials and manage your property listing presentations on your behalf.
4. Transaction Coordination
Delegating transaction coordination to virtual assistants can take a big load off from real estate agents. It is one of the tasks, what a real estate virtual assistant do. Organizational administrative tasks are quite difficult to manage, so having an expert streamlining these processes makes everything smoother.
Your VA can organize all your paperwork relating to client information and contracts. They can help in drafting contracts, gathering necessary documentation, and making sure everything is organized properly.
There is a lot of coordination involved in this dynamic, rapidly evolving field. Your VA will act as the liaison between relevant parties. In addition to all the aforementioned tasks, virtual assistants will also follow up on third parties with deadlines, and ensure compliance according to company policy.
Benefits of Hiring a Real Estate Virtual Assistant
In recent years there have been numerous studies which prove the benefits of hiring a virtual assistant for real estate. According to ZIPDO EDUCATION REPORT 2024, by 2025, the global virtual assistant market is forecasted to reach a value of $25.63 billion.
The question is, why are realtor virtual assistants getting increasingly popular? Let’s analyze the benefits of hiring a virtual assistant for real estate below:
i) Cost-associated Benefits
Research suggests that VAs cost upwards of 70% less than full-time on-site employees. Your real estate remote assistants don’t need to be trained or onboarded like full-time employees.
Additionally, they are independent contractors and hence aren’t entitled to benefits.
You don’t need to hire in-house staff. It lessens your need to pay for office space. Full-time employees are also more expensive because of salaries.
When you hire a virtual assistant for real estate, you pay hourly and only for the duration of the project. This has accumulated into hundreds and thousands of dollars saved compared to hiring full-time staff.
ii) Time-saving Benefits
Statistics show that executives can spend upwards of 16 hours weekly on day-to-day administrative operations.
Now imagine if you could use that time on core tasks instead. Using those 16 weekly hours behind fulfilling business goals can result in exponential growth for your company.
This is why industry experts recommend virtual assistants for realtors. Your REVA can take charge of all daily operational tasks, allowing you to spend more time on other duties instead.
iii) Scalability
Your business needs are always going to be in flux. Sometimes the company will be exponentially growing and will need more support. Other times, you may hit a slower growth rate.
Regardless of the situation, having the flexibility of VAs will ensure that you can keep up with the demands of your company.
Unlike full-time employees, you can hire virtual assistants solely based on your needs. This flexibility, as seen in the VA vs Employee comparison, allows you to hire more VAs if a project demands more labor.
This flexibility is directly tied to your business’s scalability. Real estate virtual assistants can be hired part-time, project-based, or full-time.
iv) Expertise
The best part about the growing hybrid nature of work worldwide is the unlimited access to a global talent pool.
If you don’t have real estate experts in your immediate geographical area, you can easily hire international real estate virtual assistants!
Not to mention, these independent contractors are often experts, and not untrained, unlike full-time employees.
Your property management virtual assistant is more likely to be an expert in real estate software, client management, and marketing.
How to Hire A Real Estate Virtual Assistant
Now that you know the skills to look for in a real estate virtual assistant, let’s talk about hiring!
We have broken down the basic steps below, for a more detailed guide you can look into our guide to hiring affordable virtual assistants.
Strep 1 - Understand Your Needs
What are the tasks that you want to outsource to your VA? You need to look into your requirements and understand the tasks which you want to automate and streamline.
This will give you a general idea of the kind of VA you should hire.
It will also determine your budget. When you understand your needs, you can evaluate whether you need a full-time or part-time real estate virtual assistant.
Step 2 - Find Virtual Assistants
There are three main categories of places where you can find virtual assistants.
a. Freelance platforms such as Fiverr, Upwork, and Freelancer are good places to start. You will find numerous real estate virtual assistants there with competitive rates.
b. You can also look at virtual assistant websites, peruse through LinkedIn, or look into virtual assistant communities on social media.
c. The most reliable way to find VAs, however, is to partner up with a dedicated real estate VA-providing agency.
These agencies already work with reliable independent REVAs and hence can make your hiring process smoother.
If you’re looking for a reliable yet affordable agency for your next real estate virtual assistant, you can check out Green Feather Technologies.
Step 3 - Take Interview
We have already outlined above how you can evaluate your prospective VA’s skills during the hiring process.
Look into their resumes and portfolio to see if it’s a good match with you. Additionally, you should conduct thorough interviews to understand their personalities, abilities, and communication skills.
You should look at their past experiences, get objective reviews from their past clients, and ask them key questions. Ask them about their rates, experiences, and expectations from the job.
These key questions should give you an idea of their expectations from the job, and whether their work philosophy matches with yours.
Step 4 - Set Clear Expectations
Communicating clearly and setting expectations go both ways. You should also set clear expectations about what you need from your VA.
Set proper deadlines, and communicate responsibilities, working hours, and KPIs.
Skills to Look for in a Real Estate Remote Assistant
We always like to say that there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to hiring. However, there are some markers you can look for when getting in touch with a property management virtual assistant.
The ideal real estate virtual assistant for your company should have a combination of certain important skills.
i) Real Estate Experience
Some experience in the real estate industry will always be a plus. They should have an understanding of property listings and multiple listing systems (MLS). Additionally, they should be familiar with real-estate terms.
You can easily evaluate whether your prospective VA matches your requirements by looking through their resume and portfolios during the hiring process. Not to mention, you can easily cross-check their references and get in touch with previous clients.
ii) Communication Skills
If you’re going to be entrusting your REVA with client communication and liaisoning duties, they must have exemplary communication skills. They need to demonstrate professionalism when communicating with clients, prospective buyers, sellers, and any other third parties.
This is something you can easily evaluate during the interview process. If you ask analytical, problem-solving questions during the interview, you can assess the personality and critical-thinking abilities of your prospective VA.
iii) Organizational Skills
One of the important real estate virtual assistant skills is organizational skill. REVAs handle a lot of paperwork for their clients.
That’s why your real estate virtual assistant needs to be organized, efficient in managing multiple tasks, and keeping track of important deadlines.
You can evaluate your prospective virtual assistant’s organizational skills by getting reviews from their former clients.
iv) Proficiency With Technology
Your VA needs to be proficient with technology since all of the work is going to be done remotely. They need some experience with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software like Salesforce and Zoho, marketing tools, and transaction coordination platforms.
This can be easily analyzed when you look at their resume. Do they have the required technological proficiency that you’re looking for?
Tools and Platforms Used by Realtor Virtual Assistants
Your real estate virtual assistant needs to be well-versed in technology. We’ll break down the tools and platforms that the REVA uses to do their job properly!
i ) CRM Software
Customer relationship management (CRM) software is vital for managing client data and nurturing relationships. REVAs utilize CRM tools for sales automation, management, and analytics. Commonly used CRM software includes:
ii) Marketing Platforms
Real estate virtual assistants use platforms like Mailchimp, Canva, and social media schedulers to enhance marketing campaigns.
These tools enable coordinated email campaigns, targeted social media posting, and ongoing customer engagement.
iii) Real Estate Software
REVAs are familiar with various real estate-specific software. Multiple listing service (MLS) systems are crucial for connecting with brokers and facilitating home sales.
They also use property management tools like DoorLoop and Innago for lease and listing management.
Proficiency in intelligent agreement management tools such as DocuSign is a valuable asset for adding digital signatures to documents.
iv) Communication and Collaboration Tools
Effective communication is key in real estate transactions, and tools like Slack, Zoom, and Trello are essential for maintaining clear lines of communication among team members, clients, buyers, and sellers.
REVAs leverage these collaboration tools for project updates and collaborative work on different tasks.
Conclusion
In conclusion, although there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for how to run a real estate company, hiring a real-estate virtual assistant has some unquestionable benefits. You can outsource your administrative tasks, client and lead management, marketing support, and transaction coordination to your VA, while trusting that they have expert knowledge on tools and technologies.
Additionally, hiring a VA will lead to increased productivity, lower cost, and higher scalability and flexibility. If you’re looking to hire your virtual assistant as soon as possible, get in touch with GFT today- why wait, when you have the perfect solution by your side to get started?
