Top 15 Ways The Real Estate Industry Uses Virtual Assistants

Depending on your needs, a real estate virtual assistant can do virtually everything necessary to support you and your administrative needs and marketing efforts.

Ever since the book The 4-hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss was published, the idea of using virtual assistants to free entrepreneurs up to focus direct their best talents on areas that would produce the most growth, really took off.  But for many real estate investors, this was a unique concept that, when properly implemented, shortened growth cycles and greatly expanded their business efforts and profitability.

Virtual office assistants can be a tremendous benefit to real estate investors and work best as an extension of you.  In other words, if you are using a marketing method or target market that works well for you, it’s best to use your assistant to duplicate those efforts in those markets.  Here are our top 15 ways you can utilize a real estate virtual assistant:

1. Research for potential sellers via online newspapers, online courthouse records, MLS listings, FSBO listings
2. Manage transactions
3. Compile information for Comparative Marketing Analysis’ (CMA’s) for potential and new clients.
4. Screen sellers for motivation
5. Upload pictures and listings to MLS or other online resource
6. Arrange home showings
7. Process mailings to buyers and sellers
8. Perform outbound telemarketing calls seeking clients/sellers/buyers
9. Manage your email campaigns
10. Enter leads into your CRM (contact relationship management) program. This may be Top Producer, ACT!, or another CRM program.
11. Research to locate absentee owners, or people who’ve skipped out on their rent
12. Set/cancel appointments
13. Work with Excel spreadsheets to organize leads and other data
14. Work with MS Word to create mail merges and process mailings
15. Answer and return phone calls

Real estate virtual assistants are here to stay and growing in popularity.  Over the next couple of years you can expect your conversations with regards to real estate virtual assistants to go from “What is a real estate virtual assistant and what does a real estate virtual assistant do?” to that of “Who provides your real estate virtual assistant services?”

Implementing the use of a real estate virtual assistant, especially through a virtual staffing agency is a low-cost, low-risk undertaking.  If the real estate virtual assistant doesn’t work out, you simply request another, perhaps for a better fit.  What’s more, coupling the use of a real estate virtual assistant (or several assistants) with your already up-and-coming business can catapult your income and success to the next level and beyond.

Bill Manassero is the founder/top dog at “The Old Dawg’s REI Network,” a blog, newsletter, and podcast for seniors and retirees, that teaches the art of real estate investing. His personal real estate investing goal, which will be chronicled at olddawgsreinetwork.com, is to own/control 1,000 units/doors in the next 6 years. Prior to that, Bill and his family lived in Haiti for 11 years as missionaries serving orphaned, abandoned and at-risk children.