It seems the virtual real estate business in booming because of one thing…real estate virtual assistants. What is a virtual assistant? Well a virtual assistant or VA for short is often compared to an administrative assistant. VA’s perform administrative and personal support to either one client or various clients. They can be jobs are easy as sending out emails and collaborating brochures to more complex jobs like creating a company website or blog. Other jobs performed by VA’s are desktop publishing, website design and listing marketing. Everything is done online through email and also done through fax and phone.
So what are the benefits of a real estate virtual assistant? First there is no training is needed as most VA’s are trained and certified as well. You don’t have to pay any extras such as medical insurance, Workers Compensation or Social Security. If you only need someone for one or two jobs or during the real estate busy season, you can hire a VA and not have to hire an actual employee.
So now that we know what a VA is, you are probably wondering what a real estate virtual assistant is. Well a REVA will perform tasks like updating your company website, send out weekly newsletters, update home listings and photos and contact potential clients to set up appointments. You can contract him or her on a project or short term basis. So what other jobs can real estate virtual assistants do to make your business boom? They can create and maintain your blog, they can market your area of expertise, they can provide bi-lingual services if needed, they can list homes and businesses to local buyers, they can follow up on leads, they can send out newsletters, postcards or brochures, they can help you with search engine optimization to drive traffic and potential clients to your website and they can contact past clients to stay in touch.
So if you are ready to increase your real estate sales and watch your business boom, they you need to consider a real estate virtual assistant. When you are searching for a real estate virtual assistant, you want to check their credentials like how many years experience they have, if they have any professional certifications, if they have a virtual assistant website and if they can provide at least 5 references. Other things you want to consider in your search are their overall personality. Make sure you talk with them over the phone a couple of times so you can get a feel for their demeanor. If they don’t sound enthusiastic by what you are proposing, you may want to try another assistant. Be sure to ask them what time zone they are in and make sure they fully understand what time zone you are in. This will be important when it comes to deadlines. If you state you want the project done at 3:00 pm and you are in the Pacific time zone and they are in the Eastern time zone, they make thing it is 3:00 their time which will be 6:00 your time.
