Simplify Your Real Estate Business with Virtual Assistants

Due to the growing demands of the real estate industry, leveraging virtual assistants can simplify and streamline your business operations.

The time of your specialists and your own time are the scarcest resources there are. Imagine a neurosurgeon at a hospital. They have an astronomical hourly wage because they’re the only person who can operate on a patient but they get paid the same for an hour regardless if they’re in an O.R. or if they’re just making their own coffee/writing a report. 

So, how do you calculate their wage - do you split the difference between a neurosurgeon’s pay and that of an office clerk/barista? Of course not; you pay them as a neurosurgeon.

The same thing goes in the real estate business. You’re paying a veteran realtor a veteran realtor’s wage to respond to emails and do basic research that even an intern could do.

Why not just skip all of that, simplify your real estate business, and make it more cost-effective? How is that possible? With virtual assistants. Check it out. 

1. Delegate Non-Core Tasks

Multitasking is killing you. While you may think that you’re more productive or just as productive this way, the truth is that you’re more likely to make errors. Not only that, but working on two one-hour tasks won’t translate into a two-hour multitasking session. It will take a lot more time, and you need to avoid complicating your life unnecessarily.

There are two types of tasks: those that can be done by anyone and those that just you (or a specialist can do). By hiring a real estate virtual assistant, you’ll have someone to handle the first group of tasks and leave you to focus on house tours and client relations. This way, everyone does what they’re most capable of, and everyone profits. 

Moreover, you’re alleviating the psychological impact of switching tasks on your productivity. Taking a break from creative tasks to answer a few emails is a simple enough task, but this doesn’t mean that you’ll be just as productive as soon as you return. If anything, you’re losing inspiration and breaking your focus. With someone else on the task, this won’t be such a problem.

All of this can go away if you were just to hire a virtual assistant.

For instance, you can get a virtual assistant with experience in bookkeeping for real estate, thus reducing at least one of your administrative tasks.

2. Have Someone Else Take Care of Your Schedule

In theory, taking care of your own schedule would make the most sense. In practice, it’s completely opposite. With so much work to do, you’re overburdened with all sorts of tasks and responsibilities, which makes it easy to lose track of your capabilities and capacities. Therefore, having someone else (someone more objective) in charge might help out immensely.

Because the entirety of modern scheduling takes place over shared tools and cloud-based platforms, there’s really no difference from the technical perspective over who is doing the scheduling (as long as it’s done right). What does this mean? Well, in the past, someone had to sit behind your computer or take your notebook to change your schedule. Not anymore. 

You also need someone to hold you back from overestimating yourself. A lot of people are biased towards their own capacities and capabilities. This means that when they have an hour, in their minds, they’re equating that to the most productive hour they ever had. This is never true.

In time, you’ll develop a great understanding with your virtual assistant, and they’ll get to know you better than you know yourself. They’ll know how much you need to prepare for a meeting and when you’re overdue a break. Your own guardian angel.

3. Alleviate the Burden of Personal Responsibilities

Having to do everything on your own can be incredibly stressful. In fact, sharing responsibility is one of the main reasons why people find partners, not just for more funds. While you’re still the leader and the responsibility is all yours, just sharing some tasks and having someone to help you out will feel like a huge weight has been lifted from your shoulders.

Virtual assistants are often trusted with data research and entry, which is pivotal for your success but doesn’t have to be done by a realtor. 

Having a personal assistant will positively reflect on your work-life balance. With some of the tasks delegated to your personal assistant, you’ll have it easier to find some free time. You could also have them in charge of handling your personal appointments, which could help you avoid neglecting other aspects of your life. 

A virtual assistant is someone who has a closer look into what you’re dealing with on a regular basis than the rest of your employees. After all, they have insights into your own tasks that the rest of your staff lacks. 

Lastly, just knowing that you have a personal assistant will make you feel more professional. You heard that right: self-perception is often tightly intertwined with your own sense of worth, and, for some people, having an assistant helps boost their own ego. 

4. Improve Scalability

Even if you can do everything on your own, what happens when your workload increases? This is bound to happen if you’re doing everything right, and if you’re not, it really doesn’t matter what you do. A real estate business cannot stagnate; it can grow or fail. By planning for growth, you’re proactively working in the best interest of your own business. 

You can always give them more responsibilities and increase their salary on account of handling them. This gives them an incentive to try even harder and opens room for them to take the initiative to ask for more work on their own. Just remember that before they tackle something new, they need additional training/onboarding and a competence check. 

You can always hire more virtual assistants, and the old ones can even help with the onboarding of new ones. This way, you’re doing more than just increasing your capacity - you’re actively creating an expansion system. 

Some of these employees can start as virtual assistants and end up becoming conventional employees. In fact, this could be an amazing boost to your recruitment process. This way, you get to see one’s performance before bringing them in. 

Wrap up

At the end of the day, you must understand the importance of making things simpler. The industry is already so complex, which is why you can gain a massive edge by focusing on tasks that make the biggest difference and outsourcing all the rest. This is really the best way to change things in your favor and you can do it with virtual assistants.