You can’t do it all on your own. This is always true when running a business; however, in the field of real estate, where the specialist and an entrepreneur have so much networking to do, this is even more important to realize.
You need some help; however, what if you can’t hire a partner or another real estate specialist? What if your firm is, at the time, not big enough for this form of overlapping authority and profit-sharing structure? Well, in that case, you get an assistant. In 2024, you get a virtual assistant. Here are some benefits of this decision.
1. Handling your calendar and scheduling
For any professional, there’s a point when time becomes the scarcest of resources. After all, there are so many tasks that cannot be automated and outsourced, which means that they require your personal attention.
Even when you automate and outsource all the rest, you cannot be everywhere at once, which means that every task that comes before you first requires a sort of triage. It requires someone to take a look at it, assess it, and decide whether it should go into your calendar and schedule or be delegated to someone else.
With the help of a virtual assistant, this task shouldn’t be too difficult.
The longer they stay employed with you, the better they’ll understand your workflow and operational capacities. They’ll develop a feeling for how productive you are on which days and which parties are so exhausted that you need a 30-minute break afterward (instead of your standard 15 minutes).
Simply put, a digital scheduling tool has an efficient but inhuman approach to productivity and time management. What you need is an actual human being in charge of your schedule.
2. Property research
The first thing you need to keep in mind is the importance of actual property research. Now, in the modern day and age, this involves a few things. First, it requires going through listings and compiling lists of suitable properties. Then, it involves cost estimates and comparisons to similar properties and neighborhoods.
While this isn’t that complex, it’s incredibly time-consuming.
Moreover, property research in real estate requires a bit more finesse. This is why you need to hire a real estate virtual assistant instead of looking for a hireable generalist. This way, you get someone with actual industry experience and all the perks that this brings.
You also have to keep in mind that property research is a never-ending process. It’s not a one-and-done thing, seeing as conditions change daily and new properties are always on and off the market.
For this task, you need someone with high reading comprehension and critical thinking abilities. You also need someone with patience and focus to review development plans and municipality reports and determine which neighborhoods will see their values skyrocket in the near future.
3. Posting listings and website maintenance
There are two ways that your clients will find out about the properties that you’re selling – either by seeing them on listings or by seeing them listed on your website. You need someone in charge of both of these mediums if you aim to get the most out of your online presence.
The last thing you want is to keep the properties you’ve already sold online or to delay posting them. Both will harm your reputation and your overall aims.
Modern websites can be made without any code whatsoever. Hosting is relatively inexpensive, and with the help of drag-and-drop website builders, even a complete web design novice can do it. The only downside is that maintenance still takes a bit of effort, and you’ll already be short on time.
Now, add to this the fact that you want to run a blog, as well, and you get another duty that you can delegate to your virtual assistant – producing and curating content. Sure, writing quality content takes quite a bit of effort and skill, but someone who is so in-depth with this subject matter shouldn’t have much trouble with it.
4. Managing your social media
Marketing is essential for business growth, and social media marketing is one of the first areas that you should focus on.
Social media is important for many different reasons. First, platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest are amazing ways for you to display some of your properties. All platforms are great for sharing your blog content, while tools like LinkedIn are an efficient way to network and share some of your industry-specific insight.
Other than this, social media serves as a great way to interact with your buyers and potential clients directly. Think about social media DMs as a way to enhance the work of your customer service.
The whole point is that there’s so much work to be done on social media and that you don’t have the time to do so personally. With the help of a virtual assistant, you’ll have a simple way to solve this problem.
An assistant employed with you for a longer period will enhance your branding efforts. In other words, your social media profiles will get the same tone and voice.
5. Preparing marketing and presentation materials
The real estate industry is incredibly competitive, and to succeed, you need to have new offers every week. You also need to update your marketing materials or prepare new ones on a regular basis. This task takes a lot of time, but with the right direction and adequate tools, a virtual assistant can prepare these materials.
Preparing unique presentations also takes a lot of skill and effort. Sure, downloading a template is simple enough, but each of these presentations will only be effective if they’re customized and personalized to the target audience.
We discussed the role of virtual assistants in the research process a few sections earlier. It’s logical that the people in charge of the research can tailor these presentation templates to suit the right target audience.
Wrap up
The most important thing you need to understand is that if your business plans go right, you’ll have to get some help. If they don’t, none of it really matters anyhow. Either way, hiring a virtual assistant is inevitable, and the sooner you do it, the better, especially since this decision is scalable and returns are exponential.