Virtual Assistant vs. In-House

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By: Darin "Sid" Cameron, CRS
Fri, Mar 16th, 2007 12:09 am

I got to speak to the agent we know who thinks she's losing her assistant (post from a few days ago). So here's a follow up.

The agent pays her assistant $50k/year and doesn't think with the market slowing down that she can afford to give her a raise right now to keep her.

My opinon is that $50k/yr can get a lot of stuff done if you manage it properly.

When we brought on a full-time processor we didn't have a clue what we were doing. Our office manager suggested we just pay her a percentage of our sales- so we gave her 20% of every transaction (because that's what the agent she worked for before us did).

Although she was a team player, all she really did for us was process files (transaction management).

It seemed like a deal at the time but as our sales grew we ultimately ended up paying her more than $50k/year (and an experienced full-time transaction coordinator in our market can be had for $36k/year if salaried).

When we started looking at VA's I called a local one and rattled off everything I needed to do. She suggested hiring multiple specialists and felt my "biggest bang for the buck" based on what I was telling her was to start with processing contracts.

The Virtual Assistant we hired charges us $400 per transaction but it can vary depending on what you have her doing for you. Based on last years sales we would have paid her just over $17k (a $35k/year savings for the same service we had in-house).

The thing with the VA is that I really thought it would mean we had to do 20% more work to get that savings, yet I really don't feel like that's been the case yet.

What's also nice is if you have a slow month, a quick/easy deal or something small you just don't use the VA. And if you do have staff, they're great for overflow.

The only catch to using a VA like we do is you need to be using transaction management software like Settlement Room. Without a common web-based platform everyone can use it's very hard to work with a remote person.

If you prepay for 75 transactions, Settlement Room comes out to $7/per so it's not a huge expense and it had a lot of perks for the clients. What I would say is look at the tools you use and find a VA that's certified in it (Top Producer, Imprev, Sharper Agent, etc).

If anyone wants recommendations, I'm happy to make them. You can also check Mike Russer's REVA network (REVA = Real Estate Virtual Assistants)

http://www.revanetwork.com/