Hiring A Virtual Assistant For Real Estate Appraisers

 

Hiring A Virtual Assistant For Real Estate Appraisers

 

As a real estate appraiser, your job is to have an excellent knowledge of your local market and analyse market trends. Therefore, you do not want to be spending time on administrative tasks, which always take longer than you think.

Hiring a virtual assistant is becoming more common in the real estate industry because it allows appraisers to concentrate on the critical part of their job.

In addition, it enables your appraisal business to run more efficiently. The virtual assistant will take care of all data entry tasks that don’t require expert judgement or real estate knowledge.

Let me show you why hiring a VA is such a critical business choice.

Why Hire A Virtual Assistant?

Many people who run an appraisal business see the benefits of hiring virtual assistants. It is just as effective as hiring a full-time office-based assistant but far more cost-efficient.

The remote worker will often work from their own home and complete time-heavy data entry or administrative tasks that you set them.

It may seem like it only takes you 10-15 minutes to input data and another 15-minutes to reply to emails each day. However, these minutes soon all add up over the course of the working week.

Why spend your time on admin tasks when you could be working on lead generation?

The VA you hire can be trained to suit the needs of the real estate appraiser.

For example, in addition to data entry and dealing with phone calls, scheduling client appointments, managing your email account, and also answering client enquiries, they could also be trained in new skills.

These new skills could be centred around conducting research or helping you write a report.

Hiring a VA will help your business save on employment costs because the VA you hire will be paid an hourly rate.

In addition, it also allows appraisers to devote more time to property research and analytics, which will help your business stay ahead of the competition.

Your primary focus should be on the continued success of your business, and hiring a VA can help your appraisers spend more time on lead generation, which will help attract more clients to the company.

What Kind Of Tasks Can They Perform?

Typical tasks for a virtual assistant include data entry, making phone calls, managing your email inbox, scheduling appointments, and making travel arrangements.

However, you may need more than this.

For example, the role you design may require the person to deal with social media management, blog writing, collecting and analysing data entry, graphic design, and maybe even bookkeeping.

If you can see that the candidate is highly motivated and is willing to learn more skills, then it is always an option to find the best courses online to enrol them on. Online courses may come at a cost, but they may be beneficial in the long term.

Taking time to search for the right assistant to become a part of your team for your real estate business is always tricky, so it is vital to determine if the candidate has any transferable skills that may be useful for your company.

How Much Time Can This Save?

A recent survey found that of nearly 2,000 office workers asked, the average worker manages under three hours of productive work daily. Furthermore, the survey found that workers only produced this level of work despite being in the office for long hours.

The survey found much wasted time during the average eight-hour working day. Instead, around 50 percent of full-time employees spent time making coffee, online shopping, chatting to friends on social media, and looking for other job opportunities.

Hiring an assistant saves you both time and money. For example, if you streamline and manage your workflow correctly, you could say your business has saved 200 working hours per year.

That is 200 hours which can be wisely spent on the core aspects of your business.

For example, spending five hours on each client research report equates to an extra 40 reports annually. The 200 hours is time well spent on generating new opportunities for your business.

Alternatively, you may decide to spend your saved hours making sure your current clients are satisfied.

Or you could even spend the saved time networking on the golf course trying to gain new clients or spend more time with your friends and family.

Focus On Real Estate Appraisal Skills

The virtual assistant appraiser you hire will have to be able to work as part of a team, conduct research, be able to deal with public records,  and analyse data.

The job of a real estate appraiser is very specialised; therefore, the assistant you hire will need to be able to help you write detailed reports.

If the candidate has a high touch typing speed of between 100-120 words per minute, this will help as the appraiser may verbally dictate the reports.

Suppose an assistant you hire would also need to be able to update property records. Updating the documents to create an up-to-date portfolio will keep you ahead of other appraisers in other companies.

Accuracy is everything, and you cannot afford data entry or property records not to be correct. And that requires attention to detail, as the person you hire may need to conduct property research to help with accurate valuations.

Hiring And Training Your Virtual Assistant

It can be daunting to hire and train a virtual assistant. Even when you hire from online freelance platforms, it can be a hassle searching through the thousands of profiles of workers offering their services.

Often businesses get caught up in the minefield of resumes and forget to narrow down on what they are looking for from the VA they hire.

Here Are Some Essential Tips To Consider

1) What experience does the candidate have? The candidate you hire must have experience or knowledge in the tasks you expect them to perform. They may not have worked within the Real Estate Appraisal sector, but there must be some transferable skills.

2) Does the candidate communicate to a high standard? Again, you can judge this by how they respond to your emails.

3) Is the candidate able to communicate clearly during an interview? How they come across via Skype or Zoom will indicate their ability to communicate verbally.

4) Can the candidate follow instructions correctly? Not being able to follow instructions properly when applying for the position indicates that they cannot follow task directions if hired.

5) Does the candidate seem motivated? You can generally tell if a person is motivated by how they speak. If they are half-hearted during the interview, they won’t be motivated if you hire them.

Contact Us Today To Hire Your First VA

When trying to hire a virtual assistant to work alongside your real estate appraisers, it is vital to ask the right questions.

It is helpful if the candidate has had experience in other jobs related to real estate. It’s not essential, but it will save you time training them to perform tasks specifically associated with your sector.

We understand that sourcing, hiring, and training a VA can eat into your valuable time, so why not let us do all that for you?We have a large pool of highly motivated and talented VAs available, meaning you could be up and running within a matter of days.

Give us a call today for a free consultation and let us help you find the right VA that fits your real estate needs.

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