I talk to agents looking to hire a real estate Virtual Assistant almost every week who all say the same thing:
“I’m drowning.”
They’ve got 8 showings today.
Three more people want them to list.
There’s paperwork the size of Everest piling up on their desk — lease agreements, disclosures, inspection reports, contract amendments.
Their CRM hasn’t been touched in a week.
And, to boot, there are 25 leads sitting in their inbox that haven’t gotten so much as a “thanks for reaching out.”
And…somewhere in the back of their mind, they know they need to be prospecting for new business. But when are they supposed to do THAT?
Here’s the thing:
Every real estate agent I’ve ever spoken to is stuck in the same cycle.
Step 1 — You hustle. You farm, you door-knock, you do open houses, you network. You work your ass off to get business.
Step 2 — It works. Listings come in. Buyers start calling. Referrals trickle in.
Step 3 — Buried. Alive. You’ve got so many transactions going that you stop doing step one entirely. You’re just trying to keep your head above water.
Step 4 — The pipeline dries up. “I have no business.” Oops.
And then it starts all over again.
The only way to break this cycle is to hire.
But before you do — you need to understand that not every agent needs the same hire. And that’s where most people get it wrong before they even start.
I run HireUA. We’ve placed over 1,000 remote workers with businesses across the US and Europe — agencies, eCommerce companies, SaaS startups, solopreneurs, and yes, real estate professionals. I’ve seen what works, what doesn’t, and why most agents burn through Virtual Assistants like matches.
By the end of this article, you’ll know exactly what a real estate Virtual Assistant should be doing, what they shouldn’t be doing, how much they cost, and how to actually make the hire stick.
Last Updated: February 2026
Table of Contents
- Not Every Agent Needs the Same Virtual Assistant
- What a Real Estate Virtual Assistant Actually Does Day-to-Day
- What to Hire For First: Fulfillment
- What Real Estate Agents Get Wrong About Hiring a Virtual Assistant
- “But Do They Know [Insert Tool]?”
- The Ultra-Cheap Real Estate VA Problem (And Why It Matters for Real Estate Specifically)
- Training a VA
- What a Real Estate Virtual Assistant Costs
- How We Work (And How We’re Different)
- Frequently Asked Questions
Not Every Agent Needs the Same Virtual Assistant
You’ve seen the shows.
The agent in a $5,000 suit walking through a Manhattan penthouse with floor-to-ceiling Central Park views. Casually discussing a $40 million listing over espresso while their assistant coordinates the photographer, the stager, the private showing schedule, and the client’s driver.
That agent needs a Virtual Assistant who can compose emails to hedge fund managers without sounding like a robot. Someone who understands that when the client says “I need the terrace staged for a dinner party by Thursday,” there is no room for error. The communication has to be white-glove. The judgment has to be sharp. The attention to detail has to be surgical.
Now, pay attention:
That’s one version of real estate. Here’s another.
A property manager in the Southeast managing 200+ rental doors with herself and her husband. No office. No team. Just two people and a cell phone that never stops ringing. She needs someone to respond to tenant inquiries, post vacancies on Facebook, schedule maintenance, and write basic lease documents.
Her Virtual Assistant doesn’t need to know how to email a billionaire.
Her Virtual Assistant needs to be organized, responsive, and consistent.
Same job title. Completely different hire.
And yet almost no one thinks about this. They just Google “real estate Virtual Assistant,” find a company promising 100+ tasks, and expect the same Virtual Assistant to work whether you’re selling starter homes in suburban Ohio or $6 million oceanfront estates in Santa Monica.
It doesn’t work that way.
Here’s how to think about it instead:
The Solo Agent (Small to Mid Market)
You’re doing $500K to $2M in volume. Maybe you’re in a mid-size city in Texas, or the suburbs outside Charlotte, or a small market in the Midwest where the median home price is $250K.
You probably don’t even have an office. You work from your car, your kitchen table, and the Starbucks on Main Street.
What you need: A part-time Virtual Assistant for 15-20 hours a week. Someone to handle lead follow-up, CRM hygiene, basic social media posting, and scheduling. That’s it. You don’t need a TC. You don’t need an ISA. You need to stop drowning in admin so you can get back to showing houses.
Cost: $600-$800/month. Less than your car payment.
The Growth Agent (Team Lead)
You’re doing $3M to $10M in volume. You might have one or two buyer’s agents under you. You’ve got enough business that you can’t physically handle the admin anymore, and it’s starting to cost you deals.
Maybe you’re in a competitive market like Denver, Nashville, or Raleigh — somewhere that’s growing fast and deals move quickly. You’re losing leads because you can’t follow up fast enough.
What you need: A full-time Virtual Assistant who can run the operational backbone. Lead management, transaction support, listing coordination, calendar management, and acting as your gatekeeper — knowing what gets escalated and what can wait.
This is the agent who’s one hire away from doubling their output.
Cost: $1,000-$1,500/month. About what you spend on your CRM, leads subscriptions, and marketing tools combined.
The Luxury or High-Volume Operation
You’re doing $10M+ in volume.
You’re in a market like Scottsdale, Miami Beach, or the Westside of LA where the median home goes for $1.5 million and the top listings are $5 million and up.
Your clients are executives, business owners, investors. They expect a level of professionalism and responsiveness that most agents can’t sustain alone.
What you need: Potentially multiple hires. A Virtual Assistant for admin and lead management. A TC for transaction coordination. Maybe an ISA for outbound prospecting. And the Virtual Assistant you hire needs exceptional communication skills — because they’re going to be emailing, texting, and scheduling with people who have very high standards and very little patience.
The Virtual Assistant for a $200K starter home market in Ohio does not need the same communication polish as the Virtual Assistant for a luxury broker in Santa Monica. And most agents never think about that.
The hire has to match the clientele.
A real estate Virtual Assistant company will send you the same person regardless of whether you’re selling manufactured homes in rural Georgia or penthouses on Park Avenue. Because they’re selling you a body to fill a role.
We don’t do that. We match the person to the business.
So what does a well-matched Virtual Assistant actually look like in practice? Let me walk you through a day.
What a Real Estate Virtual Assistant Actually Does Day-to-Day
Stop thinking about this as a list of 100 tasks. Instead, think about what your actual day looks like — and what your Virtual Assistant takes off of it.
Monday Morning
Six new leads came in over the weekend from Zillow, Realtor.com, and your website.
Your Virtual Assistant has already responded to all six with your templated follow-up message. Three of them replied. Your Virtual Assistant qualified two and booked showings directly into your calendar. One wasn’t a fit — your Virtual Assistant sent a polite decline and logged it in your CRM.
You wake up, check your calendar, and see two showings already booked. Perfect.
Mid-Morning
You’re between showings.
Your Virtual Assistant is uploading the listing photos and details for a new property into the MLS and cross-posting to Zillow and Realtor.com. They’re also scheduling this week’s social media posts — three listing photos on Instagram, a “just listed” post on Facebook, and a market update you recorded yesterday.
You didn’t have to touch any of it.
Afternoon
A buyer’s agent calls and says their client has another property they’re writing on today — your seller needs to respond to the counteroffer by 5pm or the deal is dead.
Your Virtual Assistant doesn’t Slack you this one. They call you.
Because a good Virtual Assistant isn’t just someone who processes tasks. They’re a gatekeeper. They hold the messages that can wait — the showing confirmation for Thursday, the photographer wanting to reschedule, the title company asking for a document that isn’t due until next week. That stuff sits in a tidy list for when you’re back at your desk.
But the time-sensitive counteroffer with a competing buyer? That gets a phone call. Right now. While you’re standing in the driveway between showings.
That’s the difference between a Virtual Assistant who processes and a Virtual Assistant who thinks.
Meanwhile, your Virtual Assistant is following up with four leads from last week who haven’t responded. Two of them reply. One wants to schedule a showing. Booked. Presto. Done.
End of Day
Your Virtual Assistant sends you a summary:
- 4 new leads contacted
- 2 showings booked
- 1 listing uploaded
- 3 social posts scheduled
- Cunteroffer escalated and resolved
- 4 follow-ups sent
- They update your CRM with everything before they log off.
That’s a real estate Virtual Assistant day. Not 100 tasks from a brochure. Just organized, consistent execution of the stuff that would otherwise pile up until you can’t see over it.
The Specific Tasks
For agents who want the concrete list, here’s what a real estate Virtual Assistant handles well:
Lead Management: Responding to new inquiries, qualifying leads, following up, booking appointments, updating your CRM, managing your pipeline.
Listing Coordination: Uploading listings to MLS and syndication sites, coordinating photos and descriptions, scheduling open houses, managing listing status changes.
Transaction Support: Tracking deadlines, gathering documents, coordinating with title companies and lenders, sending reminders, managing checklists. (Note: Full transaction coordination is a specialist role. A Virtual Assistant handles the admin layer of it, not the judgment-heavy compliance work.)
Social Media: Posting listings, scheduling content, managing comments, repurposing your video content into clips. This is NOT a “Social Media Manager” — it’s a Virtual Assistant who posts three times a week. You don’t need a strategist. You need someone who can copy-paste your listing into Instagram with the right hashtags.
Calendar and Scheduling: Managing your showing schedule, confirming appointments, rescheduling, sending reminders, coordinating with other agents.
General Admin: Email management, document organization, data entry, basic reporting, research.
What a Virtual Assistant Should NOT Be Doing
Complex Transactions. If you need someone managing contract-to-close compliance, handling escrow processes, and making sure nothing blows up a deal — that’s a TC, not a Virtual Assistant. They’re different roles with different skillsets.
Inside Sales Agent (ISA) work. If you need someone making 200 cold calls a day to expired listings and FSBOs, that’s a dedicated ISA. It requires assertiveness, thick skin, and a specific sales personality. Don’t ask your admin Virtual Assistant to do this.
Strategic marketing. Your Virtual Assistant can post your content. They cannot create your marketing strategy. If you’re asking a Virtual Assistant to “grow your social media,” you’re setting both of you up for failure.
Now — that’s the picture of what a great Virtual Assistant day looks like. But to get there, you need to understand what to hire for and in what order. Because most agents get this backwards.
What to Hire For First: Fulfillment
If you’ve read anything I’ve written before, you know I talk about the order of hiring constantly. And in real estate, the answer is the same as every other industry:
Hire fulfillment first.
In real estate, fulfillment is the stuff that’s eating your day alive but isn’t directly making you money. It’s the admin. The follow-ups. The CRM updates. The scheduling. The listing uploads. The lease prep. The paperwork.
It’s not the stuff you SHOULD be doing — which is showing houses, building relationships, meeting new clients, and closing deals. That’s your highest-value activity. That’s where your GCI comes from.
But you can’t do any of that if you’re chained to a screen doing data entry.
Here’s a quick exercise. Take your typical day as an agent and sort everything into four buckets:
Bucket 1: You love it AND it makes money. Showing property. Meeting new clients. Negotiating deals. Building relationships. This is your zone. Stay here as much as possible.
Bucket 2: You hate it BUT it makes money. Prospecting. Cold calling. Following up with leads who ghost you. It sucks, but it pays. You can eventually hire for this — but not yet.
Bucket 3: You love it BUT it doesn’t make money. Redesigning your website for the fourth time. Spending two hours on a single Instagram reel. Fun, but it’s not moving the needle.
Bucket 4: You hate it AND it doesn’t make money. CRM data entry. Uploading listings. Sending confirmation emails. Chasing paperwork. Filing documents. Updating spreadsheets.
I know.
Every agent has a Bucket 4. It’s always the same things. Nobody wakes up in the morning fired up about filing contracts and chasing signatures. You didn’t get into real estate for that.
You got into it to show houses.
To hand someone the keys to their first home.
To walk a family through a place and watch their eyes light up when they see the backyard.
To close the deal and pop the champagne.
The admin was never the dream…but it has a way of becoming your entire day if you don’t deal with it.
Your Virtual Assistant eliminates Bucket 4 entirely, so you can spend your entire day in Bucket 1.
That’s the whole game.
I spoke with a property manager recently who manages over 200 doors with just herself and her husband. She was paying a friend $15 an hour as a temp because she was that desperate for help. She needed someone to handle tenant scheduling, lease renewals, lead follow-up, social media posting, and basic lease writing.
She didn’t need a “real estate Virtual Assistant.” She needed a smart, organized person to take the operational chaos off her plate so she could go back to being the face of her company.
That’s what a good Virtual Assistant does.
That’s the framework. And when agents follow it, the hire works.
But most don’t. Here’s why.
What Real Estate Agents Get Wrong About Hiring a Virtual Assistant
I hear this…way too often.
“Maybe I can get someone for a four hundred bucks a month to just run the whole business.”
My response:
You absolutely could do that…if that person existed.
Just like home buyers who expect a castle on a condo budget, many a real estate agents have the same problem when it comes to hiring a Virtual Assistant for real estate.
That’s the fantasy in a nutshell. And it’s everywhere.
Here’s what I hear on calls with agents:
“I need someone to handle my leads, do all my social media, manage my transactions, update my CRM, schedule my showings, write my listing descriptions, coordinate with my lender, and also maybe do some cold calling. Full-time. For $400 a month.“
That is $2.50 an hour.
Literally.
Also…
That’s not a Virtual Assistant. That’s like…five people.
And this is why agents churn through Virtual Assistants like butter. Not because Virtual Assistants are bad — but because the agent has zero real idea or plan on what they actually need.
But here’s what makes it worse:
The real estate Virtual Assistant industry has trained agents to think this way.
Go look at any “real estate Virtual Assistant” company’s website. They’ll show you a list of 100+ tasks their Virtual Assistant can handle — everything from cold calling FSBOs to managing your escrow process to running your Instagram.
It looks great on a landing page. In practice, it’s a disaster. Because the Virtual Assistant they send you is one person. And one person cannot do 100 things well.
So what DOES actually work? It starts with hiring the right person — not someone pre-trained on your CRM, but someone smart enough to learn it.
“But Do They Know [Insert Tool]?”
I get this question — or some version of it — on almost every call with a real estate professional.
“Does the Virtual Assistant know Follow Up Boss? KVCore? BoomTown? Chime? What about Dotloop? Skyslope? PropStream?”
Here’s the deal:
Your Virtual Assistant doesn’t need to show up knowing every CRM and transaction management platform in the real estate industry. They need to show up smart enough to learn yours in a week.
These tools aren’t brain surgery. They’re databases with buttons. A college-educated person with good English and a functioning brain can learn Follow Up Boss in three days. Four, tops.
The tool is the easy part.
The hard part is judgment. It’s knowing which leads to prioritize. It’s writing a follow-up email that doesn’t sound like it was spit out by a chatbot. It’s knowing when to escalate something to you versus handling it themselves.
That’s what you should be screening for — not whether someone has used your specific CRM before.
If someone has a background in admin, customer service, or operations from ANY industry and they’re sharp, they can learn your real estate tools faster than you learned them yourself.
The Ultra-Cheap Real Estate VA Problem (And Why It Matters for Real Estate Specifically)
Some countries have a massive Virtual Assistant industry with a lot of talented people. But I’ve seen a pattern that’s specific to real estate, and it needs to be said.
A broker I spoke with recently had tried hiring from the Philippines for cold calling. He was running a one-man operation in the D.C. area — brokerage, mortgage, and GC work all under one roof. Doing about $300K in revenue, trying to get to a million.
He’d hired a couple of Philippines-based Virtual Assistants for outbound calls to agents. The price was right — $5 an hour, $800 a month (that’s normal these days, seriously, it’s 2026, $2/hour does not exist anymore).
But here’s what happened…
The accents were too heavy for phone work. Not a judgment on the people — they were great. But when you’re cold calling American real estate agents, and the person on the other end can’t immediately understand you, the call is over in three seconds.
And there was another issue he mentioned — they were “too nice.”
In cold calling, you need a certain level of assertiveness. The ability to push through objections, keep someone on the line, handle resistance. The cultural communication style was too deferential, more agreeable. Which is fantastic for customer service. Not ideal for outbound sales.
And check this out:
If you’re an agent selling beachfront condos in Miami and your Virtual Assistant is fielding calls from buyers relocating from New York, those buyers expect a certain cadence.
They expect someone who can keep up. Someone who sounds like they belong in the conversation.
If there’s a language barrier, you’ve lost the lead before you’ve even had a chance.
The other common issue with Asia-based Virtual Assistants for real estate is timezone. If you’re an agent in Texas and your Virtual Assistant is 13 hours ahead, the window for real-time collaboration is tiny. When a lead comes in at 2pm your time and your Virtual Assistant is asleep, that lead goes cold.
This is why we source from Eastern Europe and Latin America.
Same timezone overlap as the US (LatAm especially is identical). Neutral accents that work on the phone with American clients. Strong English proficiency. And a communication style that’s more direct — they’ll tell you what they think, push back when something doesn’t make sense, and operate with more independence.
Is it more expensive than $5/hour? Yes.
A full-time Virtual Assistant from our network runs $1,000-$1,500 a month instead of $800-$1,000. But the difference in output, communication quality, and retention more than makes up for it.
Training a VA
This is the part nobody wants to hear.
You wouldn’t take a server from Applebee’s and drop them into a fine dining steakhouse without training. They might be amazing with people. Great attitude, fast on their feet, never forgets a drink order. But they don’t know the wine list. They don’t know how to present a $90 tomahawk. And they definitely don’t know which regulars get the corner booth without asking.
Same skills. Different context. Training required.
If you want a real estate-specific example:
You wouldn’t take an agent who’s been selling $200K starter homes in suburban Ohio and drop them into a $5 million listing appointment on Central Park in NYC without an ounce of prep. Would you?
They might be a great agent — but they don’t know the clientele, the market expectations, the level of communication that a luxury buyer demands.
They’d get eaten alive.
Your Virtual Assistant is the same.
No matter how talented, no matter how experienced — they need you to spend time showing them how YOUR business works. Your CRM. Your follow-up process. Your transaction workflow. Your communication style. The way you like your listing descriptions written. The tone your clients expect.
And yet I consistently see agents who hire a Virtual Assistant on Monday and expect them to be running the business by Wednesday.
That’s not how it works.
Here’s what does work — I call it Show, Supervise, Shut Up:
Show: You get on a call with them. You share your screen. You walk them through exactly how you do the thing — whether it’s responding to a lead in Follow Up Boss, uploading a listing, or scheduling a showing. You record this call. That recording becomes their SOP.
Supervise: For the next week or two, they do the tasks while you watch. You correct in real time. You answer questions immediately. You don’t let small mistakes become habits.
Shut Up: Once they’ve proven they can execute accurately, you get out of their way. You check in daily at first, then weekly. You give feedback when needed. But you stop hovering.
Most agents skip straight to “Shut Up” without doing “Show” or “Supervise.” Then they wonder why the Virtual Assistant “didn’t work out.”
And here’s the uncomfortable truth I’ve learned from placing remote hires for years…
When someone tells me, “Every hire I’ve ever made didn’t work because of X, Y, and Z reasons,” those same people never stop to think about the single common denominator in the situation.
What a Real Estate Virtual Assistant Costs
Let’s do the math that actually matters.
A full-time real estate Virtual Assistant from our network costs between $1,000 and $1,500 per month. Let’s call it $1,200 a month — $14,400 a year.
Now, if you’re an agent doing $3M in volume at a 2.5% average commission, that’s $75,000 in gross commission income. Your Virtual Assistant costs you roughly 19% of one deal.
One deal.
If your Virtual Assistant frees up even 15 hours a week — hours you can now spend showing homes, meeting new clients, networking — and that leads to even one additional transaction per year, they’ve paid for themselves several times over.
And here’s what’s wild:
The math only gets better the more expensive your market is. An agent in Austin doing $3M in volume pays the same $1,200 a month for their Virtual Assistant as an agent in Manhattan doing $30M in volume. The Virtual Assistant cost stays flat. Your GCI scales up. At $30M in volume, that Virtual Assistant costs you less than 2% of a single commission check.
The higher-end your market, the more insane the arbitrage becomes.
But here’s how most agents think about it instead:
“I can get someone for $500 a month. Why would I pay $1,200?”
Because…you get what you pay for. True for just about everything in life.
The $500 Virtual Assistant has four other clients and is giving you 20% of their attention. The $1,200 Virtual Assistant is dedicated to your business.
The $500 Virtual Assistant can barely handle data entry. The $1,200 Virtual Assistant can qualify leads, write professional follow-up emails, and make judgment calls.
The $500 Virtual Assistant disappears after two months because they found a better gig. The $1,200 Virtual Assistant stays for years because they’re paid fairly and treated well.
You’re not paying for a body. You’re paying for someone who can actually execute at a professional level — and in doing so, you’re buying back the most valuable thing you have.
Your time.
Pricing Overview
| Position | From HireUA | Typical US Equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| Real Estate Virtual Assistant (Full-Time) | From $1,000/month | $3,500-$4,000+/month |
| Real Estate Virtual Assistant (Part-Time, 20hr) | From $600/month | $1,500-$2,000/month |
| Cold Caller / ISA | From $1,500/month | $4,000+/month + commission |
| Transaction Coordinator | From $1,500/month | $3,000-$5,000/month |
We charge a one-time search fee to cover our recruiting costs, and then you pay the Virtual Assistant’s monthly salary through us. No long-term contracts. Two weeks notice to cancel. Lifetime replacement guarantee if the hire doesn’t work out.
You can pay with a credit card. No wire transfers. No invoicing headaches.
How We Work (And How We’re Different)
Let me be straight with you:
We’re not a real estate-only Virtual Assistant company. We don’t have a 4-week “real estate training program.” We don’t claim our Virtual Assistants know the difference between a probate lead and a pre-foreclosure on day one.
Here’s what we DO have:
Over 1,000 placements across every industry imaginable. A hiring methodology that has been tested, broken, fixed, and refined over years. A team of recruiters who source from Eastern Europe and Latin America using local language, local job boards, and personal networks that took years to build.
And a discovery call process that catches problems before they start.
About half the people who come to us asking for one thing actually need something different. The agent who says, “I need a social media manager” actually needs a Virtual Assistant who posts three times a week. The broker who says, “I need a transaction coordinator” actually needs an admin assistant who can track deadlines.
We figure that out on the call. We write the job description. You approve it. We present 5 candidates within 5 days. You interview. You pick. We handle onboarding support.
If the hire doesn’t work out, we replace.
Frequently Asked Questions
How quickly can you find me a real estate Virtual Assistant?
Five business days from kickoff to interviews. Our average time to placement is under two weeks.
Do the Virtual Assistants work in my timezone?
Yes. Our Latin American candidates are in the same timezone as the US. Our Eastern European candidates overlap with US business hours and are typically available during your full workday.
Exception: PST/MST-based agents and businesses should hire from LATAM.
Can I start part-time and move to full-time later?
Generally, yes. Just know that if someone is working 10 hours a week for you, they likely have another job. If you want the option to go full-time later, we’ll screen for candidates who are open to that from the start.
What if my Virtual Assistant doesn’t know my specific CRM or MLS system?
They’ll learn it. Our candidates are college-educated, speak excellent English, and are sharp enough to learn any software tool in a matter of days. You’ll need to show them your specific workflow — but the tool itself is the easy part.
Do you provide SOPs and training materials?
We have a library of SOPs, scorecards, and onboarding templates for a variety of positions. We’re happy to share them or help you create custom ones for your specific workflow. Just ask on your discovery call.
What if I’m unhappy with the Virtual Assistant and need to replace them?
We replace them free of charge. Lifetime guarantee.
How is this different from other real estate Virtual Assistant companies?
Those companies specialize in one industry.
We specialize in one thing: finding great people.
Our model gives you a direct-hire employee who works exclusively for you — not a managed service where someone else supervises your Virtual Assistant and charges you for it. You work directly with your Virtual Assistant, the same way you’d work with anyone else on your team.
What’s the minimum budget I should have?
If you’re doing at least $10,000 a month in revenue (GCI), you can realistically afford a full-time Virtual Assistant for 10-15% of your income. In turn, you get 40 hours a week of your time back. That’s a trade most agents would make in a heartbeat.
Ready to break the cycle?
If you’re a real estate professional stuck in the loop of hustling for business, getting buried, and losing your pipeline — the fix is a hire away.
Book a discovery call with our team. We’ll figure out exactly what you need, what it costs, and whether we’re the right fit.
No pressure. No hard sell. Just a straight conversation about your business.
