With all the real estate tasks an agent is encountering it is important to learn how to outsource these tasks. Many agents are a part of a small real estate office or may be in a small market and therefore have to do every tedious detail for every transaction. To be honest, most of your time should be devoted to getting listings or meeting with prospective clients and canvassing your area of expertise. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to be able to outsource some of the menial office tasks so that you can focus on getting new work?
Outsourcing is a hot topic. So, oftentimes, outsourcing isn’t looked upon in a favorable light. However, in this current downswing in the real estate market we must learn new ways to lower our overhead and increase our profits.
There are several websites that real estate outsourcing offer outsourcing resources. One of the more popular ones is Elance. I’ve used this site for well over a year and I have never had a problem with the service. However, you must be careful who you outsource to. Another great resource is ODesk. I have not used their service but they get rave reviews for service. So for the purpose of this article we will only talk about Elance.
I have found a lot of success outsourcing to the Ukraine. Other friends of mine, such as Tyrone Shum, have found much success in the Philippines. I have, on the other hand had some problems when I outsourced to companies in Pakistan and India. It may have just been the service provider but, either way, it left a bad taste in my mouth. They didn’t rip me off or anything but they were really tardy delivering their tasks on time.
Now, this is going to shock you. I have paid as little as 3$ an hour for administrative office tasks to be performed by a service provider. it almost seems wrong but the wages that are acceptable in certain areas are far below what they are in the US. I have 2 girls in the Ukraine that work about 40 hours a week for me. That is $120 a week or $480 a month. That basically gives me a full time worker for an entire month for under $500. Pretty amazing if you ask me. And, like I said, these providers are more than happy to work those hours for what we consider a minimal amount. It’s just economies of scale. I have heard that providers in the Philippines work for as little as $2 an hour.
Some of the tasks we outsource are: returning emails, posting properties to social media sites, tweeting out our new listings, updating Facebook and research. We never outsource financial tasks that may contain a buyers or sellers financial information. That is just too risky and, honestly, isn’t ethical if you as me. I would be very upset if I found out my agent was outsourcing their tasks and my financials were traveling across the world and back.