For a startup company delving into real estate management, effectively handling clients and properties across different locations can be a challenge. After all, there are a lot of tedious tasks to do to ensure that these are well cared for. Here, outsourcing can be a lot of help. Let’s take a look at how you can do it effectively.
How Real Estate Management Outsourcing Works
In real estate management outsourcing, the goal of your company is to send different administrative and client-facing tasks. Some of these tasks are:
- Marketing and prospecting
- Contract management
- Filing of legal documents and registration
- Maintenance and repairs
- Routine inspections
These tasks can be either outsourced to local contractors or sent to remote firms. The latter mostly handles the documentation tasks that can be done online. Meanwhile, the former takes care of the work that requires physical presence, such as inspection and maintenance.
Why Outsource Real Estate Startup Company Tasks?
Deciding to hand over some of your real estate company’s tasks to a third-party firm is a vital move you have to think about carefully. But there are several benefits to it that you should not overlook. These benefits can help you better meet client needs and ensure that their properties are well taken care of.
Cost-Effectiveness
Getting a dedicated in-house staff to handle these real estate tasks will cost you a lot of money. With an outsourced firm, you will be able to save on those expenses. Additionally, you don’t have to worry about this work burdening your administrative team.
Access To Skilled Talent
Managing different kinds of property requires a lot of skills. Through outsourcing, you can get access to those professionals faster. You can also get access to tools that will help you more efficiently do the management work. These firms invest heavily in these tools, so you know that they will be able to deliver quality service.
Response Time
Sometimes, real estate management work happens outside of business hours. As such, you might not have your staff available to handle these immediately. With outsourcing, you can have agents working on it round the clock. That means you can have important property documents and reports filed as soon as possible.
Outsourcing Your Real Estate Startup Company’s Tasks
Once you decide to outsource some of your real estate company tasks, you need a clear plan on how to do it. The first step is deciding which tasks to send out. Here, you need to first organize all the tasks into three categories.
- Things that you must do: These are the tasks that only your main team can perform.
- Things that you can do: These are the tasks that you can accomplish without having to spend too much time on them.
- Things that you can’t do: These are tasks that are beyond your expertise.
Of the three, the first one is usually your startup company’s core tasks, such as property assessment and client orientation. The second one is a mixture of client-facing and back office tasks that you can readily perform on your own or outsourced. Lastly, the third category is typically the specialized tasks that you will heed an expert to handle.
To determine which tasks from these categories you should outsource, you need to carefully assess how each will affect operations. For instance, your back-office tasks might not be directly related to client engagements but they have a significant impact on your overall operations. Any shortage of personnel here can disrupt your business, which is why you want to fill these positions immediately.
Who Should Your Startup Company Get?
When looking for outsourcing firms or agencies you should have an idea of what kind of people you want to get. List down the specific skills for each position. You should also think about how these skills complement those of your existing staff. From there, you can create an employee profile to narrow your search.
Getting Virtual Assistants
A specific outsourced position you would want to get for your real estate startup business is a virtual assistant. These individuals can handle a variety of tasks, making them a great option for long-term work.
While you might be tempted to go for general VAs, it would be better to go with someone that has a specific focus on the real estate industry. This way, you can let them handle more specialized tasks like:
- Finding and organizing property details
- Conducting real estate research
- Preparing sales and performance reports
- Doing social media marketing for specific clients
Additionally, a real estate VA will be able to provide you with insights on industry trends and developments. That extra perspective will help you better make business decisions.
Working With Your Outsourced Real Estate Team
Once you have your outsourced real estate team assembled, you can begin working with them. The first thing to do here is to brief the team about your existing contracts. Provide them with the documentation for each client so that they can review it.
You also need to go through the different business procedures that you employ. Talk with the outsourced to better plan out how they should handle these procedures. You should also establish the lines of communications for the work.
Transitioning To Long-Term Work
Your initial work with the outsourced real estate team will typically last for the duration of a single project. Once that project is done, you evaluate the team’s performance and decide on your next move.
Note that a performance slightly below your expectations does not always mean termination of the service contract. Look into their performance in key areas and see if these are still within your preferred threshold. You can then discuss with the provider to see how problem areas can still be improved.
You would also want to plan out additional roles for the outsourced team moving forward. A common mistake by many real estate agencies is to overburden their outsourced teams with too many new positions because they did well on previous projects. Before bringing in these new positions, coordinate with the firm to see if the current team can handle these or if they need to assign new personnel for you.
Boost Your Real Estate Startup Company With Outsourcing
When done right, outsourcing can help your startup company attract more real estate clients. Follow these strategies and you will be able to build a stronger foundation for your business. Connect with us today so that we can help you succeed in that effort.