Property Management Virtual Assistant

Once your new client is properly set up, you can move straight onto advertising the property. Of course, your experienced local property management staff will handle photos and property descriptions. But it’ll be the job of your VA to take that info and upload it into every ad portal that you use.

Depending on where you’re based, that could be Zilio, Trademe, Realestate.com.au, Domain or countless others. They will also make social media posts and push them out to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Whatsapp.

Once you’ve got your successful advertising campaign in place, there will naturally be a surge in enquiries. Most of these are fairly basic and don’t require the time of your local staff. Leave it to your property management virtual assistant to handle emails, answer questions about the property, and advise about viewings.

If you’re opting for inspection appointments, they can set those up in the online calendar and get back to the prospective tenant with their viewing time.
And as a follow-up task, the PMVA will make sure they get feedback from the tenants. They’ll be able to separate the keen ones from the uninterested ones.

All your property manager needs to do then is follow up the warmest leads and not deal with time wasters.

By now you’ll have a few good prospects who will have submitted applications. Your PMVA will process the app and make sure all the information is complete. If it’s not, they can immediately contact the applicants via SMS or email and fill in any missing details. After that, it’s a simple process of checking rental, professional and employment references – simple in theory, but time consuming in practice!

All of these checks are vital but require a significant time investment. With a PMVA, these fiddly details can be gathered while your property managers are prospecting other landlords and properties.

Once all the info and references are 100% completed, your PM passes the applications on to the landlord for approval.

At this point, it’s time to create a lease and start collecting money. Your PMVA will carefully follow all appropriate standards to create the lease and send it over to the tenant via email. They can then sign it via Docusign or whatever system your office uses.

At the same time, they’ll let the tenant know where to transfer their deposit and make sure they’re set up in your accounting software correctly. They’ll then supply the tenant all the info they need to lodge their bond properly.

Again, these are all things that need to be done. They are essential to keep the property management side of your business going. Every single step is vitally important but also time consuming. If you know exactly what needs to be done, it then becomes the job of your PMVA to tick off everything on the list.

Of course, there are things your offshore staff can’t do. Things like property inspections have to be done by your onsite team. Your property manager is responsible for going out to the property and doing the initial inspection report and taking photos. Using an app like PropertyMe, they can make all their notes online. Then, it’s over to your PMVA to complete the report, send it on to the tenant and get it signed off.

When we say that a PMVA is part of every step of the property management process, we mean it. And that includes rent receipting.
Each morning, your property management VA can process your accounts and reconcile rental payments. They’ll immediately flag which tenants are in arrears so that your local PM can follow up.

Or they can even send the initial SMS or email themselves, giving the tenant a quick nudge. Your PMVA will follow your arrears process and bring in the big guns, i.e. your property manager, only when necessary.

If you take the time to set up an online process, your tenants will be able to lodge maintenance requests online, via Facebook, or even SMS. Once your PMVA receives the request, they can get in touch with your approved tradespeople and organise the repairs.

Of course, as part of your maintenance process, you’ll include an approval step from the property manager. Once that has been ticked off, it moves back to the PMVA to coordinate between the tradesperson and the tenant to find a suitable time or arrange access.

Think about how long it takes when you need to have a three way conversation like that. The tradie is usually on the phone, while the tenant prefers email, and your PM is stuck in the middle, spending a huge amount of time on a relatively unimportant task.

That’s why, in our experience, a property manager with a dedicated virtual assistant can double the number of properties they manage. Yes. DOUBLE. A property manager with a rent roll of 150 can go to 300 in a matter of weeks.

As part of the initial leasing process, your PMVA will set up calendar alerts to set up routine inspections. Naturally, your property management team all have online calendars and will have clearly defined what days and times they are available for inspections. Using that information, your PMVA will coordinate with tenants to arrange the perfect time to carry out a routine inspection.

And just like the initial inspection, they will process the notes and photos that the property manager makes and turn them into a complete report that can be sent straight on to the landlord.

When it’s nearing the end of a lease period, your PMVA will get an alert to start following up. Generally, you want to avoid empty properties, but this will depend on what the property manager, landlord and tenant decide.

Your PMVA will contact their property manager between 60 to 90 days before the lease is due to expire. This gives the PM plenty of time to find out what the landlord wants. If they give the green light for the renewal, the PMVA sends the information on to the tenant and the process gets underway.

End-of-lease care is an important part of keeping both landlords and tenants happy, and it’ll be the job of your PM virtual assistant to make sure this critical period runs smoothly.

In the case of a vacate, your PMVA will make sure the tenant and landlord have all the information they need for a smooth transition. And of course, they’ll hop right back into preparing all the advertising materials you need to make sure a new tenant is found as soon as possible.