Virtual Assistant Forums | Work from Home

VAF Admin · #1 (**permalink**) 04-06-2010

Host : Serita Diana, REVA and President of List 2 Close Assistant http://www.list2closeassistant.com/ is also an instructor at the Academy of Virtual Entrepreneurs (AOVE.org) where she teaches a series of four courses on Real Estate Virtual Assistance. She has experience as a real estate agent and as a VA so she has some serious insight into what it takes to be a great REVA Serita’s formal education and experience includes: Dearborn Real Estate Education 2004, Mike Ferry Real Estate Assistant Training Program 2007, Anthem College, AA Business Management 2009, plus numerous years in various positions within the real estate industry. The REVA courses will teach anyone wanting to break into the real estate virtual assistant industry how to handle listing coordination, build a database, closing coordination, researching of properties, the actual ways in which real estate is recorded and so much more. To learn more about Serita's courses, please visit http://www.aove.org/reva-101.html after the chat.

Host : Serita has prepared a special topic for us tonight, specific to the many documents that are important in the RE industry... Thanks for joining us Serita and sharing your knowledge!

executive_assist : Thanks! Glad to join you here tonight!

executive_assist : Hi everyone! Welcome to the Real Estate Virtual Assistant live chat event! Thanks for joining me in the chat tonight, and thank you Tess for being kind enough to have me so that I can share a little bit about Real Estate Virtual Assistance with everyone! For those of you unfamiliar with Real Estate, one of the most important things you need to know is what an unlicensed assistant is allowed to do and not allowed to do in the State of the agent that you are assisting. For example, in Ohio, you are not allowed to speak with the buyers or sellers about any information in regards to the sale. There are many other States that do not have such strict policies and will allow you to do much more for agents. To find out what each state allows please click here: http://www.realtor.org/toolkits/assistants03d

executive_assist : The first document I am going to explain is the contract for sale. This document is filled with legal language with which many buyers and sellers are unfamiliar. These contracts are pretty standard by State, but there are items to be filled out on them. This is where you really have to pay attention to what you are doing.

executive_assist : If you are handling the closing of the property some items you will need to stay on top of are:

executive_assist : 1. Contingencies. These are items that must be satisfied for the sale of the property to close. If a buyer says they need a third party approval to close, you have to get it in writing before the time limit expires. Same thing for inspections, surveys, loan approvals, etc.

executive_assist : 2. The closing date. If the property is scheduled to close on the 15th of the month you must make sure all inspections are completed before this date and also that you will have any reports back in time to have any necessary repairs completed prior to the final walk through.

executive_assist : 3. Addendums. Addendums can be various items, but the most common is an addendum to extend the closing date. This usually occurs when the contingencies have not occurred or if there is a renegotiation going on due to excessive repairs needing to be completed when problems are discovered in the home inspection.

executive_assist : The listing agreement is the document between the seller and the brokerage. This states the commission to be paid, how it is to be split between the listing agent and the selling agent, the price of the property, and any exceptions to the agreement. Sometimes sellers will already have someone in mind for the property and have them excluded from the contract. What this means is, if Joe Seller is listing a property with Best Agent and Dan Buyer down the street was excluded from the contract, then Dan Buyer buys the house, there will be no commissions at all. This document is important because you may get asked questions about it by the seller. It is rare, but possible. This is also important when filling out MLS input sheets and if you will be inputting the property onto the MLS for the agent.

executive_assist : The MLS sheet is the form agents fill out for inputting information to the multiple listing service their Board of Realtor’s uses. There are several MLS services nationwide, so what the form looks like will vary. The multiple listing service is an online database of all the properties listed in a specific area where agents go to find all the listings for their buyers and to compare homes for a competitive market analysis. (I go into the competitive market analysis in further detail in my course.) These forms are not submitted to the Board of Realtors, but they are a necessity for a REVA. These forms have everything on them that is required to input information to the MLS on the Board of Realtors site. An example of some of the information you would be inputting would be number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, fireplaces, swimming pools, garage, basement, and room dimensions. This form is also invaluable when writing listing descriptions. This is the bible when it comes to putting your information into the MLS. It will tell you which fields are required and which are not, and there are character limits for certain sections, such as the listing description and agent remarks.

executive_assist : Does anyone have any questions regarding listing agreements or MLS input sheets?

Lady M : Who requests these to be submitted?

executive_assist : All listings must be input into the MLS. It is how other agents find the listing.

Member : I'm curious, will the agent give you the info to input generally or do REVAs go get the info somewhere?

executive_assist : It depends on the agent how much information they give you. For instance in today's market many of the listings agents are taking are expired listings. I have agents send me the old listing to input to their listing on the MLS.

executive_assist : Another great source for property information are the county records and Zillow I have even been left emails and voice messages with information.

Member : Ah, so they might have some fields they don't have data for and a REVA would do the research... ?

executive_assist : Yes, if possible.

Office Goddess : So do you use the agent's login for MLS or do you need your own? Can a non-realtor GET a login to MLS?

executive_assist : It depends on the agent. If they want to get you your own access or if they just provide you with access through them. You have to purchase access and only those in the real estate business can get access.

executive_assist : The exclusive representation of the buyer document is not a form that you will have to do anything with other than file it to the buyer’s file. Many agents don’t even use these, but a smart agent will request one be filled out. It simply states that the buyer agrees to work solely with one agent for a specified period. Many buyers will try and work with several agents at once. The reason this document is important is because if a dispute arises over which agent is the selling agent, this provides documentation that there is a contract between the buyer and the agent. This used to be a rare occurrence, but with the real estate market as sluggish as it is I have been seeing more and more posts about this very topic.

executive_assist : The last document I am going to discuss with you is the escrow deposit form. This form usually has the name, address, and telephone number of the buyer and of the seller, the listing address if different from the sellers address, the MLS number, selling agent contact information, the listing price of the property, and the deposit amount. It is standard procedure that the check is copied at the bottom of this form so proof of funds is shown to the listing agent. Some may have less information, but this is what I generally see on these.

executive_assist : My word of caution in regards to these is that you make sure that contact information and checking account number and routing number are not disclosed to the seller if you are providing a copy of this to them. As a general rule you don’t personally need this information for your files, but some agents will send it with the rest of the file anyway. Treat this information as confidential. With the many cases of identity theft, consumers are extremely sensitive about this information being passed around.

executive_assist : These documents will all be important to you when assisting a real estate agent or broker. Being familiar with them is just the beginning in developing your own systems, on how you will organize listing coordination files, closing coordination files, and in how quickly you can access the appropriate documents on request.

executive_assist : Other areas of interest to agents and brokers are of course, social media such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. If you are familiar with social media this is a service you can comfortably offer. You can outsource this aspect of the work if you feel more comfortable doing so, or you can take a course on social media. I, personally, handle this myself as I am already experienced in social media. If the agent wants a landing page, I outsource it as it involves html/fbml, which I am not familiar enough with to handle it.

executive_assist : In addition to social media, some other sites of interest to agents and brokers are Active Rain, Realtor.org, NAR (National Association of Realtors), and their local Board of Realtors. Many times they contribute to these sites and will expect you to be familiar with them as well.

executive_assist : Active Rain, www.activerain.com, is a blogging platform for real estate professionals. I have personally found it to be a great way to generate interest in my own REVA business. People also seem more willing to comment on a blog there. The key is to keep updating your blog and to make it useful to them. If it is not of use to them, they may read it, but won’t comment.

executive_assist : Realtor.org, (www.realtor.com), is a website most everyone is familiar with that have spent any time looking for homes online. This is another site you will spend time updating if you are offering listing coordination. Many times you will see listings with photo tours, highlighted listings, and listings that have additional photos.

executive_assist : Those are for the members that pay for those services and you will be expected to keep the agent profile and the listings updated.

executive_assist : NAR, National Association of Realtors, (www.realtor.org). The website is full of fresh content for the agents, and even online courses for continuing education credit. For a busy agent or broker this is just one more service you can offer. If the agent or broker is interested in the service, I offer updates by email to keep them abreast of upcoming events of interest. There are many different branches of NAR for different specialties. The NAR website is also full of information that can give you or your agents great ideas for blogging, which you can, of course, offer to take over for them if you see they are not keeping their blog updated. The best way I have found to offer this is to offer to ghost write it and have them review it before posting.

executive_assist : The last topic I will be covering tonight is a letter library.

executive_assist : If you don’t already have one, you need to develop a letter library for your agents and brokers. Many times the agents and brokers will want you to prepare a letter for each event during the listing. Some of the letters that I use are:

executive_assist : 1. Thank you for listing

executive_assist : 2. Market Update letter

executive_assist : 3. Ad letter

executive_assist : 4. Move letter

executive_assist : If they don’t request this service, you should be prepared to offer it. It is a great way to show agents and brokers you are knowledgeable and ready to improve their business. I currently have over 150 letters in my letter library and I wouldn't give them up for anything.

executive_assist : Does anyone have any questions?

donnamarie : the Active Rain site - you use that personally or do you set up the realtors on it?

executive_assist : I use it both personally and for agents. If they prefer, you can blog there for them as well, for their own profile.

donnamarie : Also, is there a good resource for finding some outlines for letters. I'm sure my agent has some letters already, but I'd love to offer him some other options that he may not be using

executive_assist : I haven't really looked for one to be honest because I took an assistant training course in 2007 which outlined an extensive letter library. If you want to offer this service to him, just think of every occasion an agent might want to correspond to their clients about.

executive_assist : I recently released on my site a free ebook to all newsletter subscribers. This ebook is an explanation of what an agent needs to know when deciding if a REVA is the right choice for them. I wrote it in response to all the "You're a WHAT???" questions I got. To subscribe to the newsletter and receive the free ebook you can visit my site at http://list2closeassistant.com

Lady M : Is special certification required to be an REVA?

executive_assist : There is no special certification required to be a REVA, however I would highly recommend you have prior real estate knowledge or training before breaking into the niche.

Addict2chocolat : If I am a REVA and I work with agents in more than one state then whatever I can do for them is based on their state? or can I not work with agents in another state?

executive_assist : It is based on their state. I live in Ohio, but I offer closing coordination services to agents in more liberal states.

Addict2chocolat : OK thank you

Office Goddess : So state boundaries don't matter for working with agents?

executive_assist : If you do not live in a state with more liberal real estate laws you will be finding most of your clients virtually. I even worked with someone in Canada More as an unlicensed assistant. My license was in Florida, but I moved back to Ohio, so I let it go.

SupportMyOffice : Do you feel like someone just getting in would benefit from getting a real estate license?

executive_assist : If you only plan to be a REVA I would not recommend it. That is why I cover the basics of real estate in my REVA 101 course. The real estate testing is rigorous in many states. I was actually the only person in my office able to take the real estate course online and pass the state test the first time and without taking it in a live classroom.

For more information regarding Serita's REVA 101 course visit http://aove.org/reva-101.html.