Remote Realty: How To Run A Virtual Real Estate Brokerage
Did you know that 54% of employees want to work fully remotely? In fact, studies have shown that remote workers can be up to 47% more productive than office workers.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work quickly became the standard for many businesses, and the real estate industry was no exception.
But even in our post-pandemic world, it’s no longer necessary for a business to operate from a brick-and-mortar office space. And remote working usually presents a cost-effective, more flexible option for virtual real estate brokerages.
In this article, we explain how a virtual real estate brokerage works and its benefits and pitfalls.
What Is a Remote Real Estate Brokerage?
A remote real estate brokerage has no physical headquarters. All staff work remotely, usually from home. Client meetings occur via video call, and essential in-person meetings happen at a third-party space like a coworking office.
A remote brokerage is the opposite of a brick-and-mortar one. A traditional brokerage will have dedicated physical offices, and their staff typically work there when they’re not visiting properties or clients.
Having a physical office presents several benefits, including:
- Good brand awareness on the high street.
- A greater presence in local areas.
- The ability to get business from walk-ins.
- A way to provide good customer service—for example, customers can drop in to collect keys or make inquiries.
Brick-and-mortar businesses are still seen as traditional. This often leads people to believe that having a storefront for a brand new company is necessary. This is rarely the case, as you can see in the infographic below:
| What Is a Hybrid Brokerage? A hybrid brokerage combines the best of traditional and virtual brokerages. It means giving your team the option to either work from home or at your office space when it suits them or on certain days of the week. |
Why Go Remote?
The pros
There are several good reasons to start a virtual real estate office:
It broadens your geographical scope
Having a physical office gives you a good presence in a local area. However, it will also be more difficult to broaden your client and property pool beyond this.
A virtual brokerage allows you to expand your geographical focus. For example, you can choose to sell properties across an entire county or state, giving you access to a far bigger market.
It’s cost-effective
Switching to a virtual real estate brokerage can mean massive savings on renting and maintaining physical office space, which can cost thousands of dollars monthly.
Without the limitations of a physical office, you can rapidly scale your business and hire additional real estate agents without worrying about providing a desk and all the necessary equipment.
Attract new talent
A remote working environment gives your agents more free time by cutting out their commute and providing flexibility regarding working hours and location.
For example, remote working has allowed one of our clients to achieve their dream of moving to Hawaii. They run their brokerage from there and occasionally visit the mainland for work. These benefits can be attractive to potential talent.
Read our guide on recruiting real estate agents for more information on attracting top-performing people.
Digital migration
The digital-first approach is rapidly becoming the norm in various industries, and real estate is no exception.
As your brokerage grows, moving it online will only become more difficult, which is why you should prioritize it now.
Moving everything online ensures you’re future-ready and well-positioned to capture new markets, such as younger people who prefer doing business online.
The cons and how to manage them
There are some disadvantages to a virtual office, but there are ways you can overcome these.
No more walk-ins
Moving your brokerage online means you won’t get clients walking into your office off the street.
These clients would have walked in because they saw a picture of an appealing property in your window or because they regularly pass your headquarters, and this familiarity makes you their first port of call when they want to buy or sell a property.
The good news is that you can use online marketing tools to replicate these walk-ins. For example, you can buy online ads that showcase appealing properties you have available.
People repeatedly seeing your ads online can help you generate the brand recognition that drives social media users to contact you for real estate services.
No meeting space for clients
Another downside to remote real estate brokerage is not having a professional space for client meetings.
Pay-as-you-go office solutions, such as Fueled Collective, offer quality functional office space with a good internet connection and other necessities.
These solutions are often more cost-effective than maintaining an entire physical office when not everyone wants to use them.
Work-life balance
Not everyone finds their home to be the ideal work environment. For some people, working from home presents distractions and other responsibilities that make it difficult to focus on work entirely.
The pandemic was particularly difficult for real estate professionals with small children, many of whom looked forward to returning to the office. Others struggled to maintain a healthy work-life balance when working from home.
Some of your agents might not want to work from home. You can manage this issue by giving your team membership to a pay-as-you-go office or coworking space.
What Do I Need to Go Remote?
Here are the essentials you’ll need to start a virtual real estate brokerage:
Work-from-home facilities
Remember to buy everything you and your team need to work at full capacity from home. This could include suitable home office hardware, such as a high-quality webcam. We recommend the Logitech C920, as it offers 1080p HD image quality, a built-in microphone, and adjustable settings—yet it is still affordable.
You’ll also need a good smartphone, a high-spec laptop, and business-appropriate security software. For the latter, we recommend Norton Antivirus for small businesses.
A website
A good website is fundamental for any brokerage. However, it becomes even more crucial when you go virtual.
Most real estate brokerages use their websites primarily to promote their listings. But most property searches take place on portals like Zillow.
Your website should focus on establishing your credibility, building your brand’s identity, and ensuring that customers can easily contact you.
A good example of this is Megan Probst, a real estate agent in Florida. She provides an excellent example of how an agent can use their website to build credibility rather than sell properties.
On the home page, she explains her experience and expertise, the market she serves, and the unique services she offers:
Megan includes videos of herself interviewing local business owners, links to her social media channels, and quotes from happy customers.
She also features guides to the different neighborhoods, establishing herself as an authority in her local real estate market.
Your website needs to carry out all the functions that an office normally would:
- Easy access to experienced agents.
- Listing the latest properties on the market.
- Facilities for arranging the transfer of anything from house keys to documentation.
For more information on building your online presence, read our guide to writing a real estate business plan.
Invest in the right tools
Using the right tools is vital for maintaining the essential functions of your virtual brokerage business. Here are some of the most important ones:
Compliance
Compliance is essential to your real estate career, so we recommend using compliant software from the get-go to avoid regulatory pitfalls. The right compliance software will:
- Allow for a speedy review of documents.
- Create a transaction-specific record of activity.
- Efficiently regulate your compliance processes.
We suggest Paperless Pipeline for ultimate compliance and to remain audit-ready.
Accounting
Getting good accounting software in place before your first sale will help you avoid stress and save time when preparing your tax return.
It also gives you an overview of your company’s finances, allowing you to make informed decisions. Some suggestions include Xero or Quickbooks.
Transaction management
Keeping digital records of every step in the real estate process is crucial for running an online brokerage. Systems like Paperless Pipeline are ideal for managing real estate transactions. They allow you to:
- Create automated transaction checklists.
- Manage deal timelines to ensure the process runs smoothly.
- Report on transactional trends and summarize activity over time.
- Get easy access to documents for perusal and processing—without having to leave the office.
- Link to over 3,000 commonly used apps.
Commission management
Once you employ other agents, you must invest in reliable commission management software.
This software automatically calculates agent commissions earned on sales and enables you to assign varying rates to your agents if necessary. It is also critical to strategic planning and report preparation.
Paperless Pipeline provides a comprehensive commission management module. You can also try our free commission calculator tool and read our article on calculating commission.
Integration tools
Well-established virtual brokerages have multiple apps and software on the go simultaneously. An integration tool can save you hours by integrating all your tools and automating some of your core repetitive functions.
Zapier is one of the most well-known integration tools. One of its several integrations is automatically saving client emails from Gmail into your customer relationship management (CRM) platform under their profile. This saves you from switching between the two programs and searching for the email in your inbox.
Cloud storage
Investing in a remote server or cloud storage platform will allow you and your employees to access and work on the same documents from different locations at any time of day.
You’ll also need to set up a safe place to store the physical paperwork you still use, and your agents might need it. Privacy is the top concern when storing documents at home, so you must invest in safes or lockable filing cabinets.
We suggest Microsoft 365 OneDrive for secure cloud storage.
A CRM
Once leads start coming in, you’ll need a way to manage and organize your customer data, track your sales, and plan and execute marketing campaigns.
A CRM gives you access to the latest customer information in real-time and allows you to automate common sales and marketing functions.
Free software may work, but once your business picks up and you manage a significant pipeline, you’ll need a CRM with advanced features. Our suggestions for a good CRM include Hubspot or Follow Up Boss.
Lead generation
Virtual brokerages can’t rely on high-street visibility, so lead generation becomes critical. REDX is a great tool for getting cold leads. It provides contact lists for prospects who may be seeking to sell their homes.
These include leads for sale by owner, expired leads, and preforeclosure leads. It also includes a CRM to help you manage these contacts.
Get set up for virtual tours
We recommend Matterport, a 3D technology company that creates virtual tours for you. They simplify uploading videos to your site, and you can even include space measurements.
How to Move Your Brokerage Online
Here are some tips for transforming your existing traditional brokerage into a remote one.
If you want to start a brokerage from the ground up, check out our article on how to start a real estate brokerage.
Reconsider your niche
Moving your business online means you’re no longer limited by physical location, so you might want to take this opportunity to rethink your brokerage’s focus.
For example, instead of focusing on a specific area, perhaps you’d like to switch your focus to a particular target market—like young people who are more likely to look for property online. Or you could change the type of property you typically deal with, like houses built in a specific architectural style.
One of our customers, Whitney Land Company, specializes in selling farms and ranches in Oregon. Its brokers have strong agricultural knowledge to back up their real estate activities. Whitney Land Company divides its properties by use, including recreational, ranch, farm, and commercial.
Another good example is Washington Waterfronts, which focuses on selling waterfront properties across Washington. It categorizes its listings by different waterways instead of neighborhoods:
Plan your transition
Take time well in advance to consult with all your team members and plan the logistics of how your brokerage will function once it goes remote.
Each of your agents will need to decide where they will work, if not in the office, and figure out what they need to do. You’ll also have to choose where to host client meetings, and your agents may need time to familiarize themselves with that space.
You’ll also need to plan your finances carefully for the transition period. Although going remote will cut your costs in the long run, this change will incur extra expenses as you set up facilities for each agent and your real estate business adjusts to its new target market.
Set a date
If you’re an established brokerage, you’ll need to transition slowly to a virtual model, giving yourself time to overcome any initial problems.
Plan an exact date when your brokerage will become fully remote to avoid delaying administrative tasks. Give your team time ahead of this date to adjust to new operating procedures and fix any problems while you still have a physical office to fall back on.
During this transition time, ensure your brokerage has everything it will need when it’s fully remote regarding workspaces, hardware, and software. Test out these resources well before you’re solely reliant on them.
Plan a transition timeline with each of your agents to give them time to adjust to working fully remotely. This will allow them to find and solve workflow problems before they’re entirely reliant on their remote working environment.
Consider a franchise
If you are just starting, you could join a remote franchise. Remote franchises give real estate brokers brand recognition and help them attract clients quickly.
Franchisees also benefit from advanced tools, including software for lead tracking, email marketing, deal management, and commission calculation.
They can also provide you with everything you need to start your business, from tools to guidance and training. This is quicker than figuring it out for yourself.
eXp Realty, for example, provides broker support and helps them with continued education so they are always at the top of the real estate game. Its cloud-campus environment enables engagement and cooperative learning from anywhere in the world.
The downside of franchises is that they often require a higher upfront payment, and you will have to pay a franchise fee. Franchise fees can range from $4,250 to $37,500.
Remote doesn’t mean robotic
Remember that even though you and your agents will do most of their work digitally, you are still working with people.
Make plans to compensate for lost in-person time between agents and clients and from coworker to coworker. Have video calls instead of phone calls or email conversations with clients when possible.
It’s also a good idea to schedule regular in-person activities for your staff for team-building purposes so that they can discuss and help each other with the challenges they face.
Choose Paperless Pipeline for Your Virtual Real Estate Brokerage
Fully remote businesses are becoming increasingly common, and online real estate brokerages are no exception.
Moving to an online real estate brokerage can help you cut costs, broaden your target market and property offerings, pull top talent with the appeal of remote working, and get a digital edge over your competitors.
Transaction management software is the most valuable tool you can invest in for your virtual real estate brokerage.
Paperless Pipeline allows your teams to collaborate on the transaction process, no matter where they’re located. You won’t have any deals fall through the cracks, and your team will stay connected.
Visit our website to try Paperless Pipeline for free. We’ll show you how our software is ideal for your virtual real estate brokerage.