TL;DR: Two things get sold as a "real estate virtual assistant". An agency rents you hours from a pool of people who rotate across clients. Hiring your own assistant abroad through an employer of record (EOR) gives you one named person who learns your listings, your CRM, and the way your brokerage closes. Agencies win for overflow and seasonal spikes. Your own hire wins once the work is continuous, because in real estate the value compounds in someone who knows your pipeline. The limit that applies to both: an unlicensed assistant, wherever they sit, cannot do anything that requires a real estate license, and in California it is your broker's licence on the line if they do. Through Shor that is $19 a month for a genuine contractor or $299 a month per employee in the Philippines, India, Mexico, or Colombia, plus each country's statutory employer costs.
Real estate is not short of agents. National Association of Realtors membership was 1,439,163 on 18 June 2026, against 1,463,352 a year earlier and a 2022 peak of about 1.5 million, and about 75% of members say they are very certain they will still be in the business two years from now (NAR, 25 June 2026). Commissions have not collapsed either: buyer-side commissions went from 2.36% in Q3 2024 to 2.42% in Q3 2025 on Redfin data, and roughly two thirds of agents in a February-March 2026 Cotality and ResiClub survey of 213 experienced agents reported no meaningful change since the 2024 settlement (Inman, 30 March 2026).
What is short is administrative capacity, and it is getting shorter. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment of secretaries and administrative assistants to decline 2% from 2025 to 2035, a fall of 75,300 positions, against a US median wage of $48,310 in May 2025 (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook: secretaries and administrative assistants). Meanwhile property, real estate, and community association managers, the people whose desks that admin work lands on, are projected to grow 4% over the same decade from 460,400 jobs, at a median of $69,990 (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook: property, real estate, and community association managers).
More transactions to administer, fewer administrators, and a licensed professional's hourly value sitting on top of the work. That gap is the whole market for offshore real estate support.
This guide is for the broker-owner, team lead, or property management principal deciding between renting VA hours and employing someone directly.
What the two models actually are
A VA agency sells you deliverables by the hour or by the seat. You send work, their staff return it. The person doing it is their employee or contractor, usually works across several of the agency's clients, and can be swapped without your say. You have one invoice and no employment relationship.
Your own offshore hire is a person you recruit, interview, and choose, employed legally in their country through an EOR or engaged as a genuine contractor. They work your hours, learn your systems, and stay yours. You carry the management, the same as any other hire.
The trade is continuity against flexibility. An agency absorbs a two-week closing surge and disappears when the pipeline thins. Your own assistant is there in January, which is also when they are learning which lender always misses the CD deadline and which listing photographer needs three days' notice. In transaction coordination in particular, most of the value is that accumulated context, which is exactly what an agency's rotation destroys.
Neither model changes the licence rules. Read the next two sections before you scope either one.
Which real estate roles travel, and which do not
Travels well:
- Transaction coordination: assembling closing files, chasing signatures and contingency dates, keeping the checklist honest
- Listing coordination: data entry into the MLS from broker-approved input, scheduling photography and staging, preparing flyers and marketing material
- CRM and database work: hygiene, tagging, drip-campaign setup, pulling reports
- Marketing production: writing ad copy for broker approval, social scheduling, email builds
- Bookkeeping and commission math: AP/AR, reconciliations, computing commission splits
- Property management back office: tenant ledgers, renewal paperwork, maintenance dispatch and vendor coordination, owner statement prep
- Research: gathering the comparable sales data and public records an agent then interprets
Stays local:
- Showings, open houses, and anything on the property
- Negotiating terms or advising a client on price, offers, or property condition
- Signing on behalf of the brokerage
- Anything a state licence is required for, which is the subject of the next section and is not a matter of taste
Time zones matter more here than in most offshore work, because real estate runs on same-day response. Latin America gives US Eastern and Central teams near-total overlap. The Philippines is the standard answer for teams that want an assistant working the US night to have everything staged before the agent's morning.
The hard limit: what an unlicensed assistant may not do
This is the part the VA marketing skips, and it is the part that can cost a broker their licence.
Every US state draws a line between administrative support and licensed activity, and an assistant abroad sits on exactly the same side of it as an assistant in your office. Offshore does not mean outside the rules; if anything it raises the supervision burden, because you cannot see the work happening.
California's Department of Real Estate states the principle bluntly: unlicensed administrative assistants "may not perform any activity which requires a real estate license or mortgage loan originator license endorsement", brokers must provide "adequate supervision to ensure that the proper limitations are placed upon them", and Business and Professions Code section 10137 makes it unlawful for a broker to "employ or compensate, directly or indirectly, any unlicensed person for performing licensed acts" (California DRE: unlicensed administrative assistants). Note "indirectly": routing the work through an offshore agency does not launder it.
New York's Department of State publishes the other half, a list of what unlicensed assistants may do, and it is a good scoping template for a job description: answering phones and scheduling appointments, assembling closing documents, writing ads for broker approval, placing classified advertising, typing contract forms for broker approval, computing commission checks, placing and removing signs, ordering repairs as directed, preparing flyers, gathering information for a comparative market analysis, gathering information for an appraisal, and general secretarial and clerical duties. New York also flags the compensation trap: "If compensated on a completed transaction basis, the assistant must be licensed as a real estate salesperson" (NY Department of State: unlicensed real estate assistants).
Three practical consequences:
- Scope the role in writing, to the permitted list. "Gather information for a comparative market analysis" is allowed. Producing the analysis and telling a seller what to list at is not.
- Do not pay per closing. Commission-linked or per-transaction pay is the fastest way to turn an administrative role into an unlicensed licensed one. Pay a salary or an hourly rate.
- Check your own state, not this page. The two above are illustrative of a national pattern, not a substitute for your state commission's rules, which differ in the details. Confirm the boundary with your broker and your counsel before the first task list goes out.
None of this argues against hiring abroad. It argues for scoping the role properly, which is a thing you should do anyway.
Contractor or employee?
Most brokerages start with a contractor, and for genuinely independent help that is right: someone with several clients, their own tools, and control over how and when they work.
The line you cannot cross is misclassification, and real estate support crosses it easily. An assistant who works your hours, logs into your CRM and your transaction platform, follows your checklists, and works only for you is employee-shaped in almost every country's test, whatever the contract says. If that is the arrangement you actually want, and for a transaction coordinator it usually is, employ them properly. The exposure for getting it wrong is back contributions, unpaid statutory benefits, and penalties, assessed in their country, not yours.
The honest version of the decision: if you would be uncomfortable with them taking on a competing brokerage next month, they are not a contractor.
An EOR is how you employ someone in a country where you have no entity. The EOR is the legal employer, handles the local contract, payroll, and statutory filings, and you direct the work. What an employer of record actually is covers the mechanics, and converting a contractor to an employee covers the move if you started on the other footing.
Where firms hire them
The four markets that come up most for real estate support, with employer-side statutory costs on top of gross salary from our compliance dataset:
| Country | Employer statutory load | Why it comes up |
|---|---|---|
| Philippines | 10-15% | Deep English-language support talent, US night shift, lowest load |
| India | 20-25% | Large back-office and bookkeeping pool, day-boundary handoff |
| Mexico | 25-35% | US Central overlap, strong for same-day transaction work |
| Colombia | 30-35% | US Eastern overlap, growing bilingual support market |
Full detail is in the Philippines, India, Mexico, and Colombia guides, and the employer costs league table compares every market we cover.
What it actually costs
Take a transaction coordinator role. The US comparison is the BLS median for secretaries and administrative assistants, $48,310 a year before employer payroll taxes and benefits.
Now the offshore version, employed properly. Salaries vary by market and seniority and we are not going to pretend otherwise, so take an illustrative $1,250 a month and treat the structure, not the number, as the point:
| Line | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Gross salary (illustrative) | $1,250 | $15,000 |
| Employer statutory contributions, at 10-15% (Philippines) | $125-188 | $1,500-2,250 |
| Shor EOR fee | $299 | $3,588 |
| Total | $1,674-1,737 | $20,088-20,838 |
Three things that table is doing deliberately.
It shows the statutory line. Most offshore staffing quotes fold it into a single hourly rate, so you never learn what the employment actually costs versus what the intermediary keeps. The same role in Colombia carries 30-35% instead of 10-15%, which is a real difference the blended rate hides.
It shows the fee separately. $299 is the platform cost of being able to employ someone in a country where you have no entity. Whether that is a good deal is a question you can only answer if you can see it.
And it is the fully loaded number. The comparison against a US hire is $20,088-20,838 all-in against $48,310 plus US employer taxes and benefits, for a role the BLS expects to keep shrinking domestically.
The contractor path is different arithmetic: you pay the person's own rate plus $19 a month, with no statutory contributions, because a genuine contractor funds their own. That only works if the relationship is genuinely a contractor relationship. See the section above.
What it costs through Shor
- Contractors: $19/month each, with contracts, W-8BEN collection, and invoicing built in, paid same-day over local rails in India, the Philippines, Nigeria, and 12+ LATAM corridors
- Full-time employees (EOR): $299/month each in the Philippines, India, Mexico, and Colombia, with the local contract, payroll, and statutory filings handled
The FX margin is a flat disclosed 2% on conversion, shown before you send. Deposits are country-dependent and quoted up front. The pricing calculator shows the full per-country math including every statutory line.
FAQ
What can an unlicensed real estate assistant legally do?
Administrative work, not licensed activity. New York's Department of State lists scheduling, assembling closing documents, typing contract forms and writing ads for broker approval, computing commission checks, ordering repairs as directed, and gathering information for a comparative market analysis or an appraisal. California's DRE states the limit from the other side: no activity requiring a real estate licence, with the broker responsible for adequate supervision. Rules differ by state, so confirm yours.
Can a real estate virtual assistant call my leads?
Administrative contact is generally fine; the moment the call becomes soliciting, negotiating, or advising on a property, it is licensed activity. That boundary does not move because the caller is overseas, and California's rule expressly covers compensating an unlicensed person indirectly, which includes through an agency. Scope call scripts to qualifying and scheduling, and route anything substantive to a licensee.
Should I use a VA agency or hire my own offshore assistant?
Agency for overflow, seasonal surges, and short projects, where you want capacity without a management burden. Your own hire once the work is continuous, because transaction and listing coordination compound in someone who knows your pipeline, your lenders, and your brokerage's habits. Agency staff rotate across clients by design, so that context resets.
How much does a real estate virtual assistant cost?
Through an agency, a blended hourly rate that bundles the person's pay, the employer's statutory costs, and the agency's margin into one number you cannot take apart. Employed directly through Shor, the lines are separate: the salary you agree, that country's statutory employer contributions (10-15% in the Philippines, 30-35% in Colombia), and $299 a month. A genuine contractor is $19 a month plus their own rate.