How much would you pay for a virtual assistant?

[Adam Faber]

Hey everybody! Quick question for you guys -

So I know this isn't a new idea, and it's been floating around in my head for a while, is there a need for a good virtual assistant for vacation rentals? 

I'm talking about a service that does customer service, i.e. talk to guests in a timely manner, answers questions, screens tenants (with approval of owner maybe?). Property owners would still be responsible for all the "on the ground" tasks. Would it be beneficial to have someone that is an expert in vacation rentals, vs just some offshore VR thats extremely cheap?

I would imagine a flat rate, monthly fee would be a good way to go with this. Perhaps one fee for handling communications or whatnot during the regular work day, and another fee for handling it all the time. 

Is this a service that is still needed and what would an investor be willing to pay for this? 

Thanks so much! 

[Julie McCoy]

I believe Evolve provides a service like this, which they charge 10% for, which is excessive to me.  I spend very little time communicating with guests for my two listings (and 95% of that is canned responses).  The only time I'd feel I really needed something like this would be if I knew I'd be unreachable most of the time, or for a period of time - e.g. if I were traveling out of the country, or my W2 job wouldn't allow me to be able to respond while I was at work.

The most time-consuming things to me are coordinating repairs or doing the work myself, and bookkeeping, which in your scenario the owner would still be doing.  I don't think you'd really save much time or hassle farming out guest communication.  Take a day to write out some thoughtful messages and answers to FAQs, save them as templates, and boom, you're done.  And I've got some automated emails set up to take care of sending check-in details and other ordinary things.