By Keith Dunham, Founder & CEO of Empower Transactions. Keith built Empower after running operations at HomeCity Real Estate, where he helped scale the brokerage to hundreds of closings a month before its sale to Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate. He also co-founded Opcity, later acquired by Realtor.com.
A virtual assistant is the cheapest way to add hours to a brokerage. MyOutDesk publishes $1,988 a month for a full-time managed assistant, which is $23,856 a year, about a third of a fully loaded in-house admin seat. If the question were only price, this page would be one sentence long. It is not, because the two things being compared are not the same kind of purchase. With a virtual assistant you buy a person’s hours and you supply the process. With an outsourced back office you buy the process and the hours come with it.
For a brokerage owner, a virtual assistant is a remote person, usually offshore and unlicensed, placed by a staffing firm and directed day to day by the broker. An outsourced back office is a firm that runs a defined piece of work (compliance file review, contract-to-close coordination, MLS listing entry, agent onboarding paperwork) to its own standard and staffing, billed per file. Empower Transactions is the second kind, so what follows is a participant’s comparison with the public numbers on the table.
Key takeaways
- A full-time managed virtual assistant is $1,988 a month at MyOutDesk’s published rate ($2,500 specialized). Per closing, that is about $200 at 10 closings a month and $66 at 30. On cost alone the VA wins at almost any volume. Cost is not what decides this.
- The VA firm supplies the person: recruiting, payroll, HR, onboarding support and monitoring are included in the rate. What is not included is the work itself: what the assistant does each day, in which system, against which standard. That stays with the broker.
- Jobs that are hours-shaped fit a VA: listing input, marketing production, scheduling, CRM upkeep. Jobs that are judgment-shaped against a state requirement set, compliance file review above all, fit a per-file firm, where the review ran 0.97 labor-hours a file in Empower Transactions’ July 2026 time clock (3,816 files).
- An unlicensed assistant is unlicensed wherever they sit. Texas publishes what one may and may not do; many MLSs require unlicensed assistants to be registered under the broker before they get login access. Both apply to a VA.
- Most brokerages at the growth stage run both: a VA for the steady hourly work, per-file for the work that arrives with closings. The mistake is asking either one to do the other’s job.
What is the difference between a virtual assistant and an outsourced back office?
One is a person you direct. The other is a process you buy. MyOutDesk’s pricing page is clear about what the monthly rate covers: recruiting, vetting, payroll, benefits, HR administration, onboarding support, time tracking and an account manager, with a replacement at no additional cost if it does not work out. That covers the employment side completely. What it leaves open is everything operational: nothing on that list decides what the assistant does on Tuesday, which platform they do it in, what “done” looks like, or what happens to a Florida file when the flood disclosure is dated after the contract.
A per-file back office starts from the other end. The work is defined first: review this file against this state’s required documents and this brokerage’s standard, return what is missing to the broker of record. Then the firm staffs it, trains to it, covers absences inside it and prices it per file. The broker is not directing a person. The broker gets an output and decides on it.
What does each option cost per closing?
The VA is cheapest per closing at almost every volume. That is the honest number, and it is the wrong question.
| Closings a month | Full-time VA (~$1,988/mo) | In-house admin (~$5,800/mo loaded) | Per-file back office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | about $200 per closing | about $580 | Per file, published on the coordination cost page; nothing in a month with no files |
| 30 | about $66 | about $190 | Same per-file rate |
| 80 | about $25 | about $70 | Same per-file rate |
The table hides the two costs that matter. The VA column buys 40 hours a week whether or not there are files, and at 80 closings a month those 40 hours are already spoken for by compliance review alone if that is the job the assistant was given, since 0.97 hours a file comes to 78 hours. It also leaves out the broker’s own time directing the work, which at a small brokerage is the most expensive hour in the building and never shows up on an invoice. The in-house seat and the per-file arrangement are on their own page; the per-file rate itself is on the transaction coordinator cost page.
Which jobs fit a virtual assistant, and which fit per-file?
Sort by what the job is made of: hours, or judgment against a standard.
| Job | Made of | Fits | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Listing marketing, social, brokerage recruiting presence | Hours, steady | VA | Repeatable production the broker can brief once |
| Scheduling, showing appointments, CRM upkeep | Hours, unpredictable | VA | Needs a person on the clock, not a per-file trigger |
| MLS listing entry | Hours per listing, accuracy-checked | Either | A VA can do it under the broker’s MLS registration; a per-file firm does it as a defined service (MLS listing coordination) |
| Agent onboarding paperwork | Bursts, checklist-driven | Per-file | Arrives only when recruiting works; a salary or a monthly seat sits idle between bursts |
| Contract-to-close coordination | Deadlines per file | Per-file | Scales with closings; the firm carries the deadline calendar |
| Broker compliance file review | Judgment against a state requirement set | Per-file | The reviewer has to know which of the required documents apply to this file; that is a maintained standard, not a task list |
| Answering agent questions, the walk-in, the culture | Presence | Neither (local) | The one job no vendor replaces |
The row that decides most of these conversations is compliance. A VA can be handed a checklist. The problem is that in the requirement sets Empower Transactions maintains, two-thirds of the entries are conditional, meaning they apply only when something else in the file is true, so the checklist is really a decision tree that changes by state and by transaction type, and it changes when the commission changes a form. Somebody has to own that tree. With a VA, the somebody is the broker. With a per-file firm, it is the firm, and the broker reviews the exceptions. How long the review itself takes is worked out in How Long Does Broker Compliance Review Take?
What does the broker still own with a virtual assistant?
More than the rate suggests. The daily part is direction: the assistant does what the broker briefed, in the order the broker set, and stops when the brief runs out. The part that erodes quietly is the standard. I have watched this play out more than once: the assistant hired in March to do listing input is checking closing files by June because nobody else was free, and the checklist she is working from is whatever she was shown in week one. Nobody went back and updated week one when the buyer-agreement form changed.
Access is the part most brokers discover late. An unlicensed assistant working inside the MLS is generally required to be registered under the broker (many associations run an unlicensed-assistant membership with its own fee and its own terms), and the assistant’s logins to the transaction platform, e-signature account and email are the brokerage’s liability. Check your MLS’s policy before the assistant’s first login, not after.
The licensing line does not move because the assistant is remote. In Texas, TREC publishes what an unlicensed assistant may do (clerical work, setting showing appointments, placing signs and ads as directed, bookkeeping, helping a buyer gather loan paperwork) and what they may not: show property, negotiate, hold themselves out as licensed. A VA in another country is an unlicensed assistant in the state where the property sits. Other states draw the line differently; confirm with your commission. Empower Transactions is not affiliated with TREC, any state commission, association or MLS; this is not legal advice.
When is a virtual assistant the right call?
When the work is hours-shaped and the broker has the hours to direct it. A brokerage with a steady twenty hours a week of marketing production, listing input and scheduling, and a broker who can spend an hour a day briefing and checking, gets good value from a VA at the published rate. That is a real profile and the staffing firms serve it well.
It stops being the right call the moment the job handed over is compliance review, because then the standard has to be maintained by someone and that someone is the broker. It also breaks when volume swings: a recruiting month doubles onboarding and a spring doubles files, and 40 hours does not flex to meet either. The quietest failure is the broker who does not have the hour a day. An undirected assistant is a salary with no output, and the replacement guarantee replaces the person, not the missing direction.
Can a brokerage use both?
Most do, and the split is the same one every time. The VA takes the steady, hours-shaped work: marketing, social, scheduling, CRM, listing input if the MLS allows it. The per-file firm takes the work that arrives with closings and agents: compliance review, contract-to-close, onboarding paperwork. The broker keeps the phone and the culture. That is the same split laid out in A Growing Brokerage’s First Hire, with the VA sitting where the in-house admin would otherwise sit, and the agent-side version of the same comparison, per side rather than per brokerage, is in TC vs Virtual Assistant vs Unlicensed Assistant.
Method
VA pricing: MyOutDesk’s own pricing page, read September 2026: managed outsourcing “starting at $1,988/mo,” specialized “starting at $2,500/mo,” enterprise custom; inclusions and the replacement guarantee quoted from the same page. Per-closing figures are the monthly rate divided by closings. In-house seat: BLS median for office and administrative support, $47,450 (May 2025), loaded at the BLS employer-cost ratio to about $69,100 a year, $5,800 a month. Labor-hours per file: Empower Transactions billing time clock, July 2026, broker-compliance line only, 3,683.2 hours against 3,816 files; one month. Conditional share of the requirement set: Empower Transactions’ manifest as of August 2026, four states codified, 204 of 309 entries conditional; what has been standardized so far, not where the work runs. Not measured: VA hours per task, VA turnover, and any VA firm’s quality. None of that is in our data, so none of it is on this page.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a virtual assistant and outsourcing the back office?
A virtual assistant is a remote person the broker directs day to day; the staffing firm supplies recruiting, payroll and HR, and the broker supplies the process. An outsourced back office such as Empower Transactions runs a defined process (compliance file review, transaction coordination, MLS listing entry, onboarding paperwork) to its own standard and staffing, billed per file, and the broker reviews the output.
Is a virtual assistant cheaper than an outsourced back office for a brokerage?
Per closing, usually yes at almost any volume, because a full-time VA is a fixed monthly rate. The cost the rate leaves out is the broker’s own time directing the work and maintaining the standard, and the fact that 40 hours a week does not flex when closings or recruiting spike.
Can a virtual assistant do broker compliance file review?
A VA can be given a checklist. The difficulty is that most required documents are conditional on the file, the set changes by state and when commissions change forms, and someone has to maintain that decision tree, and with a VA that is the broker. A per-file review firm maintains the requirement set and returns exceptions to the broker of record, who still makes the compliance decision.
Can an unlicensed virtual assistant work in the MLS or on transaction files?
Generally only as an unlicensed assistant registered under the broker, subject to the MLS’s own policy and fee, and within the state’s limits on unlicensed activity. In Texas, that means clerical work, appointments, signs and bookkeeping, but not showing property or negotiating. Location does not change the limit. Confirm with your MLS and commission; not legal advice.
Should a small brokerage use a VA or outsource per file?
Usually both: a VA for steady hourly work such as marketing, scheduling and listing input, and a per-file firm for the work that arrives with closings and new agents: compliance review, contract-to-close and onboarding paperwork. The phone and the culture stay in the office.