What $1,400 a month for a full time VA actually buys an owner of four rentals

You already answered your own question. Four rentals is not 40 hours. I'd start at 20 and expect to use twelve of them for the first two months while you figure out what to hand over. The "we'll help you find more for them to do" line is real though. Agencies bill by seat, so they want the seat full.

With a team of VAs sourced through an agency, the thing that actually matters is what happens when one quits. A good agency has a bench and a two week overlap for handover, and that's what the markup pays for. The cheap ones send a replacement and a fresh onboarding period. Ask about turnover rate directly. If they won't give a number, that's a number.

Marlow, the process documentation gap is going to eat your first month. Not the VA's fault. You said half your tasks only happen when something breaks, which means there's no procedure to hand over, only judgment.

Genuinely curious what four rentals worth of admin looks like in a week. Ten hours sounds high to me unless the insurance certificate chasing is worse than I think.

Before you buy hours, spend two weeks logging what you actually do. Not the list you wrote from memory, the real one, timestamped, as it happens. When I did this for my own business the ten hours I thought I had was six, and four of the six were things I couldn't hand off because they required a decision I hadn't written a rule for.

Then the split gets obvious. The stuff with a rule goes to the VA. The stuff without a rule stays with you until you write the rule.

On the pricing: at 20 hours you're paying roughly $10/hr all in. At 40 you're paying $8.75. The full time seat is cheaper per hour and that's the whole hook. It's only cheaper if you fill it. An empty seat at $1,400 costs you $550 a month more than a filled 20 hour seat, and you get nothing for it.

Also think about what happens in month six. If the VA is good you'll want more hours, and going 20 to 40 with the same person is easy. Going 40 down to 20 usually means losing them, because they'll take a full time seat somewhere else. The upgrade path is one direction and it's the friendly direction.

I'd take the 20.

Agree with solder on the log. It is common to find tasks that were assumed to take fifteen minutes turning into ninety. One thing nobody's said: a rent roll spreadsheet plus a property management platform means maintaining two systems. A VA will maintain both faithfully forever and the actual problem never gets fixed. Kill the spreadsheet first, then hire.

The tasks that go well remotely are the ones with a clear finish line. Certificate chasing, yes. Inquiry callbacks, mostly yes if you give them a script and a cutoff. Anything that ends with "and then use your judgment" goes badly for the first six months regardless of who you hire. A quote of $850 for 20 hours is normal for what you described. The same nominal thing gets quoted anywhere from $650 to $1,100.

Read the agreement for the replacement clause and the notice period before you sign anything. Some of these are 30 days notice, some are 90, and the 90 day ones don't advertise it. Also check whether there's a conversion fee if you ever want to hire the person directly.

Your ten hours at whatever you value your time at is the only number that decides this, and you didn't give it. If your time is worth $30/hr you are saving $300 of value for $850 of cost. If it is worth $150/hr because those ten hours are the ones you would spend underwriting, the full time seat pays for itself even half empty. Marlow, what would you do with the ten hours?