Stop Paying $1,788/Month for a 9-to-5 Assistant When Your Admin Piles Up at 11pm

You closed a showing at 8pm. You finally ate dinner. Now it's 10:47pm and you're staring at 23 unread emails, a stack of receipts from staging supplies, and notes from three buyer consultations you need to type up before tomorrow's 9am meeting.

Your virtual assistant clocked out six hours ago. She's in Manila. It's 11am there. She'll get to it tomorrow -- her tomorrow, which is your tonight plus 14 hours.

This is the $1,788/month problem nobody talks about.

Real estate doesn't happen 9-to-5. Your admin does.

The Real Cost of a Human Virtual Assistant in 2026

The VA industry doesn't make pricing easy to find. Here's what it actually costs based on current market data:

Sources: MyOutDesk pricing page (2025), Virtual Wizards MyOutDesk Review (2026), Wing Assistant blog (2026), Wishup pricing (2026), Oceans Talent pricing guide (2026).

That MyOutDesk number is the discounted annual rate. Month-to-month is $1,988. And if you want to cancel early? Termination fees. If you want to hire your VA directly after the contract ends? Buyout fees equal to 12-24 months of subscription cost.

The annual math:

• Human VA (MyOutDesk annual plan): $21,456/year
• Cora Pro plan: $588/year
• You keep: $20,868

That's a down payment on a rental property. Or 7 months of your kid's daycare. Or the marketing budget that actually grows your pipeline.

Monthly savings breakdown:

95% of what you pay a VA for maps directly to what Cora does. The remaining 5% — social media and ad-hoc tasks — is the only piece you would still need a human for.

"But My VA Handles Everything..."

Let's be honest about what "everything" usually means.

When agents on r/realtors talk about their VAs, the actual task list looks the same every time: email follow-ups, CRM data entry, transaction coordination paperwork, scheduling, social media posting, and lead list management.

These are repetitive tasks. They follow rules. They repeat. And AI handles them better than a human sitting in a call center 8,000 miles away, because AI doesn't get tired at 3pm, doesn't call in sick on closing day, and doesn't need you to explain your email style for the fourth time.

Here's what one agent described on Reddit about the daily grind:

"Up at 6am sending follow-ups, responding to 'urgent' client texts at 10pm, throwing $3k/month at marketing that barely breaks even." -- r/realtors, agent making $127K/year

And on the note-taking problem specifically:

"I find myself doing it in the car straight after because if I wait until I'm back at the office I've already forgotten half of it. Still feels like it takes way longer than it should though." -- r/realtors, on post-showing notes

These are the problems Cora was built to solve, not tomorrow morning in someone else's timezone, but right now, from your phone.

The Privacy Problem Nobody Mentions

Here's something the VA companies never put in their marketing:

To do their job, your virtual assistant needs full access to your Gmail, your CRM, your client contact lists, your calendar, and often your financial records.

You're handing your entire business over to a person you've never met, employed by a company in another country, earning $600-$800/month (according to MyOutDesk's own Philippines careers page). That's what the VA actually takes home. The rest of your $1,788 goes to the agency's overhead and margins.

Think about what's in your inbox right now:

• Client financial pre-approval letters
• Commission statements
• Personal emails mixed in with business
• Contact details for every buyer and seller you've worked with

One Amazon seller on Reddit summed up the access anxiety perfectly:

"I'm paranoid about possible linked account suspensions. For those that already have this in place, how did you guys do it?" -- r/FulfillmentByAmazon, on giving VAs account access

That paranoia isn't irrational. It's what happens when the business model requires total trust in a stranger.

Cora processes your data inside a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). No human reads your emails. No human sees your client list. The AI processes instructions, runs actions, and the data stays encrypted. Even Cora's own engineers can't access your information.

The Turnover Problem

According to Aon's 2025 Employee Sentiment Study, 64% of Filipino workers plan to switch jobs within the next year. The top reasons: better benefits, work-life balance, and career growth.

What this means for you: your VA (the one you spent three weeks onboarding, who finally learned your CRM workflow, who knows that Mrs. Rodriguez prefers text messages and Mr. Chen always calls on Thursdays) has a better than coin-flip chance of leaving within 12 months.

Then you start over. New onboarding. New training. New mistakes while they learn your systems. Another 2-4 weeks of placement time through MyOutDesk before you even begin.

Cora never quits. Cora never needs re-training. Every preference you set, your email tone, your follow-up timing, your file naming conventions, is permanent.

Honest Comparison: Where Cora Wins and Where Human VAs Win

AI doesn't replace a human in every scenario. Here's where each option is better:

The honest take: If you need someone to call your seller's attorney and negotiate a repair credit, hire a human. If you need someone to process 47 follow-up emails, organize your receipts, and update your CRM at 11pm on a Tuesday -- that's Cora.

For most solopreneurs, 80% of what a VA does falls in Cora's column. The other 20% is work you should probably be doing yourself anyway, because it requires your judgment and your relationships.

Bottom line: For every dollar you spend on a VA for admin tasks, 97 cents could go back in your pocket with Cora. The 3 cents worth of human-only tasks — phone calls, relationship building, creative judgment — are things you should probably handle personally anyway.

What Agents Actually Spend Their VA Budget On

Based on real estate forum posts, here's where the typical solo agent's VA hours go:

1. Email management & follow-ups (30%) -- Cora handles this
2. CRM data entry & updates (20%) -- Cora handles this
3. Transaction coordination paperwork (15%) -- Cora handles most of this
4. Scheduling & calendar management (15%) -- Cora handles this
5. Social media posting (10%) -- Cora doesn't do this (yet)
6. Miscellaneous/ad hoc (10%) -- depends on the task

That means roughly 80% of a typical VA's workload maps directly to Cora's capabilities. At $49/month instead of $1,788/month, that's a 97% cost reduction on the work that actually gets automated.

The After-Hours Problem, Quantified

A 2026 industry guide from VirtualNexGen estimates the total annual cost of a real estate VA at $22,788-$41,988, and that's just the VA, without benefits, office space, or equipment.

But here's the number they don't calculate: how many hours of admin work happen after your VA's shift ends?

If you're a solo agent doing 20-30 transactions a year, you're probably spending 8-12 hours per week on admin. At least half of that happens outside of 9-to-5: in the car between showings, at the kitchen table after the kids are asleep, on Sunday morning before open houses.

Those after-hours admin hours are the most expensive hours of your week. Not because of what they cost in dollars, but because of what they cost in energy and family time, and the slow grind toward the burnout that pushes agents out of the business.

Cora works when you work. Send a voice memo at 11pm, get structured notes back in seconds. Forward a receipt at 6am, it's categorized before your coffee is ready. For a solo agent, that's not a luxury. It's survival.

How Cora Works (The 3-Minute Setup)

1. Connect Google -- Cora syncs with your Gmail and Calendar
2. Connect WhatsApp -- This is your command center. Talk to Cora like you'd text an assistant
3. Start giving instructions -- "Follow up with everyone who toured 742 Elm St yesterday" or "Categorize these receipts" or "Draft a thank-you email to the Petersons in my usual tone"

No app to download. No dashboard to learn. No 10-day training program. No 2-4 week placement wait.

You already know how to use WhatsApp. That's the whole learning curve.

Pricing That Makes Sense for Solo Agents

30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

Try Cora for a full month. If it does not save you time on admin, email [email protected] within 30 days and get a full refund. No questions, no hassle, no cancellation fees.

Compare that to MyOutDesk's 6-12 month contract with termination fees and buyout clauses. Or the 2-4 weeks you spend onboarding a VA before you even know if it is working.

With Cora, you know within the first week.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can Cora really replace my VA? For 80% of typical VA tasks (email, CRM, scheduling, document processing, notes), yes. For tasks requiring human judgment, phone calls, or relationship building, no. Most solo agents find that the 20% of tasks Cora can't handle are things they should be doing personally anyway.

What if I need a human for some tasks? Use both. Many agents use Cora for the daily grind and hire a part-time human assistant (10 hours/week, ~$400-600/month) for the relationship and judgment work. Total cost: under $800/month -- still less than half of a full-time VA.

Is my data safe? Cora processes data inside a Trusted Execution Environment. No human, not even Cora's engineers, can access your emails, contacts, or files. That's a different privacy model from handing your Gmail password to a contractor in another country.

What about the timezone problem? There is no timezone problem. Cora operates 24/7. Send a request at 2am and get a response in seconds, not when someone else's workday begins.

How does Cora learn my style? Through use. The more emails you send through Cora, the better it mirrors your tone. The more receipts you process, the better it categorizes. There's no training manual to write. It picks up patterns from how you actually work.

Try Cora Free -- 50 Actions, No Credit Card

Stop paying a staffing agency's overhead. Stop sharing your Gmail password with a stranger. Stop waiting until tomorrow morning for work that piled up tonight.

Cora gives you 50 free actions per month. That's enough to see if an AI secretary can handle the 11pm email pile, the voice memos in the car, and the receipts after a staging run.

No credit card. No contract. No placement wait. Connect Google, connect WhatsApp, and tell Cora what to do.

Try Cora Free -- 50 Actions, No Credit Card

Last updated: February 20, 2026. Pricing data sourced from MyOutDesk.com, VirtualWizards.io, WingAssistant.com, Wishup.co, OceansTalent.com, and Reddit r/realtors. Agent quotes are from public Reddit posts.