A property management virtual receptionist who answers while your PMs are out on inspections.
Property management happens in the car and on other people's doorsteps. On a routine inspection day the desk can sit empty for hours while the phone keeps going: a tenant with water coming through the ceiling, an owner chasing a quote, an applicant asking whether Saturday's open is still on. Every call that reaches voicemail joins a callback list waiting for the property manager at 5pm, on top of the reports they still have to write up. A virtual receptionist for property managers puts a trained person on that line, so the repair is logged, the viewing booked and the owner answered before anyone hangs up.
What the receptionist handles, and what stays with your licensed property managers
Search for a real estate answering service or a rental agency answering service and most of what comes back is a call centre reading a generic script, or an AI voice that can take a name and little else. DotVA places one person who works only for your agency, learns your rent roll and tradie list, and follows a written boundary between front-desk work and anything that needs a licence. We settle that boundary with you before your number is switched over.
On the receptionist's desk
Log, book, route
- Live answering in your agency's name through the hours you book, with each caller sorted early in the call as a tenant, owner, applicant, tradie or prospective landlord
- Maintenance requests: the fault, the room, access times and photos taken down, logged as a job, and sent to your preferred tradie inside the owner's approval limit
- Open-for-inspection enquiries: applicants registered for the next viewing, sent your application link, and given the advertised rent and nothing beyond it
- Routine inspection access: tenants rung to confirm the date on the notice your agency has issued, with keys, alarms and pets noted for the property manager
- Owner calls: job progress and inspection dates read back from the file, and any instruction given by phone written against the property and confirmed by email
- New management enquiries from landlords weighing up a change of agency, booked into the diary of your business development manager or principal
Stays with the licensed property manager
Advice and decisions
- Tenancy advice of any kind: break-lease costs, notice periods, rent increases, repair disputes and anything heading to a tribunal
- Leasing decisions: which applicant is approved, lease terms, pets, and any offer above the advertised rent
- Arrears and breach conversations, plus every question about rent receipted or owner disbursements, because the receptionist has no trust account access
- Bond claims and outgoing condition report disputes, which rest on the property manager's evidence and judgement
- Spending past an owner's limit: the receptionist packages the quote; the owner or property manager approves it
- Formal notices: entry, breach and termination notices are issued by your agency under your state's rules, never by the receptionist
The phone is only the most visible slice of a rent roll's admin. The morning arrears run, the lease renewal pipeline and the compliance register are covered in the property management virtual assistant guide, and agencies with a sales team will find listing uploads and OFI follow-up on the real estate virtual assistant page. Strata offices, whose callers are lot owners and committees rather than tenants, have their own virtual assistant for strata managers guide.
Four calls that ring out while your team is on the road
Inspection day, and a leak somewhere else
For example: your property manager is at the third of six routine inspections, halfway through a photo set, when a tenant across town rings about water dripping from a ceiling light. Unanswered, that becomes three messages about one leak. Answered live, the receptionist takes the details, checks them against your urgent-repairs procedure, logs the job in PropertyMe, PropertyTree or Console Cloud, sends it to your nominated electrician and texts the property manager, all before that inspection wraps up.
A vacancy that needs viewings booked
Each week a property sits empty is a week of rent the owner never gets back, and leasing enquiries tend to bunch up while the listing is fresh. The receptionist answers them while the caller is still keen: confirms the advertised rent and the next open time, registers them in InspectRealEstate and texts the application link, so a Snug or 2Apply form can be done by the time they leave the viewing. Pets, lease length and anything resembling an offer go to the property manager.
Owners chasing an update
Owners tend to ring when something is worrying them: is the plumber booked, did the inspection go ahead, why does the hot water quote look so high. Most of those answers already sit in the job notes or the inspection record, so the receptionist reads them back in plain terms and books a call with the property manager for anything that needs their view. An approval given by phone is written against the job on the spot and confirmed by email, which leaves a clear record if the work is ever questioned.
Landlords shopping for a new agency
A landlord unhappy with their current manager may well be ringing several agencies the same afternoon, and that call is how a rent roll grows. It should not wait in voicemail until an inspection run is over. Your receptionist takes the property address, how it is managed now and the best time to talk, then books an appraisal or call back with your business development manager or principal while the landlord is still deciding whom to ring next.
What rent roll phone cover costs
The full trading week
When your property managers are in the field on different days, staffing the line from open to close is usually the simplest setup. A 40-hour week costs about $2,078-2,944 a month at $12-17/hr AUD ex GST, and the quiet patches go on logging jobs, confirming inspection times and chasing tradies for completion dates.
An answering service passes the work back
A rental agency answering service is set up to take a message, which leaves your property manager to log the repair and ring the tenant back anyway. A dedicated receptionist raises the job in your software with the tenant still on the line, and already knows which owners want a quote before any work starts.
Start with ten hours
Placements start at 10 hours a week, about $520-736 a month: for example, two hours every weekday morning to catch overnight maintenance requests and tenants ringing before work. Twenty hours, enough to staff two and a half days while the team is out inspecting, comes to about $1,040-1,470 a month. To get the monthly numbers we take the weekly hours, apply the hourly rate and multiply by 4.33, the average number of weeks in a month.
Cover when your receptionist is away
Annual leave and sick days still happen. We line up a stand-in wherever we can and brief them on your tradie list and urgent-repairs steps, while the AI receptionist catches any overflow. Your agency directs what the receptionist works on each day, and DotVA looks after recruitment, pay, time tracking and billing, performance and replacement.
Property management virtual receptionist questions
Can the receptionist log maintenance requests in PropertyMe, PropertyTree or Console Cloud?
Yes. Your receptionist works in the property management software your agency already runs, whether that is PropertyMe, PropertyTree, Console Cloud or Ailo, along with a maintenance platform such as Tapi if you use one. Access comes through a login your agency sets up, limits to the screens the role needs and can switch off whenever it chooses. A tenant's call becomes a job a tradie can quote from: what has broken, which room, when the tenant is home, and any photos they send through. Work orders go to your preferred tradies inside the spending limit each owner has given, and anything above that limit goes to the owner through your normal approval process. Trust accounting and banking sit outside the receptionist's seat entirely.
Will the receptionist give tenants advice about their lease, bond or rent?
No. The receptionist is not a licensed agent, so they never give legal or tenancy advice, negotiate a lease, or make a decision that belongs to your licensed property manager. A question about breaking a lease, notice periods, a rent increase, a bond claim or a tribunal hearing is written down in the caller's own words and passed to the property manager on that file, with a call back offered. An applicant who offers more than the advertised rent, or asks whether they will be approved, hears that the property manager will be in touch. The receptionist logs, books and routes; your licensed team decides.
What happens when a tenant rings about an urgent repair after hours?
Your agency's own urgent-repairs procedure decides it, and we get it in writing before the first call is answered. While your receptionist is on shift they work through it step by step, whether that means calling the nominated tradie, alerting the property manager, or both. A dedicated person is not on the line overnight, so agencies can pair the receptionist with the AI receptionist (from $89 a month plus setup), which picks up after hours, records the tenant's details and either transfers the call to your on-call property manager or sends an instant alert, exactly as your procedure sets out. What counts as urgent, and who gets woken, is your agency's call under your state's tenancy rules, never the receptionist's or the AI's. Anything that can wait is left as a call summary for the morning.
Is a dedicated receptionist better than a real estate answering service?
A real estate answering service typically spreads its operators across many businesses, bills per call or per minute on top of a monthly plan, and sends you a list of messages. Somebody at the agency still has to log every repair and ring every applicant back. A DotVA receptionist is one dedicated person who learns your rent roll, your tradie list and each owner's standing instructions, and finishes the logging and booking while the caller is still talking. If your agency's phone rarely rings, an answering service may well be the cheaper option, and Jenn will tell you that on the discovery call.
Where is the receptionist based, and how do the hours line up?
Your receptionist works from Manila in the Philippines on a roster built around your agency's opening hours in Australia. Manila keeps UTC+8 all year with no daylight saving, so it shares a clock with Perth, sits two hours behind Brisbane year round, and runs two hours behind Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Hobart outside daylight saving and three from October to April. An 8:30am summer start in Melbourne is 5:30am in Manila, so early starts are agreed as part of the role before we recruit, and the candidate you interview has already said yes to them. Back in Australia, DotVA's Melbourne office looks after the hiring, the onboarding and your invoices.
What does property management phone cover cost, and is there a contract?
Billing is hourly at $12-17 AUD ex GST, for the hours your agency books and nothing more. Ten hours a week is the smallest placement we make (about $520-736 a month), while staffing a 40-hour week runs to about $2,078-2,944 a month. Matching normally takes about 7-10 business days, and the $500 deposit paid at the start comes off your first invoice. There is no lock-in contract. For the first 14 days after your receptionist starts you are free to end it at any time; beyond that, 30 days' notice applies. If the fit is wrong within the first 30 days, we find a replacement at no cost, or you can stop and we refund any unused deposit, less third-party recruitment costs such as job ads. Overnight and weekend calls can go to the AI receptionist, an optional add-on priced from $89 a month plus setup.
Book a free discovery call
Jenn, who runs DotVA from Melbourne, takes these calls herself, and they run for half an hour. Bring your door count, the days your property managers are usually out inspecting, and a rough idea of how many voicemails are waiting when they get back to the office. You will come away knowing which setup fits your agency (a dedicated receptionist, the after-hours AI, or one of each) and the monthly cost of each. You will not be asked to sign anything.
Reading first? The property management VA guide covers the admin behind the rent roll, the PropertyMe virtual assistant page walks through the software side, and the virtual receptionist overview compares human and AI cover.
Want to know how the call runs before you book? The discovery call page walks through it step by step.
Step 2 of 2
One step left: pick your time
Your details are with Jenn, but the call is not in her diary yet. Pick a time and it is locked in, about 20 seconds. Within 48 hours of the call you will have a written recap: the tasks we would delegate first, an indicative cost and a timeline.
Pick a time with Jenn now →Nothing that suits? Call (03) 9961 6076 and we will book it around you. Or leave it and Jenn will email you within one business day.
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