As you can imagine the answer to this question depends on who you talk to. For me, I have personally experienced doing BPO's in a rural setting and talked with numerous agents all over the U.S. who work in very urban settings.

 

My experience leads me to believe that doing BPO work in a rural setting is much more limiting. It is difficult to find comps that just aren't there, even after going out up to 10 miles from the subject property. If you go further than this than it is likely that your vendor rating goes down and your QC issues go up.

 

One thing that has really helped me was to not guess at what I was supposed to do or assume what I was expected to do when given a challenging rural BPO. Instead, I had absolutely no hesitation in calling up the company that gave me the BPO order. I'd ask for their advise and guidance on what to do in the situation that I was up against. Someone in their QC (Quality Control/Quality Review) department would likely get on the phone and walk me through which parameters I should use as to avoid getting my order kicked back because of inappropriate comps.

Another thing that was extremely beneficial to me was to seek out each companies 'Guidelines' or their set of 'rules' that they wanted for me to adhere to when doing BPO work for them. Most times I found this information was listed somewhere on their website. If for some reason I couldn't find it easily then I would give them a call and ask where I could find it. By doing this, it makes you look good and helps build a rapport with the rep that you talked to.

 

Who doesn't want to do their job to the best of their ability? Sometimes we just need a small compass to help guide us safely and confidently to our destination.

 

Please feel free to share your thoughts on this too. What are your experiences with this?

 

Warmly,

Nicole Ocean

Certified Real Estate Instructor/Founder of BPO University

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Replies

  • I do work in rural areas and run into this problem all the time. After a while I have learned what each company wants to have in their BPO's. If they are a BPO mill, it seems their rules and standards change with the ever changing QC staff. If the company does REO business, they are usually more understanding to the situation because they run into the same problem when trying to get an appraisal before they list the property.
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