WePro BPO has been established as a Broker Price Opinion outsourcing company which caters all types of Residential and Commercial properties throughout United States.

Our company started as a small business partnership in 2008. 
With the perseverance, commitment and continuously delivering high quality reports of the people behind, the business started to grow and created a team of highly skilled real estate analyst who are best experienced in processing and formulating standard quality, error-free, quick turn around time and cost effective broker price opinions.

Please visit our website at https://weprobpo.com/

Amber MARTIN Alert

A thought-out scheme of lies, deceit & thievery – Amber Martin Exposed!

I would like share a scenario with everyone so that no one else suffers the same consequences. A few weeks ago I was approached by a virtual assistant, who goes by the name “Amber Martin”. Amber had disclosed that she found me on Active Rain. Amber (I say the name lightly) had disclosed she was located in Texas. Her email signature reflected the same. After reviewing her resume, I brought her on for a trial period until I received her background check and finished completing other formalities.

After a week into the trial period, Amber failed to send me certain information; claiming she had a family emergency in Washington State. When she returned, she still failed to provide the requested information. I was not able to obtain a background check as Amber apparently did not exist. Another one of my VA’s then contacted me to tell me that when on a call with Amber, she sounded like a man. At this point I decided to end her trial period.

When I contacted ‘Amber’ and brought the issues to ‘her’ attention, I found out that ‘she’ is actually a ‘he’ and ‘Amber’ is really ‘Andy’ who lives in the Philippines. Yes, we found that “Amber Martin, A.K.A. Andy” is actually Andy Cano! Trying my best to remain professional, I explained I did not appreciate being lied to and that I can no longer have her perform any further work.

A few days later I received an email from Amber demanding payment for the little work “HE” completed. Included in the email was also a threat that if payment wasn’t remitted in 24 hours, Amber would contact my clients and disclose “he” wasn’t paid as well as contact the companies my clients work with.

This person ANDY CANO cannot be trusted for he is a scammer and he has scammed me with Php 76,000 money… I have filed a complaint against this person with CIDG Philippines Cyber Crime Unit

-Roh Ramos-Tadina

Long story short, I found a connection between Amber Martin and a company called Cano BPO Services. Cano is registered in Australia under the name Amber Martin; however, the soliciting emails my agents have been receiving from Cano, reflect the company is based in the Philippines. I also tried to locate people whose name is Amber Martin and found an agent who used to live in Texas, but has since relocated. Amber had said that she was located in Highlands, Texas and also provided phone number that would matched that area code. Come to find out found out, the address was a recently ‘for sale by owner property’ and the phone number was an invalid Google number. I am not sure how she goes about selecting her address, but the bottom line is that it is not her residence.

If you have been contacted by an Amber Martin, Andy Cano, Cano BPO Services, Online BPO Services and/or Meschelle VA, I advise you to perform due diligence. Not only because she/he is actually overseas, but because she is committing fraud by providing a fake name, fake address, claiming to be a women when ‘he’ is clearly a man, soliciting my clients, etc.. I cannot be certain she is using the identity of an agent either, but that is how it appears.

I would also like to point out that since Amber had mentioned she found me on Active Rain,  I brought her on board under the impression that the site was safe.  This just goes to show that you can’t even trust the reputable sites of which you think are safe. 

All info provided by Amber Martin, A.K.A. Andy Cano, was stolen – the name, the address, the phone number, and falsifying this info not just to me but also on LinkedIN, Active Rain, Paypal, Facebook, Trulia, Elance, etc. And the lineage that this was a thought-out scheme of lies, deceit & thievery. -Pam Maglione - Owner, CEO of Pam's VAS

This scenario has taught me a great lesson. I will now be performing pre-contracting formalities prior to having anyone perform work –even if it is only a trial period. If you have been a target of “Amber Martin”, please reach out to me and share your story. If you have dealt with a similar scenario, I would love to hear your story as well. These are things we shouldn’t feel ashamed about sharing. The problem with situations like these is that the perpetrator does not suffer any consequences for their actions. The only consequence someone like Amber could suffer, is losing their source of income. With that said, I think the more awareness we bring to these matters, the less chance there is of it happening to someone else, and the more difficult it makes for a fraud to get away with it.

♦ Upon further investigation, we found multiple profiles on multiple platforms linking to Amber Martin, A.K.A. Andy Cano. While some link Amber to Cano BPO Services, others link her to Online BPO Services as well as Meschelle VA. The email she contacted Pam’s VAS through was “Amber Martin [mechellemartin27@gmail.com]” I would also like to point out that each profile reflects a different location. Here are some of the sources:

LinkedIn: A. Meschelle
Virtual assistant/Owner at Meschelle VA
Houston, Texas AreaInternet

Facebook: Meschelle VA

Active Rain: Amber Martin, I Help Real Estate Agents and Brokers on BPOs
Services for Real Estate Pros / Highlands, TX
Broker Price Assistance

LinkedIn: Andy Cano
Broker Price Opinion Analyst / RE Assistant
Region X – Northern Mindanao, PhilippinesReal Estate

Active Rain: Andy Cano, Real Estate Assistant
Services for Real Estate Pros / Auburn, WA
Online BPO Services

♦ Please share and reply using #hashtag #AmberMartinAlert ♦

Sometimes you have to search through the fog to find the best real estate agent you can. Here are seven key points you can look at to make sure you stand the best chance of finding that quality agent to help you sell your home. 

• •Look at Reputation – Ask your potential agent to provide evidence of previous listings sold in the past year with contact information. Find out what the asking prices were and what the final selling price was.
• •Check the licensing – all states will issue real estate agents with a license and it is these licenses which can reveal if there were any complaints or problems with sales in the past year.
• •Go for a winning team – Awards issued by peers are worth taking a look at: if the local or state branch of the NAR has awarded your potential real estate agent with “Realtor of the Year” then it’s worth possibly considering this agent
• •Make sure an agent has the right credentials – just as doctors have specialist fields they study in, real estate agents may specialize in certain products. A doctor may be an expert in glaucoma, chiropractic or cancer but there are real estate agents that specialize in selling (or buying) condos, expensive million dollar-plus homes or luxury tower condo properties.
• •Check the experience of your agent – Finding out how long a real estate agent has been in business is important. There are two places where you can find this information online – one is the agent’s own website and the other is Realtor.com. It should say the year in which the agency was established. Be very wary of those agents that don’t reveal this information.
• •Check out the current listings – This is one sure-fire way of checking that the agent is selling the type of property you are wanting to sell (or buy). If you are selling a small one-bedroom apartment and the agent is listing million dollar plus homes then he or she may not be the agent for you.
• •Check their local Listings – By finding out the local listings, you will get a good feel of the homes the agent is selling in your district. If there are no local listings, you may have the wrong agent for you.

On a personal not, I have always found that just as important as the list above, is the potential agents personalities, professionalism and upfront honesty...even if it’s not something you want to hear. So don’t forget to see if you “click” with your new agent.

www.pamsvas.com - Real Estate REO and BPO Virtual Assistants

If you are selling a home, your real estate agent may often tell you the something like – “we have to sell it fast, it’s in your best interests”, “get rid of this chapter of your life and start anew”. “make sure you clean your home thoroughly and give it a fresh coat of paint on the inside and out, and watch it sell like a hot cake.”

Real estate agents often recommend that you make use of a professional home stager, a person who will evaluate your home and tell you what it takes to make it appealing to potential buyers.

A recent survey has found that more than 50% of agents who work with buyers say that staging has an effect on the buyer's view of the home. It does tell us that staging is one sure-fire method to get buyers interested in at least looking at your home.

There is little doubt that decorating a home before putting it out there on the market, really does attract more buyers. Especially if the home is vacant or out dated. So the million dollar question has to be: “what if I have decorated my home but not necessarily in a way that will please a potential buyer?”

A bad paint job is as bad as not bothering to clean or decorate your home at all. If you really want to make that sale then you should be looking at spending a bit of money. Depending on the size of your home, If you look at a home staging budget of say around $700, spent wisely, then you may very well get an extra few thousand in sales price.

If you have a larger home – say a house with 5 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms, then expect that home staging budget to be higher but you can also expect a much higher return on the sale of your property when it closes and more immediate interest when it hits the market. The fact is you should be able to recoup costs associated with the decorating and paint work you do around the home, and most times, even more.

So make sure you at least consider your Realtor’s recommendation of home staging. It may shorten your time on the market and put more money in your pocket at closing.

PamsVAS.com - Real Estate Virtual Assistants

Moving out of a huge house and into a property that is considerably smaller is taking off in the U.S. (as well as in many other countries) in an ever-increasing way. So why do people do it? The average floor space of the typical American home is approximately 2600 square feet, but compare that to a tiny house where the floor space can measure just 100 square feet and no more than 400 square feet, and suddenly you really are looking at a huge downsizing operation.

Put simply, the Tiny House Movement is a social networking group whose aim is to downsize the area they are living in and then broadcast their experiences in the transformation. Advantages include lower mortgage payments, less cleaning and maintenance, lower utility bills, lower taxes, environmentally friendly and simplified living.

So what is the main reason why so many people are flocking to join this new revolution in downsizing the amount of living space in their new homes? The main reason is definitely financial and the effect of the 2007 Housing Crisis still has a huge impact on the way we are all managing our money now.

Indeed, the real estate down turn has changed the way most people live – which is hardly surprising when you consider that an average of around 50% of the income a person earns, is set aside for that roof over our head. Downsizing, even just a little, can reduce the portion of income dedicated to housing to as little as 30 per cent, thus freeing up some 20 per cent of our salary to spend on other luxury items or necessities.

Just calculate how much 20% of your take home pay is and think what you could do with that money: take an exotic vacation overseas, buy a new car, pay for your child’s university fees or just invest in a small swimming pool to go in your much smaller back yard. It’s a shocking statistic that some 76% of all Americans are living from one pay check to the next.

Another appealing statistic is that 55% of all tiny house dwelling people have more money in their saving accounts than the average American has (average savings is currently $10,800), so you can really bank on having more disposal income than the people trying to get by in their huge homes.

A Tiny House may not be for you and your family, but many people are learning to adapt, especially with all the advantages of a Tiny House.

If you fail to keep up your homeowners’ association fees or complete the annual assessments, the HOA could end up foreclosing. Its par for the course these days that when you purchase a home, condo or town house, that happens to be a communal development, then you will most likely have to pay fees to a housing association.

Now what would happen if you simply ignored these fees or failed to meet the annual assessments? The Housing Association would apply to get a lien on your home and this then leads into foreclosure (assuming you still fail to settle up with your housing association).

The Homeowners’ Associations are a body that sets up to look after the communal garden areas, essential repairs in stairwells, cleaning, lighting for communal hallways and exterior electricity bills. All this maintenance costs and it recovers its cost from the lease holder. Failure to pay up means a service is being provided to you and you are essentially not paying for it.

Other work that the housing association must carry out includes removing snow, landscape gardening, fitting new communal windows and repairing roof tiling.  Some of the more-modern condo complexes have swimming pools, gyms, clubhouses and tennis courts which can be used by the residents. All of these amenities need regular maintenance and cleaning, so the fees required by the association are likely to be higher in these luxury blocks.

The housing association also has to enforce the rules within the community; if one resident happens to be playing music loud late at night and making life a misery for all the other members of the community, the association must act and the administration work to remedy anti-social behaviour can mount up in both time and money.

HOA fees can often spring a surprise one-off fee for those complexes that need work carried out on a one-off basis. An example of this would be that a condo complex may need new exterior windows and fascia repairs following a wild storm or even hurricane; these “special assessment fees” are an unfortunate but necessary payment that will land in the lap of the resident – but not as a regular payment but as a one-off fee and comes in addition to regular payments being made.

Before taking out a homeowner association property you should read the terms and conditions on payment of fees should you default at any time, as some associations may charge interest on late payment as well as collection cost fees (if an agency was involved in the fee recovery).

Source: www.pamsvas.com

Real Estate REO and BPO Virtual Assistants

In business and commerce circles, the big news just days into October is the buy-out of Move Incorporated by the newspaper and media giant News Corporation. So who are Move Inc and why did News Corporation decide to splash out an eye-watering $950 million for the business? In the United States, Move Inc stands as the third biggest online real estate listing firm. It helps home buyers and sellers to purchase a new home by providing them with tools, guides, information and professionals from the real estate industry to make that purchase run as smooth as possible.

News Corporation is essentially a newspaper publisher which began its business from South Australia and later moved into New York to become the second-largest newspaper and media organization in the world. It now want to increase revenue and expand its business beyond just selling papers and promoting a media front and real estate is seen as a pretty good sector to get the turnover and extra revenue it now seeks.

As for Move Inc, the buy-out could see the online real estate listing agency become a real giant and a major player in the U.S. online home retail market. Robert Thomson is the Chief Executive Officer at News Corporation these days and he predicts Move Inc will soon become the United States’ biggest online real estate listing firm, thanks to News Corp’s influx of cash and support.

News Corp needs a change after the scandals of 2011 when the company was forced to close down its best-selling Sunday newspaper in the UK, News of the World. Allegations of phone hacking seriously depleted the organization’s reputation both in the United Kingdom and abroad.

Mr Thomson also believes that online home buying and internet real estate business is a growing market that has not yet taken off to the heights he believes it could reach. News Corp are convinced this sector is still in its infancy and is at the early stage of development. If it is right then the prospects for extra revenue could be huge in years to come.

There is no doubt that more and more people are now using the internet to buy their next home. Many Americans have actually purchased real estate by using self-help tools and become their very own real estate agent, just like many have booked their vacations online without using a travel agent.

Only time will tell if this was the best move for News corp and to see what direction Online Real Estate Listing Services will take.

pamsvas.com - Real Estate Virtual Assistant Services

Over the past few years, REO supply has fluctuated almost constantly. The REO Brokers/agents and suppliers who work with agencies like HomeSteps, see this everyday and understand the seasonal and demographical reasons behind these fluctuations. These REO Brokers know how to adapt and change with the low supplies of inventory.

When it comes to labor costs, real estate virtual assistants prove to be very cost-effective. Most VAs are paid on a per project basis or as based on the actual job performed. A real estate agent can also choose which responsibilities he wishes to tackle on his own, and delegate to virtual assistant areas of concern beyond his clout. Virtual assistants can perform duties that maybe beyond your experience and comprehension, of which she has expertise and experience. 

One of the most challenging tasks in real estate is REO's. Bank-owned homes or “real estate owned” properties are often due to foreclosures while some have been foreclosed for quite some time. One needs to be a tough salesman to be able to market REO’s successfully. REO agents are definitely more complicated and harried than “normal” real estate agents. More often than not they would need the help of an experienced virtual assistant knowledgeable on how to work with REO properties. To give you a clear understanding on the significance of REO VA's, here are the top 3 services that REO VA’s normally offer to real estate firms or private realtors.

Online Listings Management

Indeed, managing REOs can be quite a challenge. You are not only dealing with foreclosed properties but might also be dealing with a property that requires maximum attention. With the number of REOs on your plate, you simply cannot do it alone and this is where a reliable virtual assistant comes in handy.

There is a new trend in the horizons of real estate management that has been blooming in the past years. It’s called virtual assistance. The name “virtual” alone means that a Realtor will have someone working for his or her office through the internet. Virtual assistants, who are not in the office and will work as part of the team to assist with every possible task or position that a Realtor may have.

Real Estate Virtual Assistants can alleviate a Realtor's work load so he or she can focus on their business by taking care of daily tasks such as:

• Buyer Broker & Real Estate Owned Reports – manage the assignment to submission to the bank.

• HOA / Utilities – research and collect all information that is necessary to update the bank.

• Property Preservation – Research and collect all information that is necessary to update the bank. Communicate with contractors to provide safety and security of the bank's asset.

• Accounting - Reimbursements can be a hassle with all all the changing policies.

• Marketing – Assist with registrations so you can start receiving work based on your area and credentials. Can also assist with FSBOs, tax searches, and mailers, etc.

• Transaction Coordinator – Assist with all tasks from Bank assignment to closing.

The use of a Real Estate Virtual Assistant Services such as Pam's VAS you will get a team of professionally trained assistants who can handle all necessary tasks or position that you need. The use of a real estate virtual assistants can make the life of a Realtor easier. The Realtor can focus more on clients and showings and not worry about all the mundane day to day paper work.

Not only can Real Estate Virtual Assistants help you be more productive and achieve your goals, they can save you money thus generating you more income! What are some ways a Real Estate Virtual Assistant can save you money:

• You won't need any additional office space or equipment.

• You won't need to pay employee benefits.

• Virtual Assistants can work on weekends.

• Virtual Assistants are experts in their field which will increase efficiency and productivity.

In the world of a fast pace Real Estate industry, vast technology and the demands of time and outputs, Realtors are faced with the challenge to keep up in order to make it in the industry. Why do it all when there are people who are willing to do it for the Realtor's behalf. The helping hands are just one call or click away! Make your life and business more efficient today!