Hiring Latin American virtual assistants saves most investors 70-80% versus a comparable US hire, according to Omer Bloch, co-founder of Remote Latinos, whose company places close to 100 people a month across its direct placement and marketplace channels. The savings are real. What’s less obvious is that the hire only pays off if the business already has a process for that person to plug into.
Bloch’s client base is a useful sample: the majority of businesses that come to him are doing one to three deals a month and want to hire their first acquisitions manager or lead manager. That’s the exact bottleneck this article addresses — what the roles cost, which to fill first, how to buy the placement, and how long before the person actually produces.
Below: the cost framing, the role list Bloch sees demand for, the two buying models Remote Latinos runs, the ramp-up variables you control, and the payroll problem almost nobody plans for.
Key takeaways
- Most investors stall at one to three deals a month because one person cannot market, sell, set appointments, transact and handle dispo at the same time — the ceiling is capacity, not lead flow.
- Bloch’s headline number is 70-80% savings versus US cost for the same role, with the pitch framed around A-player talent rather than cheap labor.
- The first hires investors ask him for are acquisitions manager and lead manager. Low-level admin EA roles are the ones AI is already absorbing.
- Two buying models exist: full done-for-you placement, or HireRemoteLatinos.com at $97/month with a two-week free trial and a 30,000-candidate pool for owners who already know how to hire.
- Ramp-up commonly runs two to four weeks or longer, but Bloch had a client onboard someone on a Thursday and sign a contract inside a week — the difference was the owner’s systems, not the hire.
From the Real Estate Pros Show
This article draws on an interview with Omer Bloch of Remote Latinos on the Real Estate Pros Show, hosted by Issa Hanna.
Watch or listen to the full interview.
Why Investors Stall at One to Three Deals a Month
You can run one or two deals a month by yourself. Past that, the math stops working, and this is the single most consistent pattern Bloch sees in his intake: the majority of businesses coming to Remote Latinos are doing one to three deals a month and looking to hire their first acquisitions manager or first lead manager.
The reason is that a solo investor is running five jobs simultaneously. Marketing has to stay consistent. Leads have to be worked the same day. Appointments have to be set and shown. The contract has to be papered and the transaction has to be babysat through title. Then dispo has to find the buyer before the inspection period burns.
Any one of those slipping kills the deal, and when you’re the only person doing all five, something slips every week. Bloch’s description of the failure mode is specific: the deal falls apart on the back end because of how many hands touched it and nobody owned the follow-through, and you’ve burned weeks for nothing.
The other trap is that knowing how to do the job is not the same as being able to hand it off. Owners at this stage can typically run acquisitions well — that’s how they got to three deals. What they don’t have is a written version of how they do it, which is what a new hire needs on day one.
That’s the real threshold. If you can’t describe your acquisitions process in steps somebody else could follow, adding a person adds management overhead, not capacity.
What Latin American Talent Actually Costs vs a US Hire
Bloch’s headline figure is 70-80% less than what the same role costs in the US. That’s the number he leads with when a prospective client asks what his company’s strength is, and it’s the number the whole nearshore model is built on.
Be clear about what that figure is and isn’t. It’s a cost-comparison ratio against a US salary for the equivalent role, not a published rate card. Bloch does not quote per-hour or per-month salary figures publicly, and any per-role number you see elsewhere is somebody else’s estimate, not his. Budget against your own US comparable and work down from there.
More useful than the percentage is how he frames what you’re buying. His pitch is A-player talent at 70-80% less, not cheap labor at any quality. The distinction matters because the two produce completely different outcomes in an acquisitions seat. A cheap cold caller who can read a script will generate call volume. Someone who can actually hold a seller conversation, handle an objection and get to a number is a different hire at a different price, and that’s the one that moves your deal count.
There’s also a direction-of-travel point worth building into your planning. Bloch lives in Medellín and is blunt that it’s not the cheap city people assume: wages and costs there have risen meaningfully in the last three or four years, partly because of the demand his own industry created. The arbitrage is real right now. Don’t build a three-year model that assumes today’s rate holds forever.
Our goal now is to cut that ramp-up period down and ultimately have people get results. It requires us being good at finding the people, and also the business owner being legit with their processes and systems.
— Omer Bloch, co-founder and CEO, Remote Latinos
Which Roles to Fill First — and Which AI Is Already Absorbing
The roles Bloch places for real estate clients span the full deal cycle: lead management, acquisitions, executive assistant, operations, video editing, transaction coordination and disposition. But the demand pattern from investors doing one to three deals a month is narrow — it’s almost always the first acquisitions manager or the first lead manager.
That ordering makes sense operationally. Lead management is the highest-frequency, most rules-based work in the business, and it’s the first thing that decays when the owner is out showing properties. Acquisitions is the highest-dollar handoff. Transaction coordination and dispo tend to come later, once volume makes the back end the constraint.
The role to think hardest about is the general executive assistant. Bloch’s view is direct: a low-level, entry-level admin assistant is a role AI is actively taking over. He uses Grok and MetaMuse daily and describes the latter as functionally his assistant — it messages him, it talks to him every day — and says he no longer needs a person doing that tier of work.
The practical implication for your hiring: screen for AI capability, not just task execution. Bloch’s expectation now is that hires have to be able to run AI systems, because the economics have shifted from hiring twenty people to hiring one very good person who can operate a lot of tools. When you interview, ask what the candidate has actually automated in a previous role and which tools they use unprompted.
One caution he raises about relying on the tools: AI gives you the logical answer. Seller conversations are emotional. Don’t staff acquisitions as if that weren’t true.
Done-For-You Placement vs a Talent Marketplace
Remote Latinos sells the same talent pool two ways, and which one you should buy depends entirely on whether you already know how to hire.
Direct placement. The company sources, vets and presents candidates, confirming English fluency, relevant experience and actual skill before you ever see a resume. This is what most clients buy and what Bloch calls the model people know them for. It’s the right choice if you’ve never hired offshore, or if you have and it didn’t work.
The marketplace. HireRemoteLatinos.com is $97 a month, cancel anytime, with a two-week free trial. You create a profile for free, browse a pool of more than 30,000 candidates, and speak to people directly. This is a job board, not a service — it’s for owners who have the systems, the time and a working interview process and just want access to the pipeline.
Between the two channels, Bloch says they place close to 100 people a month, over a thousand a year.
His argument for paying for placement at all is worth weighing on its merits: Facebook and Apple have effectively unlimited capital and still use recruiting firms. Anyone can get lucky on a job board — he did exactly that with his first placement in November 2020, a VA he never even interviewed who still works with that client six years later. His point is that a team built on luck is not a team you can scale.
If you’re going the marketplace route, use the two-week trial to test your own interview process before you commit to the monthly.
Ramp-Up Time Is the Real Variable — and It’s Partly on You
Two to four weeks is the ramp-up investors typically report, and sometimes longer. That was the most consistent complaint Bloch got when he interviewed his top 20 clients about where to add more value, and compressing it is now his main product focus.
The ceiling case shows what’s possible. A client messaged him after onboarding someone the prior Thursday — less than a week — and already having their first contract signed. Bloch’s own reaction to that was the useful part: how do we replicate this for everyone?
His answer names both halves of the equation. Results require the placement company to find the right person and the business owner to be legitimate with their processes and systems. The second half is the one you control, and it’s where most offshore hires actually fail.
Before a new hire starts, have these in place:
- A written script or call framework for the role, not a verbal explanation
- The CRM configured with the dispositions and stages the person will use
- Defined daily activity targets — calls, follow-ups, appointments set
- A named person who reviews their work daily for the first two weeks
- Recordings of you doing the job well, so they have a model to copy
Remote Latinos is building toward supplying some of this — SOPs, playbooks, roadmaps, an AI academy with weekly calls and course material from their in-house AI developer. But no vendor can write your acquisitions process for you. If you hand someone a seat with no script, no CRM stages and no daily review, four weeks is optimistic.
Cultural Fit, Payroll and the Admin Nobody Plans For
English fluency is table stakes, not a qualification. Bloch’s screening standard is that working with an American company requires cultural alignment and a tolerance for the kind of pressure an American company applies — on top of the language, the skill and the experience.
He argues Medellín supplies that unusually well, and he’s in a position to know because he lives there and has for about as long as he’s run the business. The city has a large enough English-speaking expat community that he has friends who’ve lived there for years speaking no Spanish. That immersion produces candidates who don’t just translate American business communication, they’ve absorbed how it works. Vetting happens in-country, in person, rather than over a resume screen.
Then there’s the part almost nobody plans for. Bloch estimates fewer than 5% of his clients currently get help with payroll, and the gap he’s found is not that owners want a better process — it’s that many genuinely don’t know how to pay an international team member or what contracts they need. To him it seemed obvious. To a wholesaler who has only ever cut a 1099 to a US contractor, it isn’t.
Sort this out before the candidate accepts, not after. Decide your payment rail, your pay cycle, who absorbs transfer fees and currency risk, and what the written agreement covers. Get the contracting structure reviewed by your own attorney or accountant — international engagement terms are a legal question, not a hiring question, and the answer depends on your entity and where the person sits.
Remote Latinos is adding payroll handling as a paid service. Either way, someone has to own it, and right now that’s almost certainly you.
Frequently asked questions
How much cheaper is a Latin American hire than a US employee?
Omer Bloch of Remote Latinos puts the savings at 70-80% versus what the same role costs in the US. He does not publish per-hour or per-month salary figures, so budget by taking your US comparable for the role and working down from that range.
Two caveats. The framing is A-player talent at a lower cost, not the cheapest available labor — a script-reading cold caller and a real acquisitions closer are different hires at different prices. And Bloch notes that wages in Medellín have risen significantly over the past three or four years, so don’t model today’s rate as permanent.
What is the first role a wholesaler or flipper should hire offshore?
Lead manager or acquisitions manager. Those are the two roles the majority of Bloch’s investor clients — most doing one to three deals a month — come to him asking for first.
Lead management is the highest-volume, most repeatable work and the first thing that decays when the owner is out in the field. Acquisitions is the highest-dollar handoff. Transaction coordination, dispo and operations typically make sense later, once deal volume makes the back end the constraint rather than the front end.
How long should it take a new VA to start producing?
Plan for two to four weeks, sometimes longer. That’s the range Bloch’s clients consistently report, and it’s the complaint that surfaced most often when he interviewed his top 20 accounts.
Faster is possible. One of his clients onboarded someone on a Thursday and had a signed contract within the week. The variable is almost always the owner’s side: whether there’s a written script, a configured CRM, defined daily activity targets and someone reviewing the new hire’s work every day for the first two weeks.
Should I use a placement service or hire from a talent marketplace myself?
Use a marketplace if you already have a working interview process, documented systems and time to screen. Use placement if you don’t, or if you’ve tried offshore hiring before and it didn’t stick.
Remote Latinos runs both: full done-for-you sourcing and vetting, or HireRemoteLatinos.com at $97 a month with a two-week free trial and access to a pool of more than 30,000 candidates. The trial is a low-cost way to test whether your own hiring process holds up before committing to either path.
How do I actually pay an overseas team member?
You need a payment rail, a pay cycle, and a written contract — and you should have all three settled before the candidate accepts. Bloch says fewer than 5% of his clients get help with payroll and that many owners simply don’t know how to pay an international team member or what contracts they need, which makes this one of the most common post-hire scrambles.
Because classification and contracting terms depend on your entity and the worker’s country, run the structure past your own attorney and accountant rather than copying someone else’s template. Some placement firms, including Remote Latinos, are starting to handle payments for a monthly fee.
The bottom line
Before you post the role or take a placement call, write down your acquisitions or lead management process as steps someone else could follow, and set up the CRM stages and daily activity targets that person will be measured against. That document is what turns a four-week ramp into a one-week one, and it’s the part no vendor can supply for you.
