Are BPO's worth the time and effort?

My advice is to run from them or charge them enough to make up for the hassles.

I still get calls to do BPO's. I give them a menu of rates.

Drive by is minimum of $200.  Interior is minimum of $250.

Includes 5 photos. Additional photos are $10 each.

I charge time in 1/2 hour increments. 1 minute to 1/2 hour = $25   31 minutes to 1 hour = $50

I tell them that I charge an additional $50/hour plus mileage based on the IRS rate for any BPO over 10 miles roundtrip from my office. I estimate to them that the the time to complete the BPO is 3 hours plus drive time plus the mileage.  They usually offer $50 or so for the entire BPO and sometimes as high as $100.

I will not accept that.

For instance:  A driveby BPO  that is 50 miles away from my office is 100 miles plus an additional 2 hours of time ($100) as the average speed is somewhere around 50 MPH.  Plus the original cost of $200. Plus the mileage of roughly .50/mile ($50).

If they want to pay me approximately $350 for the BPO I might do it.  If not I ask that they not call anymore.

I also refuse to load their software on my computers.

Not doing many BPO these days as it was a giant waste of time...and there are enough fools out there who will do it for the cheap rate because they think they will actually get listings in the future ( like I thought...which did not happen).

Hi Ginger -- Mike McCann certainly has a system in place that seems logical.  I did lots of BPOs as a new agent but haven't done one in years.   

I used to do a lot of BPO's but that changed when some companies did not pay and they started offering much less for the BPO's. Now when they call me with a $40 BPO I tell them I don't work that cheap and hang up. I don't appreciate the insults.