Five buy-and-hold files at $325 flat, and what the fifth one taught me

The date sheet in the first 24 hours is the part I'd steal. I've watched two files where the agent, the lender, and escrow each had a different day for the same contingency and nobody found out until the day itself.

What did you do about the 12 day HOA gap while you were waiting? Just sit on it, or were you pushing the association every couple days?

Genuine question since I'm new to the service side of this. He paid at closing, and you said you'd eat the fee if a file died. What happens to your math if two of the five fall out? You'd have done maybe 20 hours for nothing on those two and cleared $975 total.

Five files in nine weeks from one client is the number I keep coming back to. That's a real pipeline for a first client and it also means one person can end your income by hiring an in-house assistant. Did you ask him what his volume looks like over a year, or was it just whatever showed up?

The number worth pulling apart is 6.5 hours, because your whole price depends on it and one file already came in at more than double.

Five files at $325 is $1,625 against 32.5 logged hours if the average holds, so $50 an hour gross. Subtract transaction management software, an e-signature seat, and whatever you spend on a calendar tool, and a solo coordinator running low volume is usually paying $50 to $150 a month for the stack. At five files a quarter that's real money against $1,625. At forty files a year it's noise. So your effective rate isn't fixed by the fee, it's fixed by volume.

On the flat fee: the standard reason coordinators price per file rather than hourly is that the client wants a known cost, and the coordinator absorbs variance by mixing file types. Your pricing rests on that mix staying mixed. Four straightforward fee simple purchases plus one condo averaged out fine. A run of condos, a probate sale, or anything with a septic or well inspection window that runs on its own clock breaks the average. Sable's cancellation point does the same damage from the other direction, since you carry the hours and collect nothing.

Two things I'd price explicitly rather than absorb. Files that need more than one extension, and files where you're chasing a third party document you have no authority over, which is what the HOA package was.

One caution on the licensing sentence in your post. Whether unlicensed fee-for-service coordination is permitted, and what specific acts cross into brokerage, is set by state law and enforced by state regulators. Get that answer in writing from your commission or a lawyer in your state rather than from a forum.

"Signed two days before the financing date, not after" is the whole post. Everything else is admin.

Coming from the trades, the 12 day wait on the HOA docs reads exactly like waiting on a utility company to schedule a disconnect. You can't make it faster, so the only lever is starting earlier and telling everyone what the delay does to the finish date. Sounds like you did the second part.

What software were you actually using? I'm buying my first rental and I keep seeing coordinators mention platforms I've never heard of, and I can't tell if a spreadsheet is fine at one file.

At one file a spreadsheet is fine, @wren. At five at once it stops being fine, which is different from stopping being possible.

@halyard, you took buy side only. That was the right call for a first engagement. Listing side pulls you into disclosure delivery and seller signatures, and disclosure requirements vary a lot state to state. Stay on buy side until you've closed twenty.

The thing I'd warn you about after five years of this work isn't the 14 hour file. It's that you set $325 with your first client and now every referral he sends arrives expecting $325.

Raise it on the next new client, not on him. Same work, new number, and keep him at his rate for a year. Otherwise you're anchored at your beginner price for as long as he keeps feeding you deals.

I'd want to see your engagement letter more than your time log. Two clauses decide whether this stays profitable. What triggers your fee, and what you're responsible for when a date is missed.

You said you flagged the HOA delay and the agent drafted the addendum. Is that written down anywhere, that drafting and advising sit with the agent and flagging sits with you? Because if it isn't written, the first file that goes sideways will be argued about after the fact, and the person with no document loses that argument. Have someone licensed in your state look at the scope language before you sign the next one.