What a $395 per file transaction coordinator actually buys across six acquisitions
A case worth studying on the coordination side of a small acquisition run, because it is the part most buyers get right by accident. Take an investor who buys six small residential properties over fourteen months, two of them off market, and hires a coordinator at $395 a file, buy side only. Before that they self-coordinated two purchases and both closed, so the hire had nothing to do with rescuing a failing process. The problem was roughly 14 hours per closing spent chasing documents, weeks in which no new deals got looked at. Measured after: time per closing drops from roughly 14 hours to about 3.5, and the 3.5 is real decisions, reviewing disclosures and deciding on inspection items, plus reading the coordinator's calendar. Six files, $2,370 total. Against that, in the same fourteen months the investor underwrites about 60 more deals than in the prior year, and two of the six purchases come out of that extra volume. The part that nearly breaks it: file three is a seller-financed purchase. The coordinator has never run one and says so, and the agreement is that she handles the same items she handles on any file while the note and deed of trust go to an attorney. That works only because she said it upfront. What a coordinator may and may not prepare or advise on varies by state, and the line on seller-financed paper is narrower than on a standard resale, so the scope goes in writing before she opens the file. What is worth keeping: a buy-side only scope and a weekly Friday summary email in a fixed format. Also paying at close rather than monthly, which keeps the coordinator interested in files actually closing. What that investor would change: hiring at deal two instead of deal three. The two self-coordinated closings teach the sequence and that is worth something, but it is not worth two of them.
