Two agents want me coordinating at $375. I'm still in pre-license class.

Track hours on the first five files in 15 minute blocks. Not a rough estimate, actual blocks. My TC told me she priced her first year off a guess and was working for about $22 an hour without knowing it, and she only found out because she started logging.

Also the file type matters more than you'd think. On my small multifamily purchases there's a rent roll, estoppels, and tenant notices that a straight resale file never touches. That's not a $375 file at the same effort level.

I do fast files, some of them close in 14 days, and I'd pay you $500 without blinking if you answer inside an hour during business hours. Price is nearly irrelevant to me next to response time. The TC I fired was $295 and took a day and a half to confirm she'd received a signed addendum. That cost me more than the difference.

So before you settle on $375, work out what you're actually promising on turnaround. That's the thing people buy.

It's a punch list with legal consequences, which is roughly how I think about my own closings. The question I'd ask myself is who's on the hook for chasing the lender. On my last two purchases the lender was the entire delay and my agent kept saying "the TC is following up." Following up isn't the same as getting an answer. Decide which one you're selling.

Read whatever agreement you send them as if you were the one signing it. What happens when a deadline slips and the buyer loses their earnest money? Where does that land? Most TC agreements I've seen cap liability at the fee and put compliance back on the agent and their broker, and whether that holds up depends on your state and on the actual facts, so that's a conversation with an attorney before you send version one to anybody.

Pay-at-close means the files that eat your life are the ones that pay you nothing. I've got one right now on its third extension, appraisal came in low, buyer's lender changed programs. If a TC were on it she'd be 14 hours in and heading for zero.

Charge something on cancellation. $125 or $150, disclosed up front. Every good TC I've worked with has that clause and no agent has ever argued with me about it.

Genuinely asking, what fills the five hours? I've read the contract-to-close list a dozen times and it still reads like ten emails. Is it the chasing, or is it the document prep?

@pike it's mostly the chasing, and the chasing is unpredictable, which is why hours per file has a long tail rather than an average.

@halyard the thing to nail down before Friday is the brokerage side. In a lot of states an unlicensed assistant can do administrative work while anything that looks like advising a client or negotiating crosses a line, and separately the brokerage may require you to be under their license, sign a compliance addendum, or work inside their transaction management system. Those are two different questions with two different answers and both vary by state. Ask agent B for the name of their broker and email the broker directly. If the broker won't answer in writing, that tells you something.

Your own numbers: 10 files at five hours is 50 hours a month, and your dry run was your easiest possible file because you had no relationship pressure and nothing else in queue. Real load with a normal tail is closer to six or seven, so 60 to 70 hours. Add intake calls and the weekly status emails agents expect and you're at 75.

At $375 x 10 that's $3,750 for 75 hours, so about $50 an hour gross before software, before the files that die unpaid, before self-employment tax. That's a workable rate. It is not a workable rate in the same month as an exam. Take agent B, run four to six files, and see what your real hours are before you say yes to A.

Went through this twice and there's still something basic I want to check. How is a TC different from the escrow officer or the title company? I thought they were the ones tracking the closing.

@juniper the escrow or title side handles the money and the recording and only cares about their own requirements. Nobody there is calling the buyer's agent to say the inspection response is due tomorrow.

@halyard on volume, ask both agents what their last 24 months looked like month by month rather than what they average. My purchase timing tells me spring and early summer are heavy and January is dead, and if that's true for them your $3,750 month is a $1,400 month twice a year.

Cost side, since nobody's said it. Transaction management software, e-sign if the brokerage doesn't give you a seat, a business phone line, and errors and omissions coverage if you can get it as a TC. When I priced out a small service setup for myself the software and insurance together were the two line items I'd underestimated by the widest margin. Get actual quotes this week, not ranges off a blog.

The lender is where your hours go, and it's the part you have the least control over. Conditions come in waves, the borrower sends the wrong bank statement, appraisal gets ordered late. A TC who can read a conditions list and tell the agent exactly which item is holding the file is worth real money. One who just forwards the email isn't.

And don't tell borrowers anything about their loan terms. Route those questions straight back to the loan officer in writing.

Worth knowing what closing looks like where you are. Some states close through attorneys, some through title companies, and the rural counties I look in can be slow on recording, which stretches the tail of a file well past the closing date. If agent B's investor files are in outlying counties your five hour estimate has a different shape than a suburban resale.

Reading this whole thread with my notes app open. Saving the cancellation fee point especially.

This reads like a second job with a boss who has two heads. I'm not saying don't, but you're studying for an exam. One agent.

Scope creep will get you and it will get you in month two. It starts as "can you also confirm the utilities" and ends with you scheduling photographers, ordering the sign, and writing the follow-up emails to the buyer's family.

Write the scope as a list of what's included and one line saying anything else is quoted separately. Then actually quote it separately the first time, even for $40, or the list means nothing. My renovation scopes taught me that the hard way.

Run the fall-through drag. If 12% of files under contract don't close and you get paid nothing on those, your $375 is an effective $330 per file you actually opened. On 10 opened files that's $3,300, not $3,750. With @quarry's $150 cancellation fee it comes back to about $348.

And @sextant's 75 hours is the number I'd stress test, because it assumes your average file behaves. One file that goes sideways can eat 15 hours by itself. What's wrong with that framing is that I'm treating fall-through as random when it probably correlates with agent, so ask them both what their fall-through rate has been.

I brought a TC on at deal five because I was doing my own tracking in a spreadsheet and missed a title objection window by two days. What changed wasn't the hours saved, it was that I stopped carrying the deadlines in my head while I was out looking at houses.

What I pay for is somebody telling me the thing before I ask. If you can be that person for agent B on this one live file with 11 days on inspection, you'll have a client for years.

Basic question I'd have been embarrassed to ask: how do you actually get paid? Does it come off the settlement statement at closing, or do you invoice the agent after? Because those are very different collection problems and I've never seen anyone explain which is normal.

@compass I wondered the same thing.

@halyard where did you learn the deadline sequence? I'm coming from a completely different industry and the contract-to-close timeline is the part I can't picture. Did the dry run teach you or did somebody walk you through it first?

Does a TC ever touch the note or the assignment documents, or does all of that sit with the closing attorney? I'm trying to figure out where the paper actually gets handled and I keep losing track of who has what.

Two coordinators handle files for my small team. Flat fee per file, invoiced monthly, and we pay a reduced fee on files that die after 10 days. The numbers are fine.

What gets a TC dropped from my rotation: going quiet. Silence does it, mistakes don't. If you tell me on Tuesday that the lender hasn't responded since Friday I can pick up a phone. If I find out on Thursday because the seller's agent called me, we're done. Build a Friday status email you send whether or not anything happened.

Following this because TC keeps coming up as the way into the service side without needing capital. @cobalt, when you hire, do you care whether they're licensed or is it purely the process record?

Don't sign agent A yet. Two clients from the same meetup who both found you the same way is one referral source, and if that source cools you have nothing. Take B, get four files clean, then use those four files as the thing you show a third and fourth agent who don't know you socially.

Also your friend's dry run file is a case study. Write it down now while you remember the details, including the disclosure that got signed wrong.

Five years in on my own service business and the one thing I'd undo is starting cheap. Raising a price on an existing client is a conversation nobody enjoys and some of them leave. Start at $425 for the financed resale files and $475 where there's a tenant or a rent roll involved, and if agent B pushes back you've learned something on Friday instead of in month nine.

Land files run differently. No lender, often no inspection, and then a 90 day survey and title cycle where nothing happens for weeks and then everything does. Different rhythm, same fee if you're not careful.

The licensing piece is what I'd resolve before anything else, and I'd want the broker's answer in an email rather than agent B relaying it. @fathom's split between what an unlicensed person may do and what the brokerage requires is the clearest version of that I've read.

Separately, if you do take agent B's live file, would you write up how the 11 days went? I'm trying to work out whether I'd be any good at this and reading somebody's actual week would tell me more than another list of duties.