What does a transaction coordinator actually do that a good checklist doesn't?

Chasing humans. Not close. My software has never once gotten a loan processor to answer on the fourth attempt.

The distinction that matters for a beginner is between the calendar and the judgment about the calendar.

Software can read a contract date and set a reminder. What it doesn't do well is decide what a date means when the facts move. If an inspection report comes back on day 8 of a 10 day period and the buyer wants a repair request, someone has to know whether the request has to be delivered inside the original period or whether asking for it extends anything, and that answer depends on the contract form and on state practice, which differ. A coordinator who has run hundreds of files on the same form knows where that form is ambiguous.

The second thing you're selling is completeness of the file. Brokerages and state regulators have requirements about what documents must be in a closed file and how long they're kept, and those requirements vary by state and by broker. An agent who is out showing property will rarely catch that a disclosure was signed and never delivered. If you build this service line, get the specific file requirements for the states and brokerages you'd serve in writing before you quote anyone.

The third is the phone call, which @quarry already named.

On your pricing question, the fee buys an outcome. Nobody has to think about the deal between contract and close. Whether $400 is defensible depends on how much a blown contingency costs the client, and that's a number you should ask agents to tell you.

I've been reading contracts for six months and I still couldn't tell you reliably when a financing contingency is deemed waived on my state's form. That's the answer to your question. It isn't the reminder, it's knowing what the reminder is about.

Take a standard residential purchase agreement and count the deadlines that are computed rather than stated. Days after acceptance, days after receipt, business days versus calendar days, and what happens when day 10 lands on a holiday. On the forms I've read, more than half the dates are computed. A tool that reads the contract has to be told the counting convention and the convention differs by form and by state. That's the gap you're selling into.

Also worth saying, receipt-based deadlines are the ones that blow up, because receipt has to be proven, and nobody logs it unless somebody's job is logging it.

@trellis the way to price this is to ask an agent what one blown contingency has cost them. If the answer is zero because they've never blown one, they won't buy from you at any price. If it's $2,500 in earnest money once, $400 a file is cheap and you should be charging more than you're thinking of charging.

Went back over this. The TC never gives advice, but they know when a date is ambiguous. Where's the line between flagging ambiguity and advising on it? That seems narrow.

@juniper the line I've seen described is that the coordinator says "this deadline is Thursday and here are the two readings of the clause, ask your broker or your attorney which applies." They surface it and hand it off. Whether that crosses into unlicensed practice depends on state rules, which is genuinely a question for a licensed professional in the state you'd work in.

I'm still working out the cost of a first deal so $400 sounds like a lot to me, but I also spent a whole Saturday last month figuring out where to send one signed form.

The coordinator who calls me is doing my job for me and I answer them faster than I answer the agent, at least when it comes to the loan. That's not a compliment to coordinators. It's that they ask for one specific document instead of asking how it's going.

In the rural counties I look at, half of what a coordinator does is know that the title office closes at noon on Fridays and the recorder wants originals mailed. No software knows the local stuff and the local stuff is most of the delay.

Genuine beginner question, does the TC work for the agent or for the buyer? If they're chasing my lender I assumed they worked for me.

@rigging usually they're hired and paid by the agent, or the fee gets passed to the client at closing, and the client agrees to it. So they're the agent's contractor working on your file. That's worth reading in the agreement before you sign it, because it determines who they take direction from.

Renovation angle. If there's a repair addendum with a scope in it, someone has to make sure the scope in the addendum matches what the contractor actually agreed to do and that the completion date lands before the walkthrough. I've had a TC catch that twice. I've also had one paste a date wrong and cost me three days of crew time.

Nobody's answered the software question straight so I'll try. Cost per file for a coordinator at $400 on 60 files is $24,000. A transaction management platform at $50 a month is $600. The comparison only works if the platform replaces the labor, and it doesn't, it replaces the spreadsheet. What the platform actually does is raise how many files one coordinator can carry, which pushes fees down over time rather than to zero. That's the pressure on your service line, @trellis, and it's slow.

@ledger that's what I've seen. My coordinator went from about 25 active files to 40 in two years, same person, better software, and her fee went up not down. She just makes more.

Asking the embarrassing one. If the TC misses the date, who eats it? Because if the answer is the agent every time, then the client is buying convenience and not protection, and that changes what it's worth.

@compass I asked that in an interview with a coordinator and she said her agreement caps her liability at the fee. So $400. Which answered my question about what I was buying.

So the product is attention. That's clearer to me than most things I've read this month.

Our coordinator is on salary rather than per file, and that's a deliberate choice for a team our size. The reason is the thing @hollow said. Local knowledge compounds and I don't want it walking out the door with a contractor. At our volume the salary math beat per-file at around 90 files a year, but that number moves with what you'd have to pay for a good one in your market.

This thread is the first time coordination has sounded like a real job to me rather than data entry. The receipt-logging point from @fathom is what did it.

@trellis one thing about building it as a service line off a management business. You already have the vendor relationships and the local title contacts. That's a real head start, and it's the part software can't hand you. What you don't have is the contract form fluency, and that takes files, not study.

The thing I'd warn you about, after five years of this, is that coordination is priced per file, so your revenue is somebody else's deal flow. When the market slowed my per-file lines dropped before my retainer lines did. If you add it, add it next to something recurring, don't replace anything.

@thatch that's the real constraint in the whole thread. Everything else here is about whether the work is skilled. Whether it's a good business depends on transaction volume you don't control.

Voted for the last option. Half the agents I've talked to could do the admin fine and just don't want to, and they'll pay to not want to. That's a durable reason to buy something.

I'm mid-licensing and my instructor said flatly that the coordinator is not a substitute for the agent's own review of the file, whatever the coordinator's agreement says. That reframed it for me. You're buying execution and you still own the read.