The questions agents ask before hiring coordination help, and a few they ask afterwards. Where a question has a longer answer, the pillar article is linked underneath it.
A TC takes a ratified contract and runs it to settlement: extracting every deadline, opening title and escrow, ordering disclosure and association packages, chasing signatures, tracking lender conditions, and keeping the parties informed. The core of the job is owning the timeline so the agent does not have to.
Independent contract TCs usually charge a flat fee per closed file, scaled by scope: listing side, buy side, or full coordination. Because most bill only on files that actually close, the rate carries the fall-through risk on work already done, which is why it looks high next to an hourly equivalent.
Four models exist: per closed file, hourly, salaried in-house, or bundled into software. Per closed file dominates independent coordination. Who pays varies by market and brokerage policy: commonly the agent out of commission, sometimes the client as a settlement line item, sometimes the brokerage as an agent service.
Usually not, under the standard per-closed-file model. The coordinator absorbs the loss on files that die after real work went into them, and that risk is priced into the closed-file rate. Some coordinators charge a reduced cancellation fee instead, which is worth asking about before you engage.
The usual trigger is around two closings a month, but volume is the wrong test. The better one: in the last quarter, did you miss a deadline or catch one late enough that it was luck rather than process? If yes, you were already paying for coordination, in risk instead of fees.
A TC owns an outcome, that the file reaches settlement without a missed date, and carries domain knowledge about contingencies, disclosures, title and lender conditions. A VA executes tasks you define, across whatever you delegate. One is hired for judgment inside a domain, the other for throughput across many.
A VA with genuine transaction experience can. A general VA usually cannot, because the work is not sending emails, it is knowing which email is urgent today and why. The failure is quiet: everything looks handled until a deadline nobody recognized as load-bearing has already passed.
In-house buys control, immediacy and culture, and costs salary plus payroll, benefits, equipment, software and management time, plus a coverage gap when that person is away. Contract coordination costs more per file and comes with built-in backup. Steady high volume favours in-house; variable volume favours contract.
An unlicensed TC cannot advise on price or terms, cannot negotiate for a client, and cannot answer "should I accept this?" Those require a licensee. The clean line is advice versus administration: judgment stays with the agent, ownership of dates and documents belongs to the coordinator.
When coordination hours start displacing prospecting hours, because prospecting is the one thing you cannot delegate. Most agents hire late, having spent months absorbing the cost in evenings rather than fees. The signal to watch is turning down business you could have serviced.
Coordination typically runs six to ten hours per file, spread across evenings and weekends in short interruptions. The hours matter less than when they land: they arrive during the windows you would otherwise spend on follow-up, which is why the real cost is measured in deals not started.
Not always a person, but always a system. Below about two closings a month, per-file coordination is marginal and software that computes deadlines from the contract is the higher-return move. Past that, the coordination hours start eating the hours that generate your next file.
Delegate deadline tracking and escalation, document collection, disclosure assembly, ordering title and association packages, settlement statement reconciliation, and status updates. Keep the negotiation, the difficult client conversation, and the call on whether to invoke a contingency. Delegate the mechanical and high-consequence work first.
Do you bill on files that do not close? What exactly is in scope? What is your coverage plan when you are unavailable? How many active files are you carrying? And the one people forget: who owns the file records if we stop working together?
It depends almost entirely on how much tracking is automated. Working from memory and a spreadsheet, most coordinators top out around ten to fifteen active files and fail suddenly rather than gradually. With a deadline engine carrying the recall, the same person commonly runs twenty-five or more.
By sorting on obligations rather than files. Deadlines from different transactions compete for the same hour, so a per-file view hides the real queue. The working view is one list across every file, ordered by consequence, plus a bucket for new ratifications not yet fully extracted.
Rank by irreversibility, not by due date. An expiring contingency that forfeits earnest money outranks a settlement task due sooner but easily moved. Ask what is actually lost if this slips a day; if the answer is nothing, it is not today’s work.
The recurring one is ordering long-lead items late: association packages, surveys, payoff statements. The second is treating a received title commitment as a reviewed one. The third is doing the deadline extraction on day three instead of day one, which spends the buffer before anything has gone wrong.
Ask what the broker can currently see. If file review happens after closing, on whatever agents submit, then problems get found when the only remedy is documentation. An office needs coordination at the point where supervisory responsibility exceeds supervisory visibility.
DIY works while volume is low and the tracking fits in your head. It fails suddenly rather than gradually, because the failure mode is a dropped item and one dropped item is indistinguishable from excellent performance until it surfaces. Outsource the remembering before you outsource the doing.
Start with the system rather than the person. A deadline engine that recalculates when a date moves removes the highest-consequence failure for a fraction of a per-file fee. Then add contract coordination on listing-side files first, because that side is the more standardized of the two.
The value is not in files saved dramatically, it is in problems surfacing in week two instead of the final week. A missed financing contingency can cost the client their earnest money and cost you the client. Coordination is priced like an expense and behaves like an insurance premium.