By Alex Mont-Ros and Amanda Creter
Earlier this year, we had a real estate agent come to us inquiring on what exactly do we do as transaction coordinators? The interesting aspect of the question was who it was coming from. This particular real estate agent was tenured, which surprised us a bit. There was an assumption made that he would have known the functions and value provided by using a transaction coordinator, but we were mistaken on making this assumption, hence why we felt the need to write this and provide a description and better understanding of the roll of a transaction coordinator, and the time they help give back to the real estate agents they serve.
So….what is a Transaction Coordinator anyway? In a simple description, a Transaction Coordinator is responsible for managing the real estate transaction process from start to finish. They are the liaison between Real Estate professionals, their clients, and the 3rd party partners (escrow, lenders, etc). The Transaction Coordinator will monitor the real estate transaction by handling all of the pertinent documents for the sale of each residential and commercial transactions, eliminating one of the most time consuming elements that real estate agents deal with on each transaction they are a part of. A must for real estate agents that want to scale and grow their business.
To some Real Estate Agents, especially newer Agents, this term may be foreign. But Transaction Coordinators have been around for years, creating strategic partnerships with Agents to help take as much of the work off their hands as possible, so they can focus their energy on building relationships and driving new business to increase revenue. In dividing the labor and allowing each party to focus on what they specialize in, you increase the productivity of all the parties involved.
Think of a Transaction Coordinator as part of a real estate agent’s executive staff. They are there to help divide and conquer the work. Real Estate Professionals are extremely busy. Their clients want constant updates and often the Agent isn’t able to get back to them right away, especially when the business is in growth mode.
By partnering with a Transaction Coordinator, a Real Estate Agent eliminates this issue since the Coordinator is tracking everything from start to finish, they likely have the answer on hand. This also makes the process much cleaner and simpler, since the Real Estate Transaction is being handled by the same person from start to finish. The partnership with a Transaction Coordinator improves customer satisfaction; further increasing the real estate agent’s customer retention and likelihood for referrals.
In our experience, the time that a Transaction Coordinator saves a Real Estate Agent is 10-20 hours…Per Transaction! Let’s say a real estate agent is going to close 20 Real Estate Transactions this year. If they are spending 20 hours on each transaction, that is 400 hours of their time being spent on paperwork, follow-up, coordinating, and management of the transaction sales cycle. That time could be better utilized on revenue generating activities like networking, lead generation, getting deals to mutual acceptance, and spending quality time with their clients. Not to mention, possibly shutting down and taking a vacation without having to worry about the details of the transaction. Imagine what you could do with 400 more hours at your disposal? Even 20 hours for 1 transaction? The point here is that your time matters and a real estate agent needs to prioritize what matters most and focus on high priority activities.
A Transaction Coordinator is crucial for a successful agent or team. They can save hundreds of hours by delegating the operational aspects of their business (non-revenue generating activities), to allow real estate agents time to focus on creating new business opportunities which results in more income or better yet, improved work-life balance.
In a world where many successful real estate agents say time is money, can you afford not to strategically align with a Transaction Coordinator?
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