$39,000 a year is the US national average for a transaction coordinator, hired to know which document is missing. Without the hire, it is your evenings.
The file closes when someone remembers. Storage is bought. Two paid products keep the documents. Neither says which is missing, from whom, or how late. For a six-person brokerage the list lives in one head, and the chase is a Friday afternoon of messages.
By hand today
Storage is cheap. PropSpace lists Transaction Documents, in its own words a way to “Efficiently generate and manage invoices, receipts, and contracts”, at AED 220 a user a month (propspace.com). Street.co.uk files compliance and renewals under property management, at a price it does not publish (street.co.uk). Both store. Neither is described as chasing.
The chase is a job. A US brokerage hires a Transaction Coordinator to:
“Enter client information into the client database system and submit appropriate documentation to the office broker for file compliance and keep track of transaction activity”
Wizehire, on Real Estate Transaction Coordinator job description
That is the whole stage in one advert: a deal has a set of documents the file needs, each signed and dated, and somebody must know which are not there yet, who owes them, and for how long. This book does not say what belongs on that list. It differs by place and by deal, and it is yours. Without the hire, a document is chased when someone remembers it, with no record of the asking.
What it costs you each week
$39,000 a year
The published national average for a US Transaction Coordinator, hired to know which document is missing. Without the hire, the list is your evenings.
Source: Wizehire, Real Estate Transaction Coordinator job description, national average salary, read 14 September 2026
No source gives hours per file, so this book prints none. The cost is a salary: $39,000, the national average Wizehire prints for the role (wizehire.com), paid in evenings where there is no hire. The other cost has no figure: a file audited by hand on completion day finds the missing item on the day it is hardest to get.
The build
Open Claude Code. Ask for the list. The list is yours, once per deal type. The folder is read against it. Signatures come from the signature vendor. Who owes each missing item is a column. The chase is one reminder per item, with the days overdue.
Open Claude Code in the engine folder. Connect three servers. Google Drive comes through the community Google Workspace server. Airtable’s remote server reads and writes records (support.airtable.com). PandaDoc’s does status and signature tracking (developers.pandadoc.com).
Write the base once. A required table: one row per deal type per document the file needs, named in your words, with a column for who usually owes it: the client, the other side, or you. A deals table: one row per live deal, its folder and its dates. Then say:
Read both tables. For every live deal, list its Drive folder and match each file to a row on its deal type's
list by the name I gave it. Ask PandaDoc for the status of every
document sent on this deal; sent and unsigned is not present. Write
one row per deal per document: present, missing or unsigned, who owes
it, and days overdue against the deal's dates. For every missing or
unsigned item, draft one reminder in my words to the person who owes
it, naming the item and the days, and send it by email where I have
marked that person send freely; otherwise leave the draft on the row.
Never add a document that is not on my list. Each morning print one
line per deal: present of required, the oldest missing item, who owes
it, days overdue.
What comes back is a script, a schedule, one row per document per deal, and a morning line: the deal, nine of eleven, the oldest missing item, who owes it, six days.
Two honest limits, which Claude Code will tell you about. Present is not adequate: the chain matches a file name to a row; whether that file is the right version, signed by the right hand, is a person’s read. And the reminder goes freely on email only. On WhatsApp it goes from chapter 8’s business number, as a template once the window has closed, sent by you; never from a personal session, whose terms forbid applications that “interact with our Business Services without our prior written consent”.
What it feeds
The file, closed. The last stage reads which stage leaks on Monday. A file that closed itself is one Friday nobody spent chasing. The number to read: files complete on completion day with no audit, and the age of the oldest missing item.
Every email reminder lands on the contact through chapter 16: the record shows who was asked, for what, and when. Chapter 20 reads the Monday number.
The number that proves this stage worked is files complete on completion day without a manual audit, beside the total, and the age of the oldest outstanding document; never a rate alone.
What stays with a person
What goes on the list. A person decides what a file needs, for their place and their deal. The machine never adds a line to it. A person makes the call when someone will not send, and reads whether what arrived is the right thing.
The objection is that a machine has no place near a compliance file. It is given none near the judgement. What the file needs is written by you, once per deal type; the machine reads against that list and never adds to it. Whether a document that arrived is the right one is a person’s read, every time. The chain knows only present, absent, unsigned and overdue.
At six days a reminder is a draft. At twenty days, when the other side has gone quiet, it is a phone call, and the morning line only says the day has come.
The tools you already pay for
Nothing new to buy.
Folder is Google Drive through the community Workspace server, OneDrive through Softeria’s Microsoft 365 server, or a folder on disk through the protocol’s own Filesystem server.
Checklist is Airtable, official or community (github.com), or a Google Sheet on the same Workspace server.
Signatures is PandaDoc, or Docusign through its own server, “now available in Open Beta” in its own words (developers.docusign.com).
Mailbox is Gmail, or Microsoft 365 Mail.
Every live deal on one line: what is missing, who owes it, and for how many days. Then the file closes itself.
Ask: For the deals live this week, can you say from your desk which document is still missing, and who owes it?
This is stage 19 of twenty, after keeping an agreed deal moving and before seeing which stage is leaking on Monday. The whole engine in order is the book, Building a real estate sales engine with Claude Code and Codex, end to end.