Transaction management isn’t admin work. It’s margin protection

If your brokerage is scaling, your close process better be airtight.

In commercial real estate, deals don’t fall apart because brokers stop pushing. They fall apart because something in the back office does. A missed SNDA. A miscalculated commission. A last-minute lender delay that no one flagged.

Even seasoned shops with strong deal flow get tripped up by a clunky close process. That’s why we built the Buildout Transaction Management Playbook—to give brokerages a clear, repeatable system to manage every lease and sale transaction from start to finish.

Download the free guide and learn how to keep your deals on track and your commissions clean.

Why a Process Playbook Isn’t Just for Ops Teams

You’ve likely seen it: a deal with a 1031 buyer stalls because the estoppel certificates weren’t sent until two days before closing. The buyer’s lender flags it, counsel scrambles, and everyone’s waiting on a signature that should’ve been secured during due diligence.

That’s not an ops miss. That’s a revenue risk.

Here’s how the playbook breaks down CRE transaction management into three critical phases—each with specific best practices and real-world broker pain points it solves:

Phase 1: Pre-Transaction Preparation

This is the table-setting stage—and skipping it is like showing up to a pitch without a proposal. You need:

• A full document review: LOI, PSA, lease abstracts, title reports, financials.
• Assigned responsibilities across your team: Who’s tracking escrow? Who owns the due diligence checklist? Who’s coordinating with outside counsel?
• A mapped-out deal calendar: inspection periods, financing contingencies, estoppel deadlines and closing dates.
  

Broker scenario: Your industrial team lands a 4-property portfolio. But because no one standardized the data pull on current leases, your client discovers a non-transferable use clause during legal review—four days before the sale. The deal doesn’t die, but it gets delayed—and so does your payday.

Phase 2: Transaction Execution

This is where most deals run into friction—because the initial push fades, and small tasks get missed. Your job here:

• Centralize stakeholder communication between buyer, seller, brokers, lenders, and legal.
• Track critical tasks like finalizing purchase agreements, clearing title, and coordinating inspections or environmental reviews.
• Surface delays before they become deal-killers—things like appraisal lag or a lender not getting estoppels in time.

Broker scenario: Your retail buyer has a CMBS lender who needs a current rent roll and utility estoppels. The admin emailed them but didn’t confirm receipt. Closing is scheduled, but funding is pending until the lender receives the necessary documentation. Now, escrow is off calendar and your commission is delayed two weeks—on a $14 million deal.

Phase 3: Post-Close Review

The close isn’t done until it’s reconciled. That means full operational cleanup and commission clarity. To do this right:

• Confirm all financials—commission splits, invoice schedules, client billing and reimbursement tracking.
• Archive signed documents, final closing statements and transactional records.
• Review what worked and what didn’t and standardize the process for next time.

Broker scenario: One of your junior producers closed a multi-tenant office deal with a stepped split that adjusted at $250K in gross revenue. Your spreadsheet didn’t catch it. The broker’s shorted $12K. Now, you’re issuing a manual correction, writing an apology email, and hoping they don’t take their book elsewhere.

Closing Clean Isn’t a Bonus. It’s Your Brand.

You already do the hard work—winning the listing, navigating the negotiation, pushing deals forward. The transaction management playbook helps you protect that work and get paid on time, without having to firefight on every close.

Download the Buildout Transaction Management Playbook to take control of your deal process, protect your broker relationships, and put your back office on offense—not just clean up.

Because in this business, what happens after the LOI is what defines your margin.

Get the playbook now