NAR publishes a document called 179 Ways Agents Who Are REALTORS® Are Worth Every Penny of Their Compensation. It is exactly what it sounds like: a numbered list of every task an agent may perform in a residential transaction, one to 179.
It normally gets quoted in commission arguments. There is a more useful reading, because the numbering says something the total doesn't.
Where the list turns administrative
Item 120 is "when Offer to Purchase contract is accepted, deliver to buyer's agent." Item 121 is recording and depositing the earnest money.
Everything from there to item 179 — the final entry, post-closing follow-up — is fifty-nine tasks, grouped under NAR's own headings.
| Items | NAR's heading |
|---|---|
| 121–131 | Contracts |
| 132–143 | Inspections |
| 144–150 | Home Inspections |
| 151–165 | The Appraisal |
| 166–174 | Processing for Closing |
| 175–179 | Follow-Up After Closing |
A sample, verbatim from the list: order the septic inspection if applicable (133), receive and review the septic report and assess the impact (134), deliver a copy to the lender and buyer (135), request final closing figures (165), receive and carefully review the closing statement (166), change the MLS status (174), share the warranty paperwork for future claims (175).
Fifty-nine discrete steps that happen after somebody already said yes. None of them wins the client. None of them earns the commission. They protect one that is already earned.
Now the number that moves
NAR's 2026 Member Profile, published 25 June: the typical Realtor closed nine transaction sides last year. The year before it was ten.
Sides fall. The list does not. Item 133 is still there whether you closed fifteen files or eight.
Nine sides is roughly 531 post-contract steps a year, and the count per file is fixed no matter what the market does. Which means the administrative share of the job rises in a slow year — exactly when there is least margin to absorb it. And the standard response to a slow year is to push harder on lead generation, which has to come out of somewhere.
NAR's framing is "all the things — big and small — that an agent may do." It is a maximal list, not an average of what a given file requires. Your transactions do not run 179 items, and anyone who tells you they do is selling something. The list is also dated 2023.
I use it because it is the only enumerated, publicly checkable inventory of this work that exists — and because the shape holds even if your number is half of it. Whatever your real post-contract count is, it does not shrink when your sides do.
What it costs to buy your way out
| File type | Per file |
|---|---|
| Typical residential | $300–500 |
| Full observed range | $250–600 |
| Complex or commercial | $500–800 |
Nine files at the midpoint is roughly $3,600 a year — genuinely cheap against fifty-nine steps a file, and the reason so many shops do it. I am not going to argue against hiring a coordinator; for most offices it is the correct first move.
It has a ceiling that has nothing to do with money. A coordinator is a person. They take vacation in August, which is when your July contracts close. They hold the municipal quirks in their head rather than in a system, so the knowledge leaves when they do. And in New Jersey, attorney review compresses the work into clustered weeks — the load spikes, and one person is the wrong shape for a spike.
The test, and you don't need me for it
Open NAR's list — it is a free PDF, linked below. Read items 121 to 179 and mark the ones your office genuinely does on a typical file.
Then answer three questions:
- What is your real number?
- Who does those steps, and what would they be doing instead?
- If that person left in October, how many of them are written down anywhere other than in their head?
Most brokers of record have never counted. The count usually surprises them, and the third question is the one that lands.
Sources
- National Association of REALTORS®, 179 Ways Agents Who Are REALTORS® Are Worth Every Penny of Their Compensation. The full numbered list, items 1–179, grouped under Pre-Listing Activities, Listing Appointment Presentation, Offers, Contracts, Inspections, Home Inspections, The Appraisal, Processing for Closing, and Follow-Up After Closing. PDF dated 2023. Item numbers and task text above were read from the PDF directly and counted, not taken from a summary. List (PDF).
- NAR, 105 More Ways — the companion document. Supplement (PDF).
- NAR, 2026 Member Profile, published 25 June 2026. Typical member closed nine transaction sides in 2025, down from ten; median experience 13 years, up from 12. Announcement.
- Transaction coordinator rates, 2026 — $300–500 typical per file, $250–600 range, $500–800 complex or commercial. These are vendor rate cards, which is the appropriate kind of evidence for a price. AgentUp, reBillion.