The benchmark on this site is a six-question survey of how brokerages handle closing files. This page states what it asks, what is stored, who is actually in the sample, and the threshold a number has to clear before we publish it. If a statistic is missing any of that, it is not worth quoting — including ours.
What the benchmark asks
Six questions, chosen because each one changes what a file review has to cover:
- How many agents does your brokerage have? — 1-10 · 11-50 · 51-150 · 151-500 · 500+
- What is your role? — Broker-owner · Managing broker · Operations or compliance lead · Admin or transaction coordinator · Agent
- How many states do you operate in? — 1 · 2-3 · 4-9 · 10 or more
- Who reviews closing files today? — I do · A managing broker · In-house admin or TC · An outside partner · Nobody consistently
- Hours a week your brokerage spends reviewing files? — Under 5 · 5-10 · 11-20 · More than 20
- Are your brokerage’s own file requirements written down? — Written and current · Written but out of date · In people’s heads · No
Answers are fixed choices, not free text. A submitted value that is not on these lists is discarded rather than recorded.
What is recorded, and what is not
- Recorded: the six choices, the date, and the page the visitor first landed on.
- Not recorded: name, brokerage, or IP address.
- Recorded only if you ask for your results: the email address you type, so we can send them.
Rate limiting uses a salted hash of the requesting address that expires within the hour. It is never written to the response record.
Who is actually in the sample
This is a self-selected sample, not a random one. Everyone in it arrived at a page about outsourcing file review and chose to answer six questions about it. That skews the sample toward brokerages already considering the question, and toward the roles that read operations material in the first place.
So any result here describes brokerages looking into outsourced file review. It does not describe brokerages generally, and we will not write it up as though it does.
When a number gets published
- No overall figure below 40 completed responses.
- No figure for any segment — a role, an agent band, a state count — below 10 responses in that segment.
- Every published figure carries its n, its date range, and a link back to this page.
- Where a relationship is a correlation, it is stated as a correlation, with a note on why the groups may differ.
Until those thresholds are met, the results screen says so instead of showing a peer percentage. That is why you did not see one.
What we will not do with the responses
- Sell, rent, or share the response list.
- Publish any response in a form that identifies a brokerage.
- Report an aggregate we cannot show the working for.
Corrections
If a figure we publish from this survey looks wrong, write to salesteam@empowertransactions.com. Corrections get made here, and noted.
Method last updated 26 August 2026. Survey opened August 2026; no results published yet.