Real Estate Transaction Management Software Built for California Deals
Count the signatures in a single California file. A TDS. An SPQ. A natural hazard report covering flood, fire, and seismic zones. A federal lead paint packet if the house went up before 1978. Then whatever the city or county adds on top. Each one needs the right party to deliver it and the right signatures at the right moment. Multiply that by a team doing 15 deals a month and the question stops being whether something slips. It is when.
Full access for 14 days. The real product, your real deals, day one.
No credit card. No contract. We set it up with you - free.
A 1-minute walkthrough - listing to closed, end to end.
1,700+
real estate companies
4.6M+
transactions managed
16 years
in business
~30,000
closings last month
Paperless Pipeline turns the disclosure stack into a checklist that applies itself, by deal type, side, location, and status, and keeps a complete audit trail for the three years the DRE expects you to be able to produce the file.
In short
The California disclosure stack, drawn out
Most state pages say “manage your disclosures” and move on. Here is the actual stack a California residential sale generates, layer by layer, with who provides each item and when it gets signed.
| Disclosure | Who provides it | When it gets signed |
|---|---|---|
| Transfer Disclosure Statement (TDS) The seller's statutory disclosure of the property's condition, required on most 1-4 unit residential sales. | Seller | As soon as practicable before transfer of title. Late delivery gives the buyer a short statutory window to rescind. |
| Seller Property Questionnaire (SPQ) The CAR form that expands on the TDS with the seller's detailed knowledge of the property, item by item. | Seller | Goes out with the disclosure package after acceptance, signed alongside the TDS. |
| Natural Hazard Disclosure (NHD) Disclosure of statutory hazard zones: flood, fire hazard severity, earthquake fault and seismic hazard zones. | Third-party NHD company, ordered by the seller side | Ordered early so the report can come back before the buyer reviews it. Signed by seller and buyer. |
| Federal lead-based paint disclosure Required on homes built before 1978, with the buyer acknowledging receipt in writing. | Seller | Before the buyer is obligated under the contract. |
| Supplemental and local disclosures Statewide statutory booklets plus whatever the city or county piles on: occupancy rules, retrofit requirements, point-of-sale obligations. | Seller, agent, or a third party, depending on the item | Varies by jurisdiction, and changes when you cross a county line. |
Inside Paperless Pipeline
The RPA clock behind every disclosure
Timing in a California deal flows from the CAR Residential Purchase Agreement.
By default the RPA gives the buyer 17 days after acceptance for the investigation contingency: the window to complete inspections, review disclosures and reports, and approve matters affecting the property, unless the parties write a different number into the contract. Source: CAR Residential Purchase Agreement.
- AcceptanceDay 0
The clock starts. Every date on the file counts from here.
- Disclosures outDay 3
TDS and SPQ delivered, NHD report ordered, lead paint packet on pre-1978 homes.
- Investigation contingency (default)Day 17
Inspections done, disclosures and reports reviewed, written removal signed or the deal renegotiated.
- Loan and appraisal contingenciesDay 21
Day counts are set by the contract. Confirm the current defaults against the CAR form revision your office is using.
What trips up out-of-state brokers
Key Dates in Paperless Pipeline auto-calculate task due dates from acceptance in either calendar or business days, so entering one date populates the rest of the schedule instead of six manual calendar entries. Dashboards show what is due today, what is overdue, and what is coming up across every file in the office, not one deal at a time.
Instant reports do the rest. Closing in 30 Days and Expiring in 14 Days let a coordinator see every contingency approaching across a whole roster of agents in one view, which is the difference between managing 40 files and remembering 40 files. And per-transaction Maildrop addresses pull disclosure emails straight into the file, so the signed removal and the conversation around it live in the same place rather than in somebody's sent folder.
Put your next acceptance date in and watch the schedule build itself. Start your free 14-day trial
Three years is the DRE's number. Plan for it.
A licensed California broker must retain, for three years, copies of all listings, deposit receipts, canceled checks, trust records, and other documents executed or obtained in connection with licensed transactions. The three years run from the date the transaction closed, or from the listing date if the transaction never closed. After notice, those records have to be made available to the Real Estate Commissioner for examination, inspection, and copying, and an audit can follow on sufficient cause. Source: California Business and Professions Code section 10148. The Department of Real Estate is the state regulator that licenses and oversees the industry.
Read the clause the way a broker should
- 1
Produce the file for one deal, fast
One transaction page per deal holds every document, note, email, task, and date. There is no reassembling a file out of three inboxes and a shared drive. - 2
Show what happened, not just what is there
A complete audit trail records every action in the transaction: who uploaded a document, who reviewed it, when it was approved, what changed. - 3
Give an examiner a way to look without touching
Optional auditor access lets an outside reviewer see what they need to see without the ability to edit or remove anything. - 4
Keep agents in their lane
Granular permissions mean agents see their own files while compliance staff and managers see the whole office. - 5
Hold your own archive
Free monthly vendor-neutral backups mean the brokerage keeps its own copy of the record, rather than depending on any single system to still be around in year three. Including this one.
Unlimited storage matters more here than it sounds. Storage caps quietly push brokerages into deleting old files to make room, and the years they delete are the exact years the DRE can still ask about. Nothing on any Paperless Pipeline plan asks you to make that trade.
One brokerage, many Californias
A California brand can have offices in Long Beach, Palm Springs, and San Jose that operate like three different companies. Different local disclosures. Different MLSs. Different escrow habits and different title relationships.
100,000+
Professionals on CRMLS
California Regional MLS, the largest MLS in the country, across dozens of associations.
1
MLS for Silicon Valley + the central coast
MLSListings covers this region on its own system.
1
City-only MLS in San Francisco
The San Francisco Association of REALTORS runs its own SFAR MLS inside the city.
0
Extra cost per new office
Unlimited locations are included on every Paperless Pipeline plan.
Trying to run all of that off one shared checklist produces a checklist nobody follows. The Locations feature gives each office its own separated workspace: its own transactions, its own checklist templates tuned to that jurisdiction's disclosure requirements, its own staff. Leadership still reports across all of them, so the broker of record can see the whole company without every office seeing each other's files. The Enterprise Portal adds multi-office roll-up for larger operations.
California Transaction Coordinators: The Biggest TC Economy in the Country
California has the largest transaction coordinator industry in the United States: an ecosystem of in-house coordinators and independent TC businesses running files for dozens of agents at a time.
The California Association of REALTORS even maintains a transaction coordinator directory for its members. If you are a TC here, you are not a support function. You are a business. The workflow requirements are specific: per-file organization that survives volume, deadline dashboards that span every client rather than every brokerage, and permissions that keep each agent seeing only their own deals. Unlimited users means a TC business can add agents, assistants, and a second coordinator without doing per-seat math every time the roster changes.
Not required
State license
- California issues no state transaction coordinator license.
- Purely administrative coordination does not require a real estate license.
- Many California TCs hold one anyway for the flexibility it gives them.
Optional
CAR Certified Transaction Coordinator
- A self-paced online course bundle, open to licensees and non-licensees.
- Certification is valid for two years before it needs renewing.
- Independent certification programs exist too, so ask before you pay.
How to become a transaction coordinator in California
- 1
Check whether you need a license
No license is required for purely administrative coordination, though plenty of California TCs hold one for the flexibility it gives them. - 2
Learn the stack and the clock
The disclosure stack and the RPA contingency timeline on this page are the job. Know who provides each item and when it has to be signed. - 3
Get certified if credibility matters
CAR's CTC is the recognized program and it is a reasonable answer when a brokerage asks what training you have. - 4
Pick a system that scales past ten files
Spreadsheets stop working at volume. Paperless Pipeline gives a TC one login across every agent's files, with dashboards, per-file checklists, and permissions that keep each agent in their own lane.
What an LA team pays
Take a Los Angeles team on CRMLS closing 15 sides a month. Pricing is by monthly production, not by headcount, so that team sits on the tier covering up to 25 transactions at $190 per month - under $13 a file.
$69/mo
Starting tier
5 transactions per month.
$190/mo
25-transaction tier
Under $13 per file for a 15-side LA team.
$715/mo
Unlimited plan
450 transactions, then $1.65 per transaction beyond that.
Unlimited
Users, locations, storage
Included on every plan, at every tier.
Compare that to whatever you pay per file today for outsourced coordination, and note that the number does not move when you add a showing assistant, a TC, and an admin to the account. No contract, free setup, and a 14-day free trial with no credit card. Pipeline eSign runs in usage-based blocks of 10 signature requests with unlimited signers and documents, which matters on a disclosure-heavy, signature-heavy California file. The Commission Module starts at $49 per month, and Pipeline AI early access includes AI Doc Review at $99 per 1,000 pages, a second set of eyes on a thick disclosure package.
California disclosure and record questions, answered
How long must a California broker keep transaction records?+
Three years. California Business and Professions Code section 10148 requires a licensed broker to retain copies of all listings, deposit receipts, canceled checks, trust records, and other documents executed or obtained in connection with a licensed transaction for three years, running from the date the transaction closed, or from the listing date if the transaction never closed. After notice, those records must be made available to the Real Estate Commissioner for examination, inspection, and copying, and an audit can follow on sufficient cause. Source: Business and Professions Code 10148. Paperless Pipeline includes unlimited storage on every plan, so nothing gets purged to stay under a cap during the years the DRE can still ask for it, plus free monthly backups you keep yourself.
What disclosures are required to sell a home in California?+
For most 1-4 unit residential sales the core stack is the Transfer Disclosure Statement, required by Civil Code section 1102 and following; the Natural Hazard Disclosure, required by Civil Code section 1103; the Seller Property Questionnaire on CAR-form transactions; the federal lead-based paint disclosure on homes built before 1978 under 42 U.S.C. 4852d; and supplemental disclosures that vary by city and county. The local layer is the one that catches brokerages out, because it changes as you cross a county line.
Who tracks whether every disclosure got signed?+
Contractually, the parties and their agents are responsible. Practically, it is the transaction coordinator or office admin who chases the missing initial at 9 PM. The systemized version is a checklist that applies itself by deal type, side, location, and status, standardized document names so the TDS is always filed as the TDS, document review history showing who checked each item and when, and an audit trail of every action taken in the file.
Do transaction coordinators in California need a license or certification?+
There is no state-issued transaction coordinator license in California, and purely administrative coordination does not require a real estate license. Certification is voluntary. The recognized route is the California Association of REALTORS Certified Transaction Coordinator program, a self-paced online course bundle open to licensees and non-licensees, with the certification valid for two years before renewal. Source: CAR Certified Transaction Coordinator.
Does Paperless Pipeline handle multiple California offices?+
Yes. The Locations feature gives each office its own separated workspace with its own transactions and its own checklist templates, so a Long Beach office can carry different local disclosure items than a San Jose office, while leadership reports across all of them. Unlimited locations are included on every plan, and the Enterprise Portal adds multi-office roll-up for larger operations.
Sources
- California Civil Code 1102 and following, Transfer Disclosure Statement
- California Civil Code 1103.2, Natural Hazard Disclosure
- CAR Residential Purchase Agreement (investigation contingency default)
- California Business and Professions Code section 10148, three-year retention
- California Department of Real Estate
- California Regional MLS, about
- MLSListings via SILVAR
- San Francisco Association of REALTORS MLS
- CAR Certified Transaction Coordinator program
- CAR transaction coordinator resources
- CAR transaction coordinator directory
- Federal lead-based paint disclosure, 42 U.S.C. 4852d
This page is general information about California practice, not legal advice. Confirm current form revisions and local requirements with your broker of record or counsel.
Every disclosure. Every signature. Every file. For three years and then some.
Set up your California checklist templates once, and let every deal apply the right stack by itself.
14 days free. No credit card. No contract. Free setup. Unlimited users, locations, and storage.
See pricing, from $69/mo with unlimited users