Paden's Ongoing Resistance to Title Companies and Their Wholesale Insanity

paden cash, post: 338675, member: 20 wrote: it was recorded and signed by the mayor and council and the janitor,

Sorry Paden it ain't valid unless the the garbage truck driver signs too. 😉

And so recorded!

There are a couple of title companies around my area that I actually enjoy working with. But the vast majority of them fall into a category much like what you described.

Yes, the title insurance industry has devolved substantially in the 40 years that I have been practicing. The few specialists who deal effectively with subdivision and boundary matters are to be treasured. The consolidation of local offices into regional paper mills has led to this demise.

Warren Smith, post: 338694, member: 9900 wrote: Yes, the title insurance industry has devolved substantially in the 40 years that I have been practicing. The few specialists who deal effectively with subdivision and boundary matters are to be treasured. The consolidation of local offices into regional paper mills has led to this demise.

I've seen it devolve in the 20 years I've been practicing. And the majority of that started in 2008 when all kinds of development stopped. Many experts in the title company offices that I had known either retired or switched careers. Now we have inexperienced individuals that don't know how a lot of things work...

Some people enjoy being A-holes. For some reason they seem to gravitate towards title work, the law and bureaucracy.

Holy Cow, post: 338715, member: 50 wrote: Some people enjoy being A-holes. For some reason they seem to gravitate towards title work, the law and bureaucracy.

When it comes to title companies, I enjoy being the A-hole, too. And I can't help myself.

My attitude and behavior is childish and unprofessional at times. I really do try and avoid them BECAUSE of my attitude. But it never works....I'll get a call, I'll try to be nice. And then I start hearing this noise about "we REQUIRE this...or we want it to SAY this...or we want you TAKE THIS OFF"...and I can't stand it. They treat seasoned professionals like clerical staff. It's like everything you ever try and do for a title company is up to their approval. I would just as soon live my life without those folks.

oh...jeez...don't get me started...I'm getting worked up again....

Paden. Mate, time to jump ship and migrate to the great state of south Australia , the home of the Torrens Title system where we have no such thing as your title companies. A single state central plan and title register with electronic access. Title guarenteed by the state.

O what a feeling !

RADU

RADU, post: 338743, member: 222 wrote: Paden. Mate, time to jump ship and migrate to the great state of south Australia , the home of the Torrens Title system where we have no such thing as your title companies. A single state central plan and title register with electronic access. Title guarenteed by the state.

O what a feeling !

RADU

Quit it! You're teasing me...

hmmmm....what side of the road do you all drive on? B-)

Around here if you want to work for title companies, you basically have to be at their beck and call and work for rock bottom fees. Sure, they pass you a lot of work (and you had better not find too many problems), but you end up being their slave. There are a few good ones around that will refer their clients to me, but many have their own "captive" survey company to do all of their work their way (read: fast and cheap).

I am learning that it is the middle men that are making the most noise and fretting at the seams and whining their way thru the process.

They merely are connected to the 1-800 system gathering contracts they follow thru to the end and are responsible for those hourly update calls, emails and text messages. They are relentless in using every possible contact number to stay on top of blowing up your message boards.

You know that operator dong business from the kitchen table connecting banks with clients and contacting the surveyors in their PJs and bunny rabbit slippers.

They live in some far away place states away from the client and job and have their own metro title company doing the paperwork and closings. In reality they split the title policy fees with your local county title company.

That really chaps your local title company raw because they must prepare the title commitment for half their normal fee and not get on the receiving end of the big dollar title policy fee.

It is dang near the same as all the competing Realtor agents out there getting 6% of sales price off the top while everyone else has to wait and see if there is enough closing costs to cover their low on the totem pole of fees. Then there is that army of agents that work thru a broker for a few points per contract while their broker is constantly on a extended trip and never reachable.

what a game............

I have decided that when I retire that I will just simply change the phone message as follows:

Thanks for calling Rarely Surveying.
Please listen to the options as they have changed.
If you are shopping price, please hang up.
If you are a realtor, don't waste my time.
If you need something fast, please stay on the line and I will pick up in the next few weeks.
If you are an attorney or title company go to H_ll.
If you really want a quality survey for a price that is fair for both of us and you are not in a hurry, please leave your name and number and I will gladly get back with you.

At a recent surveyors dinner meeting we were being entertained by a Gary Kent webinar extolling the virtues of title insurance.

So I turn to the gentleman sitting next to me (who has over 50 years running a survey business) and I ask if he ever heard of a title company paying out on a claim

He smiled at me, shook his head no and said "Jim, tonight we are eating chicken parm, the lawyers in the next room are having steak and lobster"

"Paden's Ongoing Resistance to Title Companies and Their Wholesale Insanity" gets high marks for compressing the right amount of content into the title of a post. As the forum software depends upon the actual titles to enable someone just popping in to spot potentially interesting posts without rummaging through a file cabinet of stuff, longer, interesting titles work are a great choice.

Variations, of course would include "I Reached through the Telephone and Was Choking the Title Agent ..."

We were just talking about this. Dad told me about title attorneys that would push surveyors around 30 years ago when he started in business. They would make demands on all sorts of things. Mostly because they could. That group has died out mostly. Around here, we have a good reputation with the title companies. At times, they catch an oversight on our part and we make corrections. Often times we find things of record they miss. More often than not we confer to determine the best way to approach title issues. No one BS's us anymore though. It just doesn't happen. I like working as a team with other professionals, whether it's real estate attorneys in title transfers, contractors in construction projects, or civil engineers on design projects. If I get the impression at the onset that the project partners are going to be contentious, I'd rather not even work on the project.

I have also employed the Paden Cash last minute submittal technique before. You figure out what is really important and what is just meaningless BS on some of those "requirements". If it is going to delay closing, people start prioritizing some of those trivial requests out of consideration.

Ultimately, paying clients have the privilege of making requirements (when contracts for services are being negotiated), everyone else gets to use what was agreed upon between said paying client and the service provider (surveyor).

Kent McMillan, post: 338817, member: 3 wrote: "Paden's Ongoing Resistance to Title Companies and Their Wholesale Insanity" gets high marks for compressing the right amount of content into the title of a post...."

Well thanks Kent..I think.

Actually the post was my 'Protestant Confessional' of my sinful inability to maintain my composure when dealing with those numbnuts. I have always taken pride in my ability to stay cool under pressure. I found out early in my career as a smart-ass, when confronted with obtuse personalities, one can get better digs in if you remain calm...

But I loose it with these people. I'm ashamed at how flippin' mad I get when I deal with title company personnel. And when angered, I can't guarantee a socially acceptable level of the civility to my remarks. Professionals are suppose to be, well, professional.

I believe my current dealings with them are all in the box now. I can plow ahead happy as a lark and make believe they don't exist....until that dreaded "next time"...

paden cash, post: 338825, member: 20 wrote: Well thanks Kent..I think.

Actually the post was my 'Protestant Confessional' of my sinful inability to maintain my composure when dealing with those numbnuts. I have always taken pride in my ability to stay cool under pressure. [...]

But I loose it with these people. I'm ashamed at how flippin' mad I get when I deal with title company personnel. And when angered, I can't guarantee a socially acceptable level of the civility to my remarks.

What annoys most surveyors about our dealings with title insurers is mostly attributable to personality type. The lawyer or title agent will have found a one-second "discrepancy" in a bearing or will call wondering why a particular something was or wasn't shown on the map. Or they will want a 24 in. x 36 in. map compressed to letter size, arguing that "all the other surveyors do it".

They are checklist type people, Sensation types, who are usually just following a Step 1, 2, 3 procedure and have a backlog of other paper to get off their desks. Recently, a title agent was ready to issue a policy on a tract of land even after I'd written a report describing a serious defect in the chain of title, namely that the record title to the land in question was out of a tract that COULD NOT BE DEFINITELY LOCATED on the ground and that appeared to be more than a mile away from where the parties thought it to be. Apparently, that wasn't on the checklist, so they skipped over that detail and were harrassing me about why no source of title was reflected on the map.

I do a fair amount of work for the title insurance company that they were an agent for and were writing the policy on. I assured them that what they were proposing to do did not meet underwriting standards and that I'd checked with the underwriter's claims department just to be sure that standards hadn't recently changed.

Kent McMillan, post: 338832, member: 3 wrote: What annoys most surveyors about our dealings with title insurers is mostly attributable to personality type..

Agreed. I suppose they're used to beating their drum and having everybody fall in line (with money in hand). Title companies spend other people's money, not their own. I generally always check with my client on matters...and the title company is NEVER my client.

What boils me as much as anything else is the not-so-subtle implication that an impending scheduled closing date should evoke in me some sort of Pavlovian response to attempt to make the impossible happen. I have told several people over the phone I don't care when the closing will be, my work requires a certain amount of time. One simpleton implied if the closing didn't occur, nobody would get paid. I explained I get my money, closing or not. That might require an ugly lawsuit and all sorts of encumbrances on their client's property...but I've done it before and have a good grip on how to do it. I get my money, capisci?

They can all go to hell, but the devil himself would probably get sick of them and send them back up here...

My area must be the exception to the rule: Title companies never hire surveyors around here because we aren't needed for property sales.

I deal with numerous different title companies monthly usually involving title reports or research. I have my preference on which companies I use but all in all my dealings with Title officers has been very positive so don't paint them alll in a bad light.

A good relationship with a title company and the research they have at their fingertips is very worthwhile. For instance, if I'm reviewing a deed and come across a deed reference that I do not have I will email my friendly customer service person of choice and usually within a few hours (sometimes less) the deed is in my mailbox. If I had to go get it myself it would be over half a day of travel, time, etc...

As you say there is often an "it takes what it takes" component to our work. Reduce what you're asking for and it'll take less time. Our "clients" usually accept the amount of time estimated when we explain why. Our clients are coworkers in the department, Foresters, Investigators and Engineers.