Mr. Madden’s ignorance of the job is showing. He knows not of what he speaks. His conception is far from reality, or good practice.

His suggestion to add the cost of producing more than customary copies to the search fee would be truly deceptive. If you are seeking a truly itemized bill, confusing examination fees with copy production costs IS deceptive. The search costs are X. Its X all day long, every day for that category of work. The fact that the client wants “ADDITIONAL” billable services doesn’t belong in the search fee. Not on a residential order. 

You want to explain to a HUD investigator why you charge customer “A” $15 more for a current owner than you do customer “B”? Watch his eyes roll when you say it’s because you know customer “A” always wants extra copies. That it’s just “assumed”. Good luck with that.  Even worse is an across the board increase charging customer A and B the higher costs when only customer A is generating the extra work. Hope you enjoy your baloney sandwich while you spend some time in the Federal system thinking about it. 

 Most of us are independent contractors. Our true product is our time and expertise. It’s called billable hours. There are only so many hours in a day. We have to use them wisely. We have overhead costs to cover before we make the first nickel in income. Too much uncompensated time can wreak your week if you let it. 

It would be interesting to know if Mr. Madden’s employer shows the price they paid for the search and what the client will pay in mark up for the “value added” they brought to the product separately so that their clients have full knowledge of who did what for what amount of compensation . Hmmmm? Don’t think so. And if they don’t, why not? It’s a far better illustration of the term deceptive pricing. 

In my neck of the woods it’s customary to charge only the pass through copy price for residential work. Yes; we are a dumb lot in that regard. It’s just how the practice evolved. Examiners get the raw end of the deal. 

Commercial work is a different animal in that it’s billed by the hour. The bill is for hours worked rather than search type. Pass throughs are billed as separate line items. The time to gather, make and assemble copies and put them into useable form is counted in the total hours billed. I’ve had more than a few cases where the time spent on copies, and their costs to assemble, exceeded the time spent actually examining the title. At least I’m compensated for the time spent to bring the whole requested product to the table.