I know things are tight all around.  Trust me - I know.  As rock bottom as things have been, I've been scraping by with only a couple of good, volume clients left.  And now, I am essentially unemployed because an abstract company that covers my area just undercut me by doing current owner searches for $25.   I can't go down to that price.  I won't go down to that price.  Once you lower your fee to a client, you can't raise it again.  What stinks is that I know who they are and it's not the first time that they've done this (not just to me, but to anyone they can if it means grabbing a new client). 

When will all of us understand that when we keep our fees reasonable, then we can survive on a lower volume?  That when we price our work at what it's worth (or what it is "worth" in the last few years?), then we all have a chance of surviving.  When abstractors lower their fees to the ridiculous, especially in a market like this, they put fellow abstractors out of work or worse.  If everyone were to keep their fees more reasonable, then we'd all be doing less work for more money and there would be more to go around. 

Maybe I'm just being niave ... maybe I am just terrified wondering what to do now that the work is gone and the bills are piling up.  It just seems that if we work united, we all do well.  When we backstab and undercut to ridiculous fees, no one wins in the long run.