How would that work?  The lender orders the appraisal, they are the party relying on the appraiser's work.  They may offer a choice to the borrower from their approved list, but the lender is still the one who places the order and ultimately chooses the list of approved appraisers.  The lender requires the payment at the time of the application - the borrower doesn't pay the appraiser directly.

Under your scenario, the title company would have to contact the borrower after receiving the order and get them to choose an abstractor, still from an approved list, and collect the fee upfront.  The borrower doesn't know any abstractors and most likely doesn't even know what they do.  Why would they even care?  And, this would all be a moot point if the title company has their own staff examiners - they aren't going to use an independent, regardless.  That would put the title companies that use independents at a disadvatage because those with employee abstractors wouldn't be collecting the fee upfront. 

As an agent, that uses employee abstractors, I wouldn't want to charge the borrower upfront for the search.  It would just slow the process down and if my competition isn't doing it, that just makes me a less attractive option to the borrowers, lenders, and Realtors. 

I don't think the answer to ensuring that abstractors get paid is in making the borrower pay the fee.  The title company needs the search, they order the search, they need to pay for it.  Besides abstractors don't have any control over that aspect of the closing process.  If you decided that you were going to require your clients to charge the borrower upfront for your fee, you probably wouldn't get much work. 

Best,
Robert A. Franco
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