Boy I missed alot of posts!  In reply to all your attacks on me, I perhaps did not respond to Jason's response to his pricing perhaps in the right words.  To me, he was indicating that just because someone had E&O insurance, they were qualified to perform searches.  I was trying to indicate that is not what makes someone qualified - it is years and years of education and experience.  To reply to JT's response that an abstractor of 30 years cannot sometimes retrieve a simple document, it often stems from a qualified researcher expanding business and hiring very unqualified people to work for them to "make the most profit they can."  Two such businesses I know of in my area.  And when they send these people out to the courthouses they don't check the work when it gets back.  I have seen these people struggle at the courthouse.  They take one girl to train the other in 2 weeks - tops - asking do you know what an assignment is?

It is common knowledge that someone with extensive background in real estate and abstracting, will 90% of the time produce a much better end product.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to assume that.

As far as who has done what for the industry, my personal belief is that David Bloys is way ahead of the game in protecting not only our industry but the citizens of the United States, then any industry that has been formed to-date.  One single person, has not only fought for the industry as a whole but he has also put together a index for Texas abstractors - across the state - that he has personally picked and chose as qualified to do business for any company who has any desire to find the best. 

As far as NALTEA, there is a desire of this organization to unite and do something about this industry, however, it is more concerned with meetings and vacations, acting as if the abstracting business just needs fine-tuning.  That is completely so far from the truth, it hurts.  You have to fix the core of the industry first - that is what David is doing.  If  the core is not there - in business, in your body, in your mind, nothing can expand - you are putting bricks on top of sticks and soon the weight is going to take over and topple down.  David is putting the concrete slab down - knowing that nothing is going to happen without the stable foundation.  In some areas, people are worried if their business is going to close tommorrow and no information about health insurance is in their minds right now or a trip to Florida.  Not that they don't want to be there and learn more - it is just that there is an immediate crisis in some areas - that some of you have not experienced so you have no comprehension of it.  You have been warned - but you don't comprehend. 

Texas has been one of the hardest hit states with online records and sheer messes because of it.  Why, it is a big state, and the bigger the state, the more profit one can make.  Alot of us are working behind the scenes together with ideas that can basically save our very business.  We have no choice, we are using our brains together in our expertise, our legal, our real estate backgrounds, our marketing backgrounds - we don't have time to wait for any organization that is making promises - we have to act right now - or we won't be talking on this forum 3 months from now.  This is the plain hard truth and we are dealing with it.

The best thing any company, local or national, could have done is kept the best abstractors very busy with work and not accept the low-balling of the unexperienced - I won't even call them abstractors employed - because we have all the intelligence to re-route and re-distinguish our business and we are the ones with TOTAL access to all the records - a much better marketing tool than any other business outside the area can provide, along with expertise in our state's laws that govern the searches they involve.