Excellent comments, Jen.  We have expereinced some of the same problems here.  It is unbelieveable to see one of the inexperienced abstractors at the courthouse.  She doesn't even bother to pull most of the books, if it isn't on the computer she doesn't bother with it.  I don't think anyone has seen her check Probate Court, and she relies on the limited amount of information available on the computer in the Clerk of Courts office.  The REALLY unbelieveable thing is that she trained one of her relatives to help her!!

We have lost about half of our ten largest clients because we refused to lower our price.  I thought the same thing others have said, they will be back.  The problem is that they don't know how lousy their "discount" abstractors really are.  How could they know what their abstractors "don't" show?  They won't have a problem until there is a loss on the new mortgage.  I think that as rates rise, foreclosures will uncover a lot of problems.  Then we will see how bad the problem really is.

We have been lucky to replace most of that work with better local clients that seem to understand things better and we truly work "with" them. It is nice not to have to deal with those other clients anymore.

I completely agree that licensing should be required for abstracting.  How else can the industry issue reliable title policies?

Best,
Robert A. Franco
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