I'm sorry that putting "facts" on the screen and online have upset some folks.  Facts are facts.  VM's, etc "have learned that there are relatively few claims in this industry" is a statement of the past.  What they are learning today is that they shouldn't have trusted everyone that said they were a qualified abstractor or tried to do the work themselves online.  The fact is there are a lot of claims in this industry today - to the point that an insurer asked me if I did nationwide abstracting because he will not insure them anymore.  When insurance becomes a problem no one is in business.  I agree that some counties have the same information but in all cases the route in order to retrieve the information is greatly hindered.  If I can't run a search by property I cannot complete the search in my state.  If I had to run a search from bank to bank to find an assignment it would take me 4 days in some cases.  And they are finding out it is not just access to information that allows a proper search it is the ability to know how to search in that particular county - that in itself can increase liability 10 fold.  I could not sit down in a nationwide office and do nationwide work without great liability.  Every single county indexes differently and has different abbreviations that if spelled completely out will come up as no records found - a huge liability to not find 380,000 judgments.  As I tell my clients, if I felt that my state's indexing was reliable and accurate - I would reduce my rates, sit down at my desk and do the work but I would never attempt to do the entire United States and their counties - that in itself is insane and too much pressure on an individual to remember all the little quirks of every counties system and indexing techniques. 

And as I said before if it comes to the point that we are all allowed to do in-house searches for lending institutions, etc. there will be no more Vendor Management companies as we know it.  You and I will cover the entire state for lending institutions ourselves - and when it comes down to it they will want someone who can cover a broad area and yet be very knowledgeable about the documents and legalities of a particular state.  It is kind of like sticking your foot in your own mouth.  You take from one industry - the industry takes from you.  Like I said our marketing (most of us) was limited to the nationwide vending companies and title companies - you take that away from us and we market direct and show the difference in the quality of the work but also the turnaround time.  If I was a lending institution I would rather work with 50 business - one for each state proficient in all the indexing, terms, laws, forms, etc. than one vending company trying to know it all and taking 2 weeks to get everything back.  And it comes down to this too - there will eventually come a time when an abstractor says no to all the hard to find orders, etc that are coming out or the lack of volume and if prices go up to meet the decline in volume - when all is said or done - they will find out it is just as cheap for us to do them all.  They will never be able to get the case that was filed yesterday by tommorrow or the certified copy federal X out in 24 hours - 60 year searches online - never will happen - I can see them taking those microfilms and putting them online - will not happen - Plats will not be online - won't happen - if you have deeds online but not probates and divorces - can't do a proper title search - and if retrievals have to go from $15.00 to $50.00 then I say that is what the industry will eventually do - I guess what I am trying to say is that don't look at this so narrow minded - with change comes change and I don't believe everyone thought out what their actions will cause everyone else to do.  Abstractors aren't going to keep going down or maintain their prices - eventually they will say this is too much work and liability for the money (I'd hate to be the one that charged $25.00 which cost me $196,000) which will end up with a shortage of abstractors and a sharp increase in pricing - it's called supply and demand.