Yes, Scott is correct. These are the rates in our markets and the abstractor is already there in the courthouse. We pay extra for the tax claim certificate which is usually $5. The abstractors who are doing the current owner searches for us are happy at that rate because they can crunch out more work and it adds up to more money because the searches take less time.
Bear in mind that most of our orders are for 60 year searches on purchase transactions and 40 year searches on refinances.
We've only ever had one abstractor price themselves out of our range. They pushed the cost of a full search up to around $225 and that was too high for our market. Remember, we are working under promulgated rates and we aren't in a high priced housing market. Though our average title policy is around $100,000, it's not unusual for us to do many cash transactions that are priced at less than $30,000. The reissue premium at $30,000 or less in PA is $378.00. I pay my on-staff closer $150 and an abstractor around $150. There really isn't much left to cover overhead in those deals and so we have to watch costs.
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