As we can all see from SOT's "Continued Revenue from Offshore Expansions" article this week,  First American (and others) are posting and back- posting title plants overseas. At some point, local title plants may be obsolete. And, counties are putting their records online, which are being posted overseas.  For example, the County's official record title plant in St. Paul, Minnesota is now being posted in the Phillipines. It is a matter of economics, I hear. No one seems concerned about the quality of the work. The only concern is the cost of posting the work, not the cost of problems because of shoddy title plant work.

I believe, similar to what George is saying,  that the title industry is rapidly taking on a casualty approach, where they won't bother to do a thorough (and expensive) search, but will deal with problems on an as-needed (i.e. when caught with a problem) basis. When a problem is found, they can just "write over" the problem again and again, until it takes care of itself in most cases by a statutory time frame.