George,

Your resoponse is pretty much what I expected. The emphasis is on the price of the search rather than the quality of the product. Can you train a college kid to do a search for $9.00 per hour...certainly. Does it increase your exposure to claims made against you for  poor workmanship...absolutely.

I am having some difficulty in understanding your position. On the one hand you complain  about the quality of American abstractors' work, but on the other hand you appear to embrace a position that fosters poor workmanship. The cost of the search is an expense that is passed to the buyer/borrower in a real estate transaction. As a homeowner I would want the best protection I could get. The acquisition of real estate is probably the most important investment Americans make. The cost of the title search is negligible by comparison to the investment. Furthermore, the markup on the HUD 1 forms charged for a title search by some title companies is huge. They are making money on both ends of the deal. How long this will continue with RESPA reform and investigations urged by the federal government is unknown .

I see the $9.00 per hour abstractors of which you speak in the town halls. They are a joke. In order to break even financially they have to increase the number of searches they perform each day at the expense of the time allocated to each search.

I saw one of them rush in to perform a current owner search completely on the town hall's computer. He never once pulled any of the documents to verify the accuracy of the items listed in his abstract, and rushed out the door to his next search.What he did not realize was that the town only included its land records in its internal computer. The water and sewer liens were kept in a separate written index. The abstractor had never reviewed any of this information for his search.Why you would want to issue a title insurance policy on the strength of this type of search is beyond me.  Your position sounds like the auto manufacturer that produced an automobile with a fatal defect, but had determined that it was cheaper to settle the claims than to perform a recall of the product.

In your post you indicate that an Indian can be paid $5.00 per hour. I don't know how you are going to do this since that is less than federal and/or state minimum wage. I therefore, must presume that you are talking about  outsourcing the work to India where $5.00 per hour is a livable wage.  So I must repeat my earlier statement that this cannot be done and still maintain the quality of the product because the Indian abstractor must rely on an online system to perform the search. The records necessary to perform the search on line are incomplete. I know for a fact that someone sitting in New Delhi cannot perform an online search of the land records, probate records, foreclosure records, tax lien records and bankruptcy records for a property located  in Branford, Connecticut.

With respect to Indian abstractors you state " It has been proven obviously that they have a higher capacity for learning technology...". Well, I guess that is the generalization for the day. Reminds me of something someone told me in law school..."Adopt a good set of prejudices because it will save you a lot of time making decisions." He was joking of course, but your statement does not sound like a joke.

In so far as giving price breaks is concerned, I do not reduce my prices. I produce a quality product. If you want the quality you pay for it. What you fail to realize is that everything is pretty much at rock bottom prices industry wide. There is no room left to negotiate. It is easier for me to turn away low ball clients, and concentrate my efforts in other areas that are more financially rewarding.

I issue title insurance policies also, and I would never rely on anything less than the most accurate search I could get.