I know exactly what you are talking about.  We do mostly full searches because there are so many abstractors doing current owners for next to nothing.  They won't do the full searches, so we still get many of those.

The problem is that, as you so aptly put it, the easy current owners subsidize the less profitable full searches.  The clients still think we can turn-around a full search in the time they get back current owners but we can't possibly staff enough examiners to do that without some of the easy work to pay our staff when the full searches slow down. Its just not possible.

What really burns me is that we see so many of the inexperienced abstractors undercutting our price and taking the work, and they aren't even doing them properly.  They take so many shortcuts that comparing their $30 current owner search to our $45 current owner search is like apples and oranges.  However, as I have often pointed out... the client doesn't know if their are no leases, easements, judgments, etc., or if their abstractor just didn't bother to look.

The problem with the system... there is no profit in doing good, reliable, thorough title searches.  The inexperienced abstractors are able to complete more work and they get rewarded for their incompetence.  Someone needs to fix that problem first.

Best,
Robert A. Franco
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