I agree with all that has been said on this thread.  When I left NC in 2001 the abstractors here all got along well with each other.  But there were only three of us independents and the others were employed by attorneys.  I went to SC and the majority of the abstractors were independents and territorial.  A few of them were hateful and mean.  So I wanted to return to NC where all the abstractors were more like family and friends.  When I returned to NC in 2004, it was the same as SC, the abstractors were at each others throats and not just the independents, the employed ones too.  I think it is the change in the industry as a whole.

I had to take a big cut in my fees in order to continue working for some of the same companies in NC that I worked for in SC.  So now I make the same fee in 2005 that I was making in 1993-2001 in NC.  Although in this county, the cost of a house has increased over 50% in the last three years.  The realtors make 6% commission the attorneys get $450.00 for purchase closings and the employed abstractors make $32 - 35,000.00 a year except the two male employed abstractors.  They make over $45,000.00.  An attorney can only pay an independent abstractor $50.00 for a search because he/she pays that out of the $450.00.  In SC, a search for an attorney could run up to $125 to $400 because the fee is collected on the HUD as separate from the attorney's closing fee.  To be honest, a search in SC is harder than in NC because of the way the title insurance companies are set up.  In NC, you can tack to an insurance policy and come up no matter which attorney's office did the previous search.  The title insurance company will insure the back title.  In SC, each attorney's office has their own title insurance company and they do not give out their back title.  So in SC, unless the attorney has already done the search before, every search is a full search.  Keep in mind I am not talking about the (national) title companies that request one owner searches.

As more and more title companies have sprung up in NC, the attorneys are not getting their piece of the pie which has caused some law firms to lay off title searchers.  Therefore the NC Bar is opposed to title companies and the way for them to get rid of them is to regulate how the attorneys can or can not use the independent abstractors.  No word yet from the NC Bar on their proposal.  They were supposed to rule on it in January.  None of the attorneys that I have asked have heard whether or not anything has be finalized.