Doug,


You are right. The national title vendors are not friends of the local examiners. If anything they seem to be in adversarial positions. This is part of the reason that I have to take everything I read with respect to ALTA with a grain of salt. If you have a chance to monitor the boards of
the signing agents you will see that they are as fed up with their current dealings with the title companies and signing services as the abstractors are. The attorneys here in Connecticut have also lost control of the closing business to the title companies. There is discussion of sponsoring legislation to take it back in the same way that the legal profession has in Georgia, Massachusetts and South Carolina. Everyone has had it with the lenders and vendors putting pressure on abstractors, signing agents, surveyors and even the attorneys to produce more efficiently for less money. Fortunately, abstracting is only one area in which I work, and I am in a position to turn away business not to my liking, but there are many out there who are not. What it comes down to is that if you appease their demands for lower prices, it only encourages the trend to seek further price reductions. If you undervalue your services, the vendors and lenders value it even less.

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