Robert, you have voiced some legitimate concerns. The independent abstractors may be staring extinction in the face. In Connecticut automation is slowly creeping in. We only have two cities on it now, Norwich and Stamford. Stamford's program is in its infancy, and only has a few years of history at present, but the City charges a large fee to access it. The Norwich system is very complete. You can access not only the grantor/grantee index, but also call up the actual documents on the computer screen and print the copies. For a large subscription fee you can do the title search from your office. We are lucky in Connecticut in that we have no county government. The land records are kept in a multitude of town halls, each supported by its own tax system. It is going to take quite a while for each of the cities and towns to adopt title plants because many of them do not have tax revenue available to implement the system. Some of the towns are still reliant on the old hand written grantor/grantee index devised two hundred years ago, and are fighting even the most basis systems of computerization. Thank God, old habits die hard in New England.

However, for those title searchers whose states operate on a system of county government the threat of thin title plants is much more immediate. You are right in your assumption that a marketing effort needs to begin to promote the limitations of title plants and the virtues of the individual title searcher. The effort needs to begin soon while there is something left to build upon

to post a reply: login - or - register