Dear Robert and the Rest:

I want to bring you and all the rest up-to-date on another factor happening with the pricing along with the lower of prices.  I have talked with directly nationwide companies that farm out work to individual abstractors all over the country -= people we have received the bulk of our work from - who admitted that all counties having on-line services (whether or not official, done by that county or by a third party independent) automatically if an order comes in it diverts to say 'COMPUTER" not 'ABSTRACTOR" and that all orders are done in house which is causing a major problem in our industry just because they are clueless to the fact that they don't have what we have at the courthouse to complete the order.  The companies stated that the only orders they are sending out are certifieds and ones they cannot find to abstractors.  Our work has been cut to 1/4th and abstractors were scrambling for work and therefore undercutting has happened.  If it has not happened in your state or your county wait until they go online - it will.  The only thing we can do is stick together and either go directly to the lending institutions and inform them what is going on and that we can provide a better product at the county level courthouse and/or charge the nationwide companies 2x our normal amount to make up for not having volume to cut our expenses down per order.  And by the way, these nationwide companies are listed on this site!!!!

Anyone who wishes can contact me regarding this.  Our Texas records are a mess because of this - assignments being filed 2 and 3 times because there is no way of finding assignments online - the online sites are not set up to search by property description like they are at the courthouse.