I am probably not in the right frame of mind to answer this question at the moment, so let me give you the practical advise I normally would for this question - FIRST.  In my opinion you can NOT be self-taught to abstract.  There are too many things that you can only learn from someone more experienced willing to take the time to teach you.  The issue is further complicated by geography.  Each state and county has their own regulations that govern the real estate records - so a "canned" on-line course is only going to give you the "basics" and that is enought to get you into trouble.  It might be a good start, but you really need a skilled abstractor to teach you the rest.

Next... (my rant for the day) if I had it do over again, I would choose another career.  Everyone else I know gets a raise every year and they get promotions and more benefits.  I have been asked CONTINUALLY by clients to lower my prices (read my post below).  I take my car to a mechanic and they get around $70/hr., maybe I should have taken up a vocation like that.

It seems to me that there is something wrong when I incur HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS in liability and get to charge a whopping $45.00!  People rely on our title work to process $100,000 mortgages several times a day and out of the several thousands of dollars that the borrower pays in closing fees, I only get $45 to $100.  My expenses are rising all the time; my E&O insurance is upto nearly $5,000 and I have never had a claim. 

I also think that the real estate records are becoming more and more messed up and it is taking longer to do the searches, but we don't charge on an hourly basis - we have to provide our services for a flat fee.  While the mechanic can say "Gee it took longer than we thought to fix your car, so the bill is a little higher" we just have to move on and accept what we can get.

To make things worse, our clients are now telling us what they are going to pay... many totally disregard the invoice and only pay a portion of our charges.  Often they fail to pay for copies (at $2.00/pg.) or the fax fee when they request something rushed and we have to fax from the courthouse (at $2.00 to $4.00/pg.).    I had a client call me and say that they were only charging thier client $50 and they couldn't pay our $100 fee for a statutory full search.  They got upset when I told them that I couldn't do the search for that.  What were they thinking?

There is something wrong with this industry when the client calls and tells you that they just bid out their work at 25% less to get a big client and they expect you to follow suit.  The problem is there is nobody below us to pass this along to.  I can't call the phone company, the electric company, the E&O company, the county where we charge our copies, etc. and tell them that my clients just lowered our fees so we need them to lower our costs 25%.  The fact is, our costs are constantly rising and our clients are trying to dictate that we work for less.

Sorry for the long rant, but I am disgusted with the direction things are going and it appauls me to hear "well we can get that search for $15 less from so-and-so."  I don't have a problem with competition, but the people who are undercutting our prices take shortcuts and don't do a thorough search, they don't have E&O insurance, they don't know what they are doing... AND MANY OF THE CLIENTS DON'T SEEM TO CARE.  It has become all about price and this is what is causing the degredation of the public real estate records.  They are the reason it is taking longer to do a thorough title search - we have to point out all of the title defects that the last idot caused.

If I knew how to do anything else, I would seriously consider a career change.

Best of luck,
Robert A. Franco
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