By all counts, 2024 was a lackluster year for real estate and refinance transactions for many title agents, but the New Year promises an uptick. as pent-up demand brings more people into the general real estate market and current homeowners who have put off refinancing for cash-out necessities jump back in. Here are the predictions, […]

Technology as a percentage of a company’s annual revenue has nearly doubled since 2016. According to a Deloitte Global Technology Leadership Study, the average tech budget as a percentage of revenue grew from 3.28% in 2016 to 5.85% in 2024. Of course, for some industries that percentage is far greater, for instance in banking and

As we look ahead to 2025 and an improving housing market you may be entertaining the idea of adding new capabilities to your tech stack to improve productivity and streamline your processes. As you are contemplating the addition of a new application, consider the impact the integration of new technology is going to have on

It’s so easy to adopt a preferred method of communication with our customers and make that de rigueur for every occasion and for every customer. The more helpful approach may be to map your customers’ experience with you and determine at each juncture what the preferred communication method should be. For instance, you may want

This past spring, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) launched a public inquiry into why mortgage closing costs have gone up in recent years, opining that expensive closing costs can result in lower down payments and higher mortgage costs overtime. It isn’t the first time that regulators have been perplexed in trying to understand the reason and

The outside salesperson in most companies, particularly in the title insurance industry, has the most contact with the actual customer and often has the best insight into what the customer needs as well as what frustrations they experience in the course of a real estate transaction. The challenge is how to get the voice of

We cannot read a customer’s mind, any more than we can read our partner’s mind, but that expectation – however unrealistic – is often part of both personal and business relationships. One way to overcome this distortion with a customer is through customer profiling – that is by gathering data about the customer, as well

Customer profiling can be a foundational way to improve many aspects of a title agency’s business, from fine-tuning your marketing language to recalibrating your customer communications. What is customer profiling? Customer profiling is the process of gathering all data on a customer into one location that can then be mined to inform business decisions, refocus

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in May launched a public inquiry into why mortgage closing costs are increasing, opining that “the escalating fees are draining down payments and pushing homeownership out of reach.” What is actually putting homeownership out of reach is a complicated stew of low housing inventory that is driving up prices,

You may not have aspired to being a teacher when you were growing up, but as a title, escrow or closing agent, you may find that the ability to teach is a must-have skill in your toolbox. Most first-time homebuyers focus first on choosing a home they love and second on acquiring a mortgage. These