Digital Real Estate Closings Why They Are Faster and Safer

Hello and welcome to the Global Integrity Finance Podcast. My name is Brian, and today I have the pleasure of bringing you Jeremy Dean, the owner, the founder, the brains behind Elite Title here in the DFW area. Jeremy, go ahead, introduce yourself, tell us about who you are, your background, and a little bit more about your organization.

Yeah, thanks, Brian. Really appreciate you having me on today. Like you said, we have an elite title company based here in Fort Worth. and I have been in residential real estate for— I just completed my 23rd year, so last week started my 24th year in real estate, all right here in the North Texas area. And my amazing wife has also been in real estate for 20+ years. And so between the two of us, we collectively own an appraisal company, a mortgage company, and a title company. Um, and we've both been doing those for all that time. So it's been, it's been really great. It's been a lot of ups and downs, but we love real estate. We love helping people. We love impacting people in lots of different ways. The title company is really our primary focus among those three. Elite Title, um, we launched last year with Elite Title to try and shake things up and be different. Um, from both of our experiences in real estate, we've really looked at title as one of the areas where we can try and make an impact and try and be unique and try and be different. And so I'm sure we'll talk about that here in a little bit, but there's, there's lots of windows of opportunity to, um, to try and shake things up a little bit in the industry, and that's what we're trying to do.

Yeah, absolutely. Now I want to unpack that outside of probably what your dinnertime conversation sounds like. Having a real estate household, I can only imagine the the situations, the borrowers and things like that that can kind of come up during those conversations. So I like to be a fly on the wall there to listen to what you guys have going on. So, uh, Elite Title, right? So looking at your website, which I have pulled up on the screen behind me for those watching on YouTube, um, you know, you have a section in there, it's called, you know, Here's the Problem. And you, you really kind of, you break down that 95% of title transactions are still done on paper. Uh, tell us, why is that a problem? Why do you, why is that like the first thing you called out on your website?

So in today's environment that we're in, and I mean outside real estate, right, I think this is culturally, socially, whatever, however you want to look at it, we are in an environment where we as consumers, like collectively as consumers, we value convenience, right? Convenience is preached to us and it is beat into our head in marketing everywhere you look— TV commercials, social media, you know, this is just a convenience culture. And in most respects, in most regards, we're gonna pay extra for convenience, right? We're gonna pay extra for, um, shorter boarding times on airplanes, or, you know, to skip the line at an amusement park, or whatever that may be, right?

That overnight Prime delivery, right?

Exactly, right? Amazon, I mean, they've made a killing off of convenience. And, and in a lot of cases, because the old adage of time is money, right, which is— there's a lot of truth in that— people will pay extra for that. And so, and when it comes to real estate it's hard to create convenience in a lot of ways because we're such a heavily regulated industry, right? There's only so many things we can do to increase speed and efficiency throughout the process. Now you see this all throughout real estate in terms of tech stacks, lots of different ways where people will promise more efficiency which will, you know, increase your sales and increase your bottom line and higher ROI and higher profits and all this kind of stuff. And that's all good and dandy, don't get me wrong. Um, we are not a tech company. I'm not a tech guy, I'm a real estate guy. Um, but I believe in the power of that, right? The power of technology as that relates to how this can impact your business. But what we realized is ultimately, at the end of the day, sure, we are for-profit organizations, right? And in real estate, like, we are here to make a living, we are here to make money. But what we really centrally should be caring about universally as a whole in real estate is our customer. And sure, we want to give them a great product. We want to give— as a mortgage person, we want to give them a great rate. We want to put them in the best possible product. As a real estate agent or a title company, we want to fulfill the roles that we have, right? We want to do these things. We want our clients, our homeowners or sellers— I mean, homebuyers or sellers— to be satisfied with us at the end. But one of the biggest gaps that we identified, which is why it's so prominent on our website, is convenience. We are in an age where so much in the last, I would say, 20, 25 years, but even really in the last 5 years of commerce in general, has shifted towards digital means, methods, medias, right? So absolutely. Opening a credit card, opening a bank account, buying a car. I mean, you even mentioned Amazon, and it's not just global commerce, right? It's beyond even just buying stuff online. But again, going to buy a car, very, very few dealerships you will go buy a car and you'll see physical paper, right? Or not be able to do that online or open a credit card or something like, or even opening a checking account. So in general, culture and society is kind of moving that direction. The smartphone really changed a lot of that, right? And so with real estate, for whatever reason, we've kind of hit this snag where that technology exists, it's available, it's been around for a long time. Okay, we're talking 25+ years. The, the ability to sign real estate documents electronically has been allowed. Now this is state by state, so it kind of varies. There's no federal legislation on this yet, um, so it does vary a little bit state by state, but you know, in general The technology exists. This is not new, and it's been around. Now it's getting more and more prominent. But to sum all that up, what we have today is 95%. It's really about 92, 93% now. We see a little bit higher industry adoption each month, and there are some industry metrics monthly to get updated with that. So roughly 7 or 8% of all real estate transactions today in this country are done digitally. So 92, 93% are done on paper. And what that means for the client, the buyer or the seller, is a convenience aspect. Because if it's paper, I mean, have you seen the stack of papers that a client signs at closing? It's like that big. Yeah, you know what I mean?

It's like a giant dissertation paper.

Uh-huh. Yeah. And so every time there's a lawsuit, or, you know, you got 2008 happens, like more documents get added in there, more attorneys put stuff in there. So that stack has grown and grown and grown, which is fine. I don't hate the papers that are in the stack. Um, they're there for reasons. But the point is shifting towards the client coming in. Okay, now think about it's not just them sitting at the closing table, it goes well beyond that because you've got to take time off work, right? You got to schedule time out of your day because you're going to the title company and that title company is only open during business hours, right? They're not open late.

It's probably a good distance from your house because you're not around every corner, right?

Exactly. So when you factor in, let's say it's an average 20-25 minute drive time from wherever you are, you got to take off a little bit of work. Maybe your spouse has to take off work. Maybe you got to do something with your kids, right? So all of these factors, you drive there, you wait in the lobby for a few minutes, you go back, you say hi, you sign the papers, they go, they copy all the papers for you while you're waiting. You know, they might tell you, go grab a Starbucks, come back in 30 minutes, we'll have the funding completed, we'll get you your keys. You know, then you're going to sit there and take all the pictures. Then you got to go back to work. You know, go pick the kids up, whatever. That whole process is not 30, 40 minutes of the actual signing right now. It's become 2, 2.5 hours out of your day.

Yeah.

And If you told the customer, hey, this is what it's going to take at the end, right? You're going to go through this whole process of buying a house. Sure. I get 93% of customers, they're doing this and they say, okay, fine, we'll make it work, we'll make it happen because that's what is required of you to close this deal. But if you told a customer, Mr. or Mrs. Customer, here's what I need from you. I need a good internet connection and I need a compatible device, a laptop or a tablet, and I need about 20 minutes of your time. You can be anywhere in the world. Would you prefer to do that or would you prefer to do what I just mentioned where you take several hours out of your day, drive around town, take off work, shuffle your kids, whatever it is, right? Right. I just don't know a lot of clients that are going to prefer the first option. Um, now some of them might, you know, some pushback that we get when it comes to digital closings as well, you know, I'd like to meet a real person. I don't want to do this whole online thing because it feels techie and it feels not personal. Great, fantastic. We tell people all the time, I'd love for you to come to my office. I would absolutely love to meet your clients. Or if they do want to take a picture with the key and the sign and the realtor wants to bring it, right? Yeah, like bring a closing gift if you're the agent. Totally cool. We'll do all that. We love doing all that, but I would much rather them come and do that and I hand them an iPad instead of a stack of papers. Right? So we have that option, or it can be remote where it's a video call like this. Either way, it doesn't matter. The bottom line is it is exceptionally more convenient for the client and the way that we structured it at our title company is it doesn't cost them anything extra. Right? So going back to what I said earlier about we're just in a culture where we pay extra for convenience. If it's faster and it's better for me, you know, DoorDash, you know, Uber Eats, whatever. Like if it's faster and it's better, if I can get what I want quicker, I'm probably gonna pay more for it. Right? And it gives me some of my time back. So that's what we offer, but it doesn't cost extra. So it's, I mean, it's a win-win for everybody.

Okay, great. And we, we talked about it before, and, you know, I appreciate that explanation, especially in the convenience. I think it gives a lot of insight into what we are lacking in that, and people don't think about that tail end. And I mean, just ops people as a whole, right? I remember we talked about some stats of how long it takes to get a clear title versus a, uh, you know, a complex title and how many hours you all put into it, not to mention the ops people from the lender and the real estate agent, everything else, right? So all that time if you can shave off 2 hours of that, it's huge, right? But one of the things we talked about before that I thought was really fascinating because you mentioned anywhere in the world, security, right? So in the days of, you know, leaks and hacks and everything else, can you open that up a little bit about like security measures and what's important outside of just a strong internet connection and a compatible device?

Yeah, I love this one. I'm glad you brought this up because when we talk about digital closings, that's one of the primary concerns that we hear from the lenders because, you know, the lender, it's their closing docs, it's their money that they're lending, right? So from a security standpoint and the title company too, because they're moving a lot of this money. So with wire fraud being exceptionally high in today's environment, yeah, the security and seller impersonation fraud is a huge deal on the title side as well. So the security and the encryption aspect is a huge concern, especially for lenders. And I love this one because this one, there's really no excuse. So this goes back to what I said earlier about how this is state by state, right? So there's federal legislation that's been talked about the last couple of sessions, but it hasn't passed yet. So right now, the security features that are required to be able to do this digitally vary from state to state, but by and large, they kind of all fall into some similar buckets. Okay. So there are some nuances, but they're all relatively similar. I can only speak to Texas because I only know how we have our licenses set up in Texas. But how it works in Texas is there are multiple layers of security to protect everyone involved, right? You've got obviously the title company and the lender, but then the buyers and the sellers as well. So what that looks like is we have a multi-factor authentication set up first. Okay, so the person that is doing the signing, so whether the buyer or the seller, we've got to be able to send them a multi-factor code. Okay, so that goes to their email. So we invite them to the signing session just like you and I are on this session, but to even join that session, they've got to pull up their email, um, they've got to validate that email, pull it up, and then input the code before they can even hop into the video part, right? So that's step number one. We've got MFA. Then step number 2 is identity proofing. Okay, so they have got to have a government-issued ID, so driver's license, passport, military ID, whatever it is. They put that into our software, um, and the software will actually validate it against that government database. Now this is in strict contrast to what happens now on the 92% of closings that are paper, right? You walk into the closing at the title company, you hand them your driver's license, they go to the back they make a copy of it, they bring it back to you. That escrow officer is not trained to be an identity, you know, expert. Like, that's not what they're there to do, right? So that ID can be fake, it can be expired. Even a lot of times, we're not talking about gross negligence here, we're talking about an expired ID.

Like, we're not even supposed to be running off of expired IDs, but a lot of times, yeah, they just transpose the number when they were reading it or something, right? You're not paying attention.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, but there's a lot of risk there. So with a system that actually verifies the credential. That is completely different than what happens on an in-person. Now, the lenders that are still a little iffy and worried about this whole digital closing thing, they would say, yeah, but what if you don't— you're not meeting them face to face? It's digital, like, you know, this video call that we're doing right now. So how do you really know it's them? Well, A, I can see your face. B, you have to input your ID into my system. If the system does not give you a green check mark, meaning it has validated your— in this case, say it's your driver's license against the Texas DMV database— if it doesn't give you a green check mark, I can't, we can't even begin the process of signing the documents again. We haven't even started the video session yet. So I send you the link, you do the MFA through your email, then you get on and it's asking you to put in your ID and I'm still waiting on mine. We haven't even gotten on video yet. And you have to pass the identity verification process. So we know that it is a valid government-issued ID. That does not happen in a real live person's in-person signing with ink. Okay. So that's step number 2. And if that's not enough, there's a third step. And the third step is what we call in the banking world, um, out-of-wallet questions. They're referred to as KBAs, which is knowledge-based authentication. So if you've ever opened any kind of accounts online or anything like that, you have those questions where it'll say, you know, which of these 5 addresses have you ever been associated with, you know what I mean? Or, or which of these 4 cars have you ever purchased? And you're like, that's kind of scary that they even know that information about me, but it's right, it's from public, um, public record information. It works off of an address and your social. So Um, that's, that's the last step is you are presented— the state of Texas requires a minimum of 5 KBA questions. You have to answer at least 4 of them correctly, um, before— if you don't, you get to try again. If you don't, we have to cancel the closing and wait a whole 24 hours.

But that was going to be my next question. So I've been that guy that's actually failed those because, you know, maybe when I was a bit younger and— right, I grew up in a slightly younger generation and it's like we, we saw the age of the computer and everything else, right, to where some of that information is like my mom's, right? So it's like, hey, did you ever own these? I'm looking at it like, I didn't own any of them, but my mom owned that car, right? So I clicked on it and it was like, yes, it's correct. But in another case, maybe it was wrong or something like that. So in those cases where you get the timeout, hey, this isn't the right person, there's the safety nets. How does that 24 hours work? I'm assuming you have a protocol for that.

Yeah. So that's all mandated by state law at this point. So it doesn't have anything to do with our title company. The law in Texas, again, only speaking for Texas, but Texas requires you can have a second attempt immediately at those questions. And then if you fail that second attempt, you've got to wait 24 hours before you attempt them again. And so—

And they start all back over, they got to re-upload the ID and all that other stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah.

The process of the actual session has to start all over 24 hours if we do. We've never had that happen at this point. So hopefully we don't, but you're right. I mean, some people do get confused, especially when you see similar names or a son that's a junior of the dad. Like that's one that we see a lot, right? Where they've got the same name and So you do kind of have to know, is this my parents' address? Was this a car my parents own? So sure, like it's not a perfect system, but when you've got those 3 steps of identity analysis to verify that you are who you say you are, if we've gone through those 3 steps and then we get on this video call together so that we can now sign your documents, me as the escrow person, as the title person, I'm feeling pretty confident that you are Brian. Like if you're on the other— Yeah, because I'm not going to see your face on camera until you have passed all 3 of those.

Yeah. And I don't want to call out any particular websites out there, but there's one where, you know, people can, you know, sell arts and crafts that they create. Right. And it's very unique. And I remember, you know, from a mortgage fraud situation that we had where people were getting pay stubs or you can get auto registration off of there. Right. And people print you up these docs and make them look very legitimate. And so, you know, I'm sure it's not too hard to find somebody there that probably does an ID or two. Right. You know, and to have that, like you said, walk in, give it to somebody that's untrained. Not that a lot of people are trained in it, right? And even the ones that are bank tellers only get so much training. I'm sure they miss stuff too. So to hear those other steps, you know, for me, I like that whether you failed it, right, you got to give it a second try or something along those lines. To your point, you've done a lot more to prove this person is really who they are. So it's just protecting that borrower, that seller, as well as, you know, every other agent that's involved there. So I think that's huge. I like that.

Yeah. So at the end of the day, you can't really make the argument that it's not safe. Um, I mean, just based on everything I just described, it is substantially safer than the traditional process. Like I mentioned, like, you hand the ID, they go back, they copy it, and that's it. Um, yeah, you know, the age-old way of doing it is, yeah, but I'm meeting you face to face and I'm looking at the picture and I'm like, oh, does this look like you? But again, I mean, fake IDs, they're out there.

That was me 40 pounds ago, right?

Yeah. So, so it is a lot safer, uh, because of these security measures that are in place. And that is one of the key things I think that is wildly misunderstood. I think a lot of people think that we're just hopping on FaceTime and I'm like, oh, all right, you're Brian. I'm just applying my notary stamp because you said you're Brian. And it is way safer than that.

That is, that's great information. I love that. Um, okay. So kind of going down that path, cause you're teaching us so much, right? We're learning a lot about the, the passion you have behind, you know, Elite Title when it comes to the parties you work with, right? So lenders, buyer agents, seller agents, borrowers themselves. We had had a discussion before when we previously met about like some gaps there, right? And some areas to really improve communication and the overall experience, not just for the client, but everybody involved. Now I'd like you to kind of unpack that a little bit. You know, you talked a lot about like the synergy and kind of like a triangle, and I'll just, I'll let you take it away. I know you'd do much better at it than I would, but you know, I'd love to hear that from you. Yeah.

So my background is in mortgage. So I was in mortgage for 23 years before starting this title company with my wife. Um, And one of the primary reasons for that is if I, as a mortgage person, right, if I looked at the entire process from start to finish, so from prequal all the way to post-closing funding, looking at that as objectively as I possibly could, but with the lens of a mortgage loan officer on, I ask myself the question, what in this process do I think is the most broken or that I could actually have any kind of impact or do something about? I mean, I can't do anything about rates, right? I mean, all this stuff we see, we see the NAR settlement, we see what's going on with rates and, excuse me, affordability and, you know, housing inventory below. Like, those are all the economical stuff. Honestly, I don't really lose a whole lot of sleep about that because whatever that is doing to impact me and my business is the same for everybody else in this business, you know, and nothing I can do about that. So, so that, that, all of that part aside, like the outside noise on the, in the influences in our business aside, what is my pain point as a loan officer and what can I do about it? And to me, it was the dynamic and the synergy between lending, title, and then I would also include an agent in there, although I've never personally been an agent. Um, but, but all three of those together, I would say those synergies, and, and, and that spans a lot of different things, right? So it is communication channels, um, but it's also, it's, it's understanding and awareness of what each other's, uh, roles and functions are. And so, but from the lending title perspective, because that's what I had a background in, I could look at that and see a lot of frustration on both sides. Now that I have a title company, I can ask my employees who have worked in title, hey, is it frustrating when you don't get closing docs from the lender until 5 o'clock on a Friday and we're closing at 9 AM on Monday? Which just happened to us last week, by the way.

Yeah, sadly I've been around that scenario too much too.

Yeah, you know, and so the title people are over here like, oh my gosh, what? Like, this is— ah, you know. And but the lenders, they're over there like, man, they're trying to balance the CD and they're doing all these things, and then they order the closing docs from an attorney or the review or whatever. Like, there's so much that goes on right on the, on the side of the lender that the title company has no idea. And the reverse is true. There's so much the title companies do the lenders have no idea. I don't need them to be experts in what each other does, in my opinion. Like, that's not what I'm trying to build. What I'm trying to build is an understanding and an awareness of what goes on a little bit behind closed doors so that we can work better together, the communication is better, and then we have better empathy and understanding. And so when you include the realtor in that, it just popped in my head that like it's an equilateral triangle. And so all 3 of those, if there are synergies amongst all 3 of those parties, um, then we have substantially better communication all around. But in the middle of that triangle is not the house that we are closing on, right? It's not the property, it's the customer. And that ultimately should be our focus. And what I see in my career historically leading up to this point is of those 3 parties in that triangle I would say this is just pure conjecture. I don't have data to back this up, but my conjecture is 2 of those 3 probably know each other or referred the deal or whatever in a vast majority of transactions, right? The agent referred it to the lender, or the agent referred it to title, or the lender referred it to the agent, or whatever. It's pretty rare that all 3 know each other and are sort of working in tandem, in unison on a single transaction. And there's a lot of reasons for that, but In my opinion, if every one of those relationships is bidirectional, right, if you've got an arrow that points both ways on all three sides of that triangle, then the borrower, the homeowner, the seller, whoever it is, our client, our mutual collective client, they win. Because if you think about it now, if you're the client, if you're a buyer, you're getting emails from the lender, right? And a lot of times, going back to what we said earlier about like efficiencies with technology, not only are you getting emails, but you're probably getting automated emails to ask you to set up a user ID and password to log into their portal and and they're going to give you status updates, you know what I mean? Like, that's just— there's so many different third-party softwares out there that'll do that, but the realtor might have one, the title company might have one, the lender might have one. So if I'm buying a house, I might get an email from the lender saying, hey, create your user ID and password, you know, upload your documents through here, we'll send you updates. Well, then I might get something similar from title, I might get something similar from the real estate office. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so much, this is so much, you know. So I think the synergies among the three are hugely important. And I don't think that there is— I think that there are gaps there. But particularly for me, if I just looked at lending and title, I thought, you know, I could complain about this and whine about it for the rest of my career, or I could just do something to fix it, right? I could be a title company with a lending background that can go to lenders and say, hey, I feel you, been there, done that, seen the movie, know how it ends, and let me help you. Like, let me help you understand what we do. Because I understand what you do. And through, you know, integrated technology, which is another huge one for us in Title, um, through more efficient streamlined processes, like we can make each other's lives a lot easier and the customer feels that and it makes their life easier.

Yeah, absolutely. And I've, I'm right up there. I don't quite have as many years, but I'm just at the, you know, the 20-year mark. And just as you were kind of explaining, I was thinking back like, and I remember my first few years in sales, the explanation of like how closing works. And then a few years later and how it's a little different, right? And you think about all the closings that you may or may not have been a part of. Well, the person on the other end dealing with mostly consumer agency-type loans, right? These people, they may have bought 2 homes from you, maybe 3 in the last 15, 20 years, right? Like, it's not everybody's business to get up and move unless you work in the fix and flip, right? Or you're buying up investment properties or something along those lines. So it is still a really unique experience for a lot of people. And to your point, if the only people that can really control how that experience goes for the the main focal person of, you know, the client is that, you know, the agent, the lender, and, um, the title company. So I think that's a really important part you bring up, which comes down to, you know, like the networking and communication. It's not just sending this blind email or, you know, 5 other ones where it's like, hey, I did this, and you forgot to read 2 chains below or something like that where you miss some important information. It's building that relationship, being able to pick up that phone call and work in synergy, knowing you're all working for that same goal versus just Hey, I'm just trying to get this done and be home by 5, right? Or get off by 5. So I think that's huge.

Yeah.

Yeah. All right. So I'm going to switch gears on you, kind of talking about agency and bringing up consumers. One big thing I know going on right now is, you know, attorney opinion letters in lieu of, you know, title, right? And I'm not in that realm to talk overly educated about it, but I know there's a lot of benefits of going with just title. There's arguably some benefits for the attorney opinion letter. What are your thoughts and feelings on it?

You know, as someone who's not spent the majority of my career in title, I can try to look at this a little outside the lens and the scope of just a title company, right? Even though I have a title company now. And again, the central theme here, like we just talked about a minute ago, is really all comes down to the consumer. And so what we're seeing as it relates to AOLs is this is, this is being kind of fired at from a couple of different perspectives, right? So recently we saw the Biden administration say we're going to pilot this program where we're going to try to not have title insurance required on certain refis. So that was kind of kicked off this conversation a little bit, right? Just, just recently. And then here, just in recent days and weeks, kind of being coupled with that is the CFPB coming down and saying, hey, we are sort of declaring war, if you will, on junk fees. And they're really going after increased fees that the customer is paying because the overall set of closing costs for the customers have gone up in recent years. And so the CFPB is targeting this and they're really, really spending some considerable effort going after what they are calling junk fees. And so two of the biggest targets in that category are credit report costs and title insurance. And so the use of alternatives to title insurance like attorney opinion letters is really what is kind of becoming more prevalent in this conversation as you know, the administration and the CPB are saying we have got to do something to help the customer, right? Like, we've got to do something to help their pockets. And so from my perspective, I don't necessarily disagree that we got to do something to help the customer, right? Um, are closing costs outrageous? I don't think they're outrageous. But to your point earlier, people are only doing this every however many years, right? 5, 7, 10 years. It's— this is not like a yearly thing, you know.

Homeowners insurance, I said it might be even longer now with where rates have been, right? There's so many people have cheap money right now, they that's why the market's kind of stalled the way it has for primary residences.

Yeah, for sure. So you look at something like homeowners insurance and property taxes, right, that have skyrocketed in recent years. Those have a lot more bearing on what the customer is going to shell out of their pocket every year as opposed to, let's say, title insurance or taxes. Yeah. And so like for title insurance where they're going to pay it once and probably not pay it again for many, many years. Now, again, so the administration, like the Biden administration, when they talked about this pilot program, that was for refinances. Okay, so on a refi, if you come back and say, why do I need a full-blown title policy again? I bought one when I bought the house. Why do I have to get a full-blown lender's policy again, right? The lenders require it because they want their loan covered and protected. I personally can see in the future where we do have some alternatives come in the refi space. May or may not be attorney opinion letters. I could see something like maybe an update to the existing policy, or, you know, a down-date endorsement, or a bring-to-date, or a substantially cheaper renewal of the existing policy. You know, something like that, like I can see where alternatives might start to make some sense in the refi space because at that point you're just updating the lender's policy, you're not updating the owner's policy. So that makes sense to me. And honestly, I wouldn't really be opposed to that. I think bringing refi costs down is fine. Nobody's really talking about refi costs right now because nobody's refinancing. That's not really the— right. That's not really the problem. So when we're talking at the moment.

Yeah.

So when we're talking about a purchase, now you got the CFPB and the administration saying, hey, affordability, right? Like affordability is the buzzword. That's the buzzword across the whole industry right now. And this is where I do have a problem with it as we talk about AOL and title insurance alternatives, because the problem with affordability is not the closing costs. The problem with affordability is the fact that a starter home was $175K 5 years ago, right, at a 4% rate. And today a starter home is $350K depending on where you are in the country at a 7.5% rate. And guess what incomes have done in that same 5-year span nationwide? Yeah, nothing, right? Like maybe you got a 2% merit increase, but that teacher or that firefighter or whatever, whoever it is, like they're probably still making almost the same, if not maybe just a teeny bit more than they were 5 years ago. So $175,000 house at 4% and a $350,000 house at 7%, like that's an affordability crisis. An extra—

correct—

an extra $1,200 on the closing cost does not make that $350,000 house less affordable for that person whose income hasn't changed, right? So that's my rub as it relates to this particular part of the process, is it doesn't fix the issue. The issue is not what they're bringing to the table and shaving $1,000 off the closing cost. Now, with AOLs in particular, um, just to speak on those, the, the challenge there is that it's not insurance. Um, I just saw—

because you're giving up some stuff, right? Whether it's you or the lender, you're technically giving up some protections, right?

100%. Yeah. Because you're not insured, right? So an attorney, what they're going to do is an attorney is going to pull a, you know, they're going to run a title search, they're going to do a, you know, historical search on your property. And I'm just guessing, this is just my, this is just conjecture, but they're going to run the search and they're going to write an opinion letter on, you know, what they see, right? So if they see liens, if they see, hey, I see the existing mortgage, we need that mortgage paid off, you know, whatever, whatever. There's a whole slew of challenges that are presented with that because, you know, we talked a little bit about on the last call what title companies do to offer a clear title to the buyer, right? And then the underwriter is then ensuring that. Alta says that on a normal or average transaction, title companies spend on average 22 hours clearing whether it's defects, you know, what we call curative issues or whatever, procuring clear title. And on difficult and complex transactions, title companies spend an average of 45 hours. Clearing and procuring clear title. With an attorney opinion letter, you don't have that, um, because they're just going to run it and they're just going to give you an opinion of what they see. You don't get that effort of clearing and procuring clear title because that's not what they're there to do. They're just there to give you an opinion, right? So it puts the homeowner and the lender in a much more dangerous position because they're not insured. I also just saw an email from Alta earlier this week, actually, where they said that the average claim due to fraud and forgery in the last— I think it was maybe 10 years, I may have that part wrong, um, but in recent, in recent years, the average claim that was due to fraud and forgery for a title claim that was filed and paid was $143,000. That was, that was the dollar amount, right? You think of like the hail claims on your house or your roof or whatever, right? Those are substantial, but they're generally not $143,000.

Um, no way.

And of that, this was based on a very, very large independent study that was of that, 30% were things that were not found in public records searching. So 30% of those claims were things that were there because people didn't find it when they did a public record search. And that's what AOL is going to do. They're going to do a public record search, right? And they're going to say, here's my opinion, but you're not insured. So that $143,000 claim, that is enough to ruin a family, sometimes for multiple generations.

Oh, easily, right?

Yeah, that's bankruptcy. That's Maybe I'm liquidating my retirement. My kids are screwed. Like, we're not talking about a few thousand dollars here. Um, $4.5 billion in total title claims have been paid out in the last 10 years. $4.5 billion. So to put all of that on— because the attorney is not going to carry liability for this, right? They're not going to say if my opinion letter was wrong, I'm going to pay that $143,000. Absolutely not. It's not an insurance policy, so they're not going to do that. So you're putting that $4.5 billion of the last 10 years back on the homeowner or the lender. And that just— that's ludicrous to me. If we've—

I'm going to throw you a little bit more specific. So like, and maybe you don't have an example, sorry to give you a curveball, but like what would be a scenario where like the borrower would be on the hook?

Right?

Because everybody's like, oh, the lender at the end of the day, I don't care. It's a lender, right? Obviously the lender is listening to this care, right? Because we got to keep the lights on and keep paying things. But when it comes to the borrower, like what scenario would be like, hey, this borrower is in trouble?

So Let's say borrower buys a house, um, something that was not recorded of title. So that 30% I mentioned are things that were, were not found in public records. So, um, let's say the borrower buys the house from you, okay? Let's say that, you know, I bought the house from you, Brian, and we closed. I move in, my family lives there, and then, you know, 6 months later, a year later, 2 years later, whatever, it doesn't matter, um, you inherited the house from your grandpa, and your grandpa had another grandson that you know, maybe it was a distant cousin of yours that you didn't know about. Well, they had a, you know, your cousin had a deed from your grandpa to him giving him that house, and he stuck that deed in his nightstand. Nobody ever filed it. And it sounds like, oh, this is kind of crazy, nobody does that. This kind of stuff happens all the time, all the time. When you have— sometimes it's not necessarily a deed that was— that would have awarded the property that didn't get filed, but a lot of times it is an heir that has a familial tie or claim to that property based on where they were in the family tree, even if there was, you know, no physical paper attached to that, that people didn't know about. Right. So you think there's, there's children outside of marriage. I mean, there's all kinds of things like this. It is a ripple effect that can go out very, very widespread.

But I'll say, they make plenty of movies about that kind of stuff. So yeah, it can happen.

This could be a Netflix documentary, man. I don't know if anybody would watch it, but like, hey, you know, screw up some title that costs people money. Yeah. But a lot of times it's heirs, heirs that either people thought didn't exist or maybe sometimes thought were deceased that were not deceased. Um, or transfers of title that were not properly documented or properly recorded. So what will happen is that heir would come back to me and say, Jeremy, you own this house now, but I actually have a 1/6 interest in it, or I have a 1/4 claim in it because Brian's grandpa didn't record this deed. So that's why it's $143,000, because if, let's say, the house is worth $500,000 and they've got a 1/4 claim in it, you know, that's— there's your $143,000 right there, or, you know, close to it. So, so the title insurance company, if they were insured If they said, hey, we missed that, that's our job to procure clear title. You go file a claim with title insurance. Title insurance writes, you know, your cousin Joey $143,000 check because he technically has that percentage of ownership interest in the property. He shuts up, he goes away, I get to keep the house.

Great.

But when it's an attorney opinion letter and there's no insurance policy, he shows up, he's got a rightful claim to 1/4 of my house that I, that I own. What am I going to do? He's going to take me to court. Now we're gonna spend way more than $153K in court battling him out, and it's just, it sucks for everybody. Nobody wins.

Yeah, if you're even lucky enough to be in that position to afford that kind of avenue, right?

Yeah, exactly.

To battle that out.

Yeah.

Yeah, we, uh, it's a personal story on my end. I worked with a guy, we were doing consumer loans. It wasn't even in real estate. We were just doing like auto loans or something like that when I worked for a bank. And he had, uh, his wife had inherited a property. They turned around and they sold it to an oil company. I think the oil company knew about it, but along the lines, they actually owned more land than what was recorded. And so when the oil company bought it, they knew they were getting more land and it ended up coming out probably a year or two later and they ended up going to court. But it's because of that title insurance policy, it really kind of helped them them and protected them in the sense of what, what they knew they owned, what they didn't own, the whole nine yards. And they ended up getting this huge settlement from it because they were being taken advantage of, the whole nine yards, in the sense of how they bought it and sold it. And I don't know all the details, I just know that guy got to retire earlier than he expected, right? So a lot of benefits. So, you know, we can have these conversations about like who protects and who's not, but sometimes those real-world scenarios, just like you said, like, hey, you don't know who they inherited it from. And that is a very common scenario out there. You know, you can go to a cocktail party and hear your friends talk about that, right? It may not be something you've done, but there's always that that degree of separation where you know somebody who's done that or somebody who was lucky enough to get that from an in-law or something like that. You never know how those title transfers can go. So, yeah. Great information. I appreciate it. Yep. What are, what else are your plans for, you know, Elite Title, right? Like where, what are your plans for the next couple years? Where do you see it going? What are your goals? What are you trying to accomplish?

Yeah, so our vision honestly is to stay pretty small. We are, we're boutique, we're white glove. And we want to stay that way. Um, you know, if we, if we can grow amongst sort of our area here in North Texas, or, you know, if we, if we end up expanding into, you know, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, or whatever, that's fine. Um, I'm not trying to be huge. I'm not trying to be nationwide. I feel like once we get to that point, we lose a lot of, um, kind of the— our brand identity, right? And our brand identity is super high touch point with the service aspect. Um, and, you know, our clients have our cell phone numbers. And that's really, really hard when you get really, really big to maintain that level of service. And so, so long term, I don't, I don't want to be huge. I want to be boutique. If you think of it in terms of like a boutique hotel, right? Like a super high-end boutique hotel where you're just going to get much more dedicated personal attention, you know, a higher degree of service from that aspect. Like, that's what we want. Um, so that's, that's part of it on the title company side. On the industry side, um, I want to be a very loud voice. I love doing stuff like this. I'm so thankful that you invited me, um, to, to be on your, on your show because to me, I think there is like— this goes well beyond the deals that we close at the title company and our consumers that we can help. There is a, a need for knowledge and awareness and understanding across the board. So, um, for me, that looks like really trying to be a loud voice on social media, doing stuff like this, writing books, public speaking, all of that. So, and, and we tie that in with a lot of industry organizations. So, um, on the mortgage side, that's the Mortgage Bankers Association, which I've been involved with for a very long time. I was the president of a local chapter, but now I'm on the board of the Texas Mortgage Bankers. And so really trying to use that platform. Thanks. It was really, um, very humbling and honoring to be on that board. Texas is one of the biggest MBAs in the nation, so when they invited me, I was super humbled. And so using things like that and the connection with the National MBA. And now on the title side, we have TLTA and ALTA. I'm on a couple committees with MISMO between Mismo and MERS, who are really, really trying to fight really hard to impact the digital mortgage, the digital closing space. So I think all of those things, like, that's a lot of other things that I spend a lot of my time doing that doesn't— may not necessarily bring business in the door to Elite Title, um, but I care about this industry, right? And I want to see this industry move forward, um, and I want to see collectively our borrowers have the benefit of what we're trying to accomplish. And so, so I spend a lot of my time just really, really trying to help with education and awareness and understanding. Now, on the flip side, right now where we are, because we are one of the exceptionally rare title companies nationwide that does this and that takes on— and I don't think I mentioned this earlier, but we take on the burden for the lender of doing the digital closing, meaning we carry the software, lender doesn't have to go purchase it. So my background in lending was I'm trying to come to lenders, especially now when volume is down, nobody wants to spend money, right? Nobody wants to bring on new software, new vendors, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, we did that for them so we can integrate with their system if they want to. We can provide the digital closing for them. They don't have to spend any money. All we got to do is get them an eVault set up on the back end if they don't have one already. But outside of that, they don't have to change any internal processes. We specifically tried to minimize the disruption to the lender, um, and so that is something that is exceptionally unique to us. And so all of the outside stuff that I'm doing for awareness and education, you know, will that translate into some business for Elite Title? Sure, I'm sure it will to some extent, and that's great. Yeah, but also like I genuinely legitimately want to help this industry. I want to be a voice to bring this industry into the, you know, I would even say 21st century. But I mean, there's a lot of, a lot of what we do in our industry that is even, even before that. So, um, it's a slow burn because it's a huge industry, but I'm just trying to help any way I can.

Slow burn, I love the way you said that. Yeah, you could, uh, you know, you call it small but mighty, or, you know, however you want to word it. But in the sense of being elite, right, there's a lot of different ways you can go about that. So one of those is staying to those core values, which you, you know, you talked about the, the synergy and the service and keeping the client at the, at the center of it. And when you get too big, that's when you lose it to your point, right? Like you don't, you don't want to get away from that. You want to be extremely impactful and elite for those that you serve. And you would much rather be the preferred title company as opposed to the biggest.

Yeah.

Right. So you can see the names, you're like, oh, I've heard of them before. It's great. You've heard of them, but you're, you're a number that goes through just like everybody else. Right? When you're working with somebody like boutique, I, I've always appreciated that word. You know, it's much more homegrown, right? It's, it's a different way of saying kind of mom and pop to where it's, you can walk in and people do know your name or they are expecting you and they treat you right. And, you know, they take care of you, whether that's welcoming you in and sitting you down with a stack of papers or doing it over a video, right? Or giving an introductory call on how to get into your portal to do what you're about to do and to help them through it. So there's a lot of different ways to, to serve people, give them that, that instant gratification and service that you've kind of been talking about and do it with, you know, a little bit of flair and definitely some dang good customer service behind it. So, you know, kudos to you. And I think the, The slow burn. Sorry, that got me there. I think that's, that's funny, right? After so many years of being in the industry, you know, being a voice, I think there's a lot of people that need to step up in our industry to do that, to change things, to make them better. Right. And then to stop things that don't make it better. You know, I'm not, I'm not a paper fan. You can talk to my CEO and he will tell you my eye ticks when I see a giant stack of paper. It drives me nuts. But, you know, there are times that it's appropriate and it makes sense. And then there's other times it's like, hey, we were given the ability to make this technology. And if we just went through 3 extra steps to make it a whole lot safer in the sense of, you know, the ID and the verification questions and everything else, What does it matter if it's blue or black wet ink versus an e-signature that literally gave you my IP address that you can go Google and figure out, oh yeah, he lives there. Yeah, it's his workplace or whatever it is. Right. And prove that I was really there. So that's crazy.

Okay.

Kind of wrapping some things up. I don't take up too much of your time because I know you got a business and obviously some organizations to be a part of. But dealing with all that, like, what's, what's something that helps you be successful? Right. So we, it's always good to share success secrets and, you know, what helps you keep organized or motivated or whatever it may be, but You know, somebody like you in your position with all the things that you balance, like what's some advice or a hack that you can give somebody that, you know, hey, I like that and they want to take that on and try it themselves?

Yeah. So I love this question too. I am a huge advocate of efficiency. Efficiency is something that— this is another book that I'm working on, but in my spare time, it's something that is very, very widely misunderstood. And a lot of people think efficiency means speed. It doesn't. It is way, way, way beyond speed. In our, in our society, there are hundreds, probably thousands of resources and hacks, if you will, on productivity. So you Google this, man, you can find podcasts, you can find blogs, you can find books, keynote speakers, so much, everything on how to be more productive, right? Here are my 7 hacks. Do these 7 things because I did. Whether it's real estate people or not doesn't matter, right? But do these 7 things because I did these and I became a millionaire. And, you know, this helped me in my business, whatever. And I'm not saying those are all bad, I'm not, and I'm not dogging on it. But the difference is productivity is not necessarily always the end goal because you can be productive without being profitable, and you can also be productive without being efficient. For me personally, it really came down to a few things. I drew a hard line in the sand a long time ago in my career on my work-life balance and the fact that my family was more important than my career. And so even in, you know, gosh, from the years of like 19— 2019 to 20— '22, essentially our busy season. Um, I think I was— during those years, I probably averaged 20 loans a month or so as a loan officer that I was closing. And never, never once did I work more than 40 hours a week. Never once. Um, so some people can look at that and say, oh gosh, you're that guy that's like not available on the weekends, or, you know, that realtors hate because you're not going to answer your phone at night or weekends, and that's when people are shopping for houses, and, you know, they don't want to send you. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about being so highly efficient during the business hours, during the workday, that, hey, I don't have to work nights and weekends. But also another huge component for me, and this is a hack if you want to call it a hack, but it's setting expectations with the people that you work with, primarily your referral partners. So yeah, real estate, here's what that looks like. A lot of people do look at houses nights and weekends because they got to go look when they're not working, right? And so open houses are on the weekend, they're not Wednesday at 3 o'clock, you know, they're Saturday. So Does that mean that I haven't— I should have already worked with that borrower, gotten them prequalified, pre-approved, whatever. That's fine. But they're going to go to that open house. What if they get into, you know, an offer situation and they're counter-offering and they've got a battle and they need to call me and say, hey, can I go up $5,000 more? I need to change my pre-approval letter. Like, and we might lose this deal right now and it's Saturday. So what I've always done with people that I've worked with is that, hey, listen, if you need me, you have my cell phone number, okay? If you need me at night, or on the weekend. If you're going to lose that deal, or if it is a pertinent question that is pertinent to that deal, I am here for you. You call me, I will answer. You text me, I may not answer immediately. Like, you text me like, hey, I got a question, I will call you back. I am available and I am here for you if you need me. But if it can wait till Monday, then just wait till Monday. Like, don't blow me up on the weekend just because, right? And so setting that expectation was huge, um, and it took a while. It was a little bit of a detox transition period where you're not just always checking your email. Um, but when you set the expectation with the people you work with, your referral partners and things like that, um, then they— I found that there was inherently a healthy level of respect for that, right? Like, hey, I know I can call Jeremy on nights or weekends, but like, I'm not gonna do it unless I need to right then. Like, this— getting this house for my client is, is on the balance at that point again, or there's other— some other emergency that can't wait till the next business day, right? So that's a huge one. Another thing I did— people call me crazy, but you know, I'm used to it— is I took my email, my work email, off my phone. I have it on my iPad, but I took it off my phone. People still to this day tell me, no way, no way, that won't work for me, it's not possible, I can't do it, can't do it. And I'm like, okay, look, I closed 25— 20 to 25 deals a month. And again, it sucked for the first couple months, but what it forced me to do was be more efficient during regular business hours because mentally it trained my mind of like, oh, I'm not just going to sit there and swipe through my emails while I'm sitting on the couch at home, right? Or for me, when I'm not with my kids or I'm at dinner with my wife, I'm not just going to sit there and swipe, swipe, swipe, even if I'm just marking them as read, the ones I don't need to read. So I have less to mark as read the next morning when I get in, which is what a lot of people say. I'm just cleaning it up so I have less to look at next time I get to the office, whatever. But when I took my email off my phone, again, set expectations with your referral partner, set expectations with your customers. I've got access to my email on my iPad if I need it, but I don't carry my iPad in my pocket everywhere I go, so I'm not tempted to constantly look at it and swipe. But then that forced me to be more efficient during my workday. Efficiency. I'm actually— so I'm currently getting my doctorate and I'm writing a dissertation on efficiency because I'm so passionate about how efficiency can improve people's work life and their work-life balance and how it's completely misunderstood that I committed to like doing this, you know, 4-year doctorate program and writing a dissertation just so that I can really, really hone in on the specifics of it and do a lot of historical, you know, academic research on it and all this kind of stuff. That's not important. But the key to efficiency is minimizing or eliminating the inputs and the waste, because if you are efficient, you will inherently be productive. Okay, that you can't be efficient without being productive. You can be productive but not efficient, right? Because if you're productive, what are the things that are wasteful? You can be— if you're putting out a high volume, you might be working 100 hours a week, you might be sacrificing time with your friends and family, you might be physically draining yourself, emotionally draining yourself, right? There's a lot of waste, but you might hit your numbers, right? You might put— like, your boss might like that spreadsheet at the end of the month, but what level of waste is included in that? And that's not— that doesn't show up in your month-end numbers, right? So, um, so that goes back to the, the, the email thing. The setting of the expectations and being more efficient. And once that secret sauce all made sense to me and I figured out how to be more efficient from the hours of 9 to 5 and the fact that I didn't have to work nights and weekends all the time unless the rare occasion where it was an emergency— work-life balance, family life, home life, amazing. Then I came into the office every time like, I'm more energetic, I'm fired up, I'm ready to be here. I know I've got these 8 or 9 hours to just really knock it out of the park, and then when I leave, I leave, and then I come back and I do it all over again. So I know that was—

I was looking at the, the, you know, setting expectations because you always hear that in customer service, right? And that's what you're relating it to. But I mean, it'd be the same thing with your spouse, your kids, anybody like that, right? Like, if you don't tell them what's going on, they're just going to assume, right? And that's never a good thing. So you have to be transparent with the people that you work with every day to say, hey, here's where we're at. If it's an absolute emergency, you can grab me, right? Like, it's not a big deal. But I think a lot of times dealing with, you know, because you've had the fire drills too, you set those expectations, you probably had those clients that still call you and blow you up.

Sure.

But at least it was only 1 or 2 versus 20 on the weekends.

Right.

Right. And so you're still saving your time. You're keeping that efficiency in there to where, like you said, Monday morning you come in, you're more energized. In the first 2 hours, you can knock out all those people that did send you, hey, I need to update a letter. I gotta have it by end of the day today. Great. I gave it to you. I give you a phone call. You have it in hand. Give you your real— everybody's timetables are still met. Everything's good. And for those rare cases where it's like, no, I need it by Saturday night or Sunday night.

Mm-hmm.

You're there to still help them. Right. And you can work to them. People understand like, hey, they're not available right now, I need an extension. Most realtors can have your back on that and they can work with you. And that's all they care about, right? In the sense of how you treated them during that time of urgency. And it's the one time versus you had 20 on the weekend. So I think that's huge and a really good reminder. Um, good job on the doctorate program. That's all. I just finished my MBA, so I'm not there yet on your end. Uh, I was thinking of Angela. Do you know who Angela Duckworth is by chance?

Uh, no.

I was like, you may not. Uh, TED Talks, give her a listen. Uh, her entire paper was written on grit. So not quite the same as efficiency, right? Um, but I think grit in the, in the sense of learning to keep striving and keep persevering, um, it might actually kind of go in line with what you're talking about, right? Because that efficiency, you, you have to stay focused, you have to stay disciplined. And if you do those things, those daily disciplines line up and that's where the success comes into play. But you have to do it in the right way. Otherwise you're productive, but not efficient. Right. And all that waste that you were talking about. So that's huge. Thank you so much for that insight. Um, all right. So closeelite.com, that's where people can come find out or come look more into your organization, right? Elite Title. Can they find you on social media? How can people get in contact with you if they want to hear from you?

Yeah, so closely.com, obviously, for the, for the title company. Um, I am big on LinkedIn, just again, like I mentioned earlier, for just kind of the voice for the industry. So more on the B2B side of things. So you can just search me, Jeremy Dean, on LinkedIn. Um, and the, the title company has a page on LinkedIn, but really all the content that, that anything that gets pushed through the title company is just stuff that I tag the title company on. So the page itself doesn't have a lot of activity. Um, and then our title company does have a LinkedIn page where that's really more, again, that's more consumer-facing. So we post updates about closings and, you know, pictures of closings and things like that. So you can search Elite Title Company on Instagram. Um, we don't really do a whole lot on Facebook, so my LinkedIn is probably where we push out the most content. Um, and then Instagram, more of the, uh, more of the feel-good stuff. So which, on that note too, I forgot to mention earlier, we were talking about when you said close anywhere in the world, we just had a closing this week. It was, it was our first international one, but our, the signer, our client was in Peru, um, and she, she went to an internet cafe with a laptop, got on their Wi-Fi, and we were done in 20 minutes. And I'm just telling you, man, like, crazy. Ask any agent, how would you have done that with your seller in Peru? Well, we got to get the documents down there, she's got to find a way to print them, she's got to get to a U.S. embassy or consulate.

You say the word mail-away closing, people are like, oh, this is horrible.

International mail-away closing though is like next level, right? Like an embassy or a consulate to get a U.S. notary, that's— you got to schedule that week. Yeah. It is a nightmare, man. We were done in 20 minutes. Like, it was great. So I'm super happy about that. I'm going to— we're definitely going to be hammering that on social media too.

Yeah, that's a good one, man. Thanks for finishing off of that. I appreciate that. So, you know, CloseTheLeague.com, check out Jeremy Dean on LinkedIn. Feel free to message him. I'm sure he'd love to hear from you. Follow his content. I think he's definitely a voice to be heard. So thank you so much for spending some time with me today, sir. I do appreciate it. Thanks, Brian.

Really appreciate you having me on, man.