Executive Title Rides Crest of Southwest Florida Real Estate Wave

In a nutshell, a title company ensures that a deed to a property doesn’t have any hitches—no estate problems, no ownership disputes or questions about property boundaries, and no fraud, forgeries or defects in the title-before it is transferred to a new owner. The company checks the property survey and researches the legal history of the deed, and its underwriter issues insurance to protect against any of these potential problems or conflicts. Typically, both the buyer and the lender take out title insurance, a one-time premium. The title company is usually the third party that actually passes the deed from the seller to the buyer. The title company is not a law firm; however, it does have access to attorneys when they are needed. “Really what we are is a service provider,” Yankowski says. “We put together the figures, we are the coordinator between you and all the other parties to bring you to the table, and we handle all your escrow funds.”

Executive Title, unlike many title companies, does all its work in-house rather than subcontracting certain tasks, such as title searches. Yankowski says that having the backing of Stewart Information Services, an affiliate of Stewart Title, has been a tremendous asset, partly because it has the financial heft to provide resources that smaller companies cannot afford on their own. “Our affiliation with Stewart Title has put a personnel of over 200 people at my fingertips to use in technology,” he says. “We actually house our main computers in Houston to have them service them and have us up and running at all times. They put over $4 million into their computer department to make sure it never goes down.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. They’ve got the A/C at 60 degrees and if there’s ever a fire, it sucks all the oxygen out and puts out the fire instead of using water, which would destroy all your computer equipment,” he says.

Climbing the Technology Ladder

Technology is at the core of the title industry’s future—and innovations now are a far cry from the brand-new fax machine that everyone drove over to admire just a decade or so ago. It wasn’t long ago—and for many companies, it still is true—that a quick turn-around was two weeks from the time an order came in to the closing date. “These days, we’ve done things in two hours with technology and really that’s where our focus is, is how to make our process go a little bit smoother with technology and how to make the process easier for the consumer,” Yankowski says.

One of the industry’s biggest challenges is that the customer never sees all the documents until he comes to the table for the closing. At that point, the customer often doesn’t understand the documents and it often falls to the real estate agent or the closer to explain. Yankowski believes the process could go much faster if they sent the documents via e-mail or had the customer come in ahead of time to review the documents. “That’s where our industry is really going, to make the process better for the consumer,” he says. The challenge is how to get to an insurable title in a manner where not only are people more informed, but there’s even less liability.

Executive Title has established a computer network among its offices so all employees have personal e-mail accounts, enabling them to communicate more effectively among themselves and with Realtors and lenders. “That’s a tremendous time-saver because you don’t have to track down these very busy individuals in the lending institutions or real estate institutions,” Yankowski says. “You’ve also got a paper trail.”

Executive Title has a high level of name recognition, even to those who are not in the industry. But it’s the company’s track record and its emphasis on personal relationships that count because real estate agents—the primary link between the title company and the customer—need to know they can depend on its performance. Michael Schneider-Christians, a real estate agent with Century 21 Sunbelt Realty in Cape Coral, has known of Executive Title since the mid-’80s and uses its services regularly. “I know their work, they’ve been here for years, they’ve got a good name in the community,” he says.

Mark Bucholtz, president and owner of Creative Mortgage Corporation of Southwest Florida, learned about Executive through the golf league the company promotes—one of Executive Title’s numerous community activities. More important, though, Bucholtz says he has unshakable faith in Gina Noonan, his Executive contact. Even when he has to work with a different title company, chosen by the seller, he calls Noonan for explanations that the other company can’t provide. A closing with Executive can take 24 to 48 hours instead of a week or more with other companies, Bucholtz says. If there’s a delay, Bucholtz says he’s fully informed why. “The standard was set by Executive Title,” he says. “They do what they tell me they’re going to do when they tell me they’re going to do it.”

Yankowski’s keys to marketing successfully are professionalism, consistency, integrity and a reputation for getting the job done right. “No matter whether you’re rich or you’re poor, this is the single largest personal transaction that a person’s going to do in their life, so you’ve got to be professional, you’ve got to have a professional environment, you’ve got to drive at a goal.

“Our goal is not to produce revenue and see if we can be No. 1. You don’t get there if that’s what your only pursuit is. It’s really providing a good service to our customers—that ‘magnificent moment’ at closing,” he adds with a smile.

Jill Tyrer is a freelance writer and editor.