The predictions are in, and while we’ll see modest improvement, the 2024 real estate market is likely to remain subdued across the U.S. due to low inventory and relatively high interest rates. But “subdued” does not mean nonexistent and the most recent forecasts are predicting sales of existing homes will rise to 4.3 million by […]

Customer communication is considered important in most industries, but it is truly foundational in the title insurance industry. In addition to the traditional idea of communication as a sales tool or a as an important aspect of customer service, title agents know that communication is critical to actually creating the title insurance product and the

The title insurance industry is largely made up of employees who learned the business from the ground up, or transferred into an agency from a related industry, such as lending or real estate, arriving with some basic understanding of the business. In either case, most of the actual training occurs on the job, whether it

Nothing makes an American business owner more nervous than the thought of a slowdown in orders. Not to downplay the current downturn, but after a hectic decade in the real estate market, we suddenly find ourselves staring at post-Great Recession numbers again. In 2014, we sold 4.94M existing homes. From 2015 to 2020 we bumped

In 2008, at the height of the Great Recession, the federal government, consumer organizations and the financial services industry itself all found themselves asking, “How did this happen?”  Every segment of the real estate industry as well as Wall Street were suddenly under a microscope, as investigators tried to pinpoint the weaknesses in the system. 

Many modern inventions have their upsides and their downsides. “Better living through chemistry” – an advertising slogan used by DuPont in 1935 – was heralded by scientists and industry leaders who believed that chemistry could improve many aspects of life – which it did. But the development of chemicals has its dark side. A few

Technology  We all love new technology, like the most updated smartphone or a brand-new laptop right off the assembly line. For businesses, new applications are often sought out to solve a problem, streamline workflow, organize data, build better marketing programs or better protect systems. In this era, new applications are fairly WYSIWYG – what you

Digital Customer Service: Go for the Gold Creating a Service Culture of Excellence Most service industries look at their competitors when trying to create standards for their own customer service. But copying what others are doing doesn’t have the desired effect of making you stand out from the crowd. This is particularly evident in the