Title is crucial to the buyer as a clear title will allow him or her an unrestricted use of the property he or she is going to buy with his or her life-saving.
Cost of the property can be very high these days unlike old days in 94 when I could buy a little home in Denver for as little as $15000.
Gone are the days of such bargains.
So now we pay a higher price for the same property and the huge amount of money cannot be put at risk by buying a property which can never be ours in the long run.
Who are Title Agents?
Usually it takes three to four days to apply for a title search for a competent attorney who can search all aspects of a clear title for the property proposed to be bought by his clients.
The client is not an expert in real estate like me or you who cannot understand the complex nature of a clear title and we solely depend on the expertise of the qualified attorney whom we trust.
Title agent assures us of our clear legal rights to own and use the property by searching the history of the property we propose to buy.
What is the Title of the Property?
The title will define the legal boundaries of the property and how it can be used.
Freehold property means it belongs to us free and clear forever to be continued in the ownership of our legal heirs without any restrictions whereas a leasehold property will revert to the original owner after a certain number of years as specified.
Whoever is living in the property as a renter can never become the owner as we can see in the registry of landowners maintained in the Govt offices recording the name of the rightful owner each time the property is bought or sold.
So you have a title to the property free and clear without anything hindering such rights only when your name is registered as the owner in such government records like the registry of landowners showing the complete history of ownership to the property traced as long back as possible.
When you buy a property, you are assured by your agent that you will get the ownership from the previous owner whose name is found in the registry of landowners maintained by the Govt offices.
You will get the ownership in your name. This is required for any sale transaction. Then the property becomes yours with a clean title.
Role of Title Agents
Title agent gets you a clean title and makes sure it will always remain yours by getting you title insurance. He makes sure there will be no problems after the purchase about the absolute ownership remaining in your name.
To make this possible, the agent works with all concerned in the sale transaction including the buyers and sellers and anyone else involved.They make sure the forms are filled out correctly so the title of ownership is transferred smoothly from the sellers to the buyers.
Sometimes they are also responsible to make sure that the money is transferred to the seller at the same time.
They make sure all the documents are signed properly.
So it’s important to choose the title agent with a lot of experience and expertise.
Lenders make sure they have a title agent they can trust otherwise their loaned money will be at risk. And the closing can be delayed and in the worst scenario the buyer never gets a clean title nor the seller gets his money and everyone concerned can end up in a mess!
How Right Technology Can Help Lenders in Title Settlement?
Right technology is ushering a quick transfer of title with the help of AI and automated transfer of title facilitated by machines to avoid mistakes of any kind.
A computer system detects any error in a transaction if an agent overlooks by any chance to make no mistakes.
A seller profile is maintained as well as a buyer profile in a system to avoid mistakes and frauds.
One billion funds were attempted to be misappropriated in 2017 as per FBI reports through email scams.
Real estate transactions can be foolproof through an automated system where the seller gets an SMS the minute the money is transferred to his name when he signs the documents to transfer the title to buyer’s name. Hackers are always waiting for the agent to make a small mistake if he is not using a secure means of communication in money transfer and use of business e-mails.
So lenders make sure they hire a reputable agent who coordinates in such a way to make no mistakes in transfer of the title or money at the same time.
The modern cloud based technology helps the agent to avoid mistakes.
An efficient agent therefore looks for partners with the right technology. As his success depends on the right technology.
The whole transaction remains on record where nothing can be altered.
It’s a very complicated process and they can’t afford to allow a small mistake leading to a whole transaction collapsing.
It’s found that with modern technology which is protected by firewalls, nothing can go wrong.
Buyers are afraid of a dreadful experience of losing their money and not getting a clean title.
When everything goes right it’s an occasion to celebrate with joy.
A bad agent’s unsecured communication is unable to provide the right experience that the buyers and sellers deserve after spending a lot of money as fees.
A real estate agent knows by experience which title agent can be trusted to finalise the closing of a deal smoothly.
The buyers and sellers can verify the agent through reviews his company has received online over years. If they are not careful they can end up with defective titles meaning further action will be needed to be taken.
So buyers should do their homework to study what’s a clear title and not end up with problems for the rest of their lives.
They should also study about how artificial intelligence can help them to avoid mistakes and cut costs.
Cloud Based AI/ML System is the Key
Although AI is prone to be hacked by ultra modern thieves, there is a secure way of communicating effectively and efficiently through cloud technology.
No title agent can avoid using AI and automated systems to ensure he makes no errors.
Tedious and monotonous procedure is simplified by the use of automation which works at the click of a button to study the buyer or seller profiles etc.
Machine learning has become absolutely necessary without which we become dependent on partners who can use them.
Agents lose out on competitors who get ahead of them using technology as a stepping stone.
So it has become absolutely necessary to learn about technology for an agent to be in a win-win situation.
A data officer has become a must to a title agent to move the applications swiftly and without errors to bring them to a smooth closing.
It’s like an industrial revolution to be able to use cloud based technology.
Do it or die.
A Data official collects the data to be used at the tip of his fingers literally.
It’s the technology era and if we don’t know how to access it ourselves or through our partners or we are dead losing out in the competition.
Every agent who is conventional should be able to set a pricing of automation in three stages or four.
Even facial recognition technology should be used to recognise the true owners of a property in title searching or we could end up buying the property from renters who claim to be owners in the absence or death of owners.
Even suggestion engines of Amazon are now being used to show the property to buyers which is timesaving to both buyers and real estate agents.
Cost effectiveness is absolutely necessary to a successful agent as it costs more to run an office today than it did ten years ago.
Outsourcing to effectively cut the costs and time gives more time to an agent.
AI can do the same by memorising the buyer and seller profiles for example other than the whole transaction when needed at the touch of a button or click.
This brings down the cost of operations which needed clerical staff in the old days to maintain the files etc or write a letter.
Which are now replaced by a computer sending automatic replies with speed and accuracy although my memory may be failing due to my age etc. I can still impress my customers with the efficiency and quality of an automated machine.
Keeping customers happy means keeping customers who want to do business with my experience combined with automation.
Here are some areas where a title agent can benefit by automation:
- Tracking by automated reminders.
- Eliminates routine tasks like confirmations.
- Automated reconciliation:
- Helps to reconcile accounts in time and more effectively.
- Workflow automation
As we go on automating our process, we discover how to automate further.
- Examination: searching documents is a tedious job when it’s done manually whereas a machine can do it in minutes.
- Business Processing Outsourcing or BPOs can fully eliminate the stress by taking over the whole processing.
- They can eliminate the stress totally as we go on aging and leave us with free hands to attend key jobs like overseeing the process for errors.
- Title production automation including underwriting.
- OCR or optical character recognition technology helps us to scan documents or PDF files and transfer them to other applications when necessary.
Slowly we make our lives easier by automation with the help of AI and machine learning.
RPA technology
This involves using bots or robots processing automation to chat with your customers or do other things for you when you cannot be present, reducing the cost of monitoring for you.
These bots can be programmed to manage things for the title agent.
They can start with easy tasks to learn more complicated stuff step by step.
AI can be very useful in the detection of frauds and risk assessment.
Ultimately it’s a curative process digesting as much automation as we can and hire a data officer when we can’t handle it ourselves.
Basically AI is nothing but data accumulation and using it to achieve any results like digital documents or Public records.
Customer data will be handy along with consumer profiles.
Transaction histories and credit history should be available to a title agent whenever he needs it.
The list can go on adding to it whenever he feels the need educating himself to make his life easier and more enjoyable.
