While some businesses floundered through the unpredictability of the pandemic, two title companies not only thrived, they expanded. Angela Lozano, national operations manager and general counsel of Title Forward, a subsidiary of Redfin, and Bspoke Title CEO Sarah Blackburn spoke at Qualia’s virtual Future of Real Estate Summit on March 11 about ways title companies can adapt to and weather any changes that might come.
Qualia Director of Product Charlotte Brown asked both how their companies were able to grow during the pandemic while others tried to just stay afloat. They credited technology as a big reason.
“It was a time of serious growth for us, and growth in many ways: lessons learned, growth through expansion, growth through operating systems,” Lozano said.
Title Forward switched over to Qualia last year. “I joke that I’m probably the one crazy one who voted for an operating system shift during a pandemic, but I’m so glad we did,” she said.
Lozano anticipated a market slowdown during the pandemic shutdown and thought that would be a good time to make the platform change. But the slowdown didn’t happen.
“Business ramped up, demand ramped up, everything ramped up all of a sudden. We had to be able to weather that storm. It’s a good storm, but we had to weather it nonetheless,” she said.
Blackburn said Bspoke Title transitioned its title operations in nine different cities to Qualia a year and a half before the pandemic and called the technology a “game-changer.” It allowed employees to immediately be able to work remotely during the “crazy, everchanging rules” early in the pandemic, giving them an edge over competitors.
“In one of our markets, we would have a title company down the street that literally would put out on social media that they could no longer accept contracts. We never did that,” she said. “We were able to, in each market, just keep going.”
Blackburn said Bspoke anticipates around 15 percent of its team members will permanently work from home now, compared to only 2 percent before the pandemic. That would not be possible without the tools that facilitate remote operations, she said, which include Zoom, Microsoft Teams, DocuSign, remote online notarization (RON), and Bank Shot, which allows for secure, remote deposit of earnest money.
“We were literally able to do things just from our iPhone,” she said.
Lozano said her teams went 100 percent remote during the pandemic shutdown as well because of the technology they had, including Qualia’s web-based platform that allowed documents to be accessed from anywhere. Other tools she cited include Google Suites, Google Meet, Slack and eSigning portals.
“This is a world that we dreamed of, to be in an electronic world,” she said. “We’ve been in an antiquated industry for so long. This is the future that we were envisioning for a long time.”
Blackburn said working electronically also deepens the talent pool. Bspoke began hiring remote escrow officers and assistants located in different states than the office. Of the 55 people hired since March 2020, a third were for remote positions, she said.
“Often, finding talent in certain markets, you’re limited. We’ve broadened our search and we’re no longer thinking along the lines of someone has to be in this location to work for this company,” Blackburn said. “We’re not going to turn someone away who is really good at their job just because they’re not located in Austin or Lubbock.”
Title companies need to make the remote innovations embraced during the pandemic routine if they want to thrive, Lozano said.
“Even though so much happened with the pandemic, I feel like one silver lining is that it hit the fast-forward button on us transitioning into a more electronic world and really brought to light how important it is for people to be able to sign a closing package remotely,” she said. “In a day and age where Amazon can deliver a package to your door in a few hours, there really isn’t a necessity for someone to drive hours to sit at a closing table to sign a stack of 200 pages. We should be able to accommodate them wherever they are.”