The Brent Laliberte Story

Bayou  Title owner and President Brent Laliberte might never have had his successful career in the title industry had his wife Kathy not suggested he help a title company with closings. He had planned a career in finance, but after his first closing, he was hooked on title.

Anyone who tries their hand at title work will find out quickly whether the industry is for them, Brent said.

“You seem to know pretty soon whether you like it or not,” he said. “You’re either going to make it only six months or a year, or you’re going make it a career. There’s not usually a whole lot in between.”

Brent, 57, planned on a career in finance when he was working at American Thrift & Finance Plan (dba State-Farm Acceptance Corporation of LA) while working on his bachelor’s degree in finance at the University of New Orleans.

“I got a job working part time at a finance company, making all of $4 an hour,” he said. “I did that for about a year and said, ‘Well, I’m sure I could do better elsewhere.’ So, I left.”

A few months later, the company invited him back.

“They said, ‘Why don’t you come back and be our property manager? We’ll give you $8 an hour.’ I remember thinking I don’t know what a property manager is, but $8 is better than $4,” Brent laughed.

He continued working at American Thrift & Finance Plan while he went to law school, earning his juris doctorate from Loyola University School of Law in 1993. He moved his way up to vice president and treasurer of the company and expected to spend his career there, but after his mentor and the owner of the company passed away, the atmosphere changed. That was when Kathy introduced him to title.

“My wife was a lender in the mortgage business. There was a title company that needed a closer and she said maybe I could do closings on the side. So that’s where I kind of dipped my toe in the water,” he said.

He found he was a natural at closings, so he decided to cut ties with finance and plunge full time into title, taking a job at Chartres Title Insurance Agency. It was a risky move.

“If memory serves, I was probably making $150,000 at the time, and I was ready to leave for a guarantee of about $50,000,” Brent said. “We’d just had twins, and I told my wife you need to go back to work because we might need your money just in case, because I’m probably taking a step back, but that’s the only way I can move forward.”

The risk paid off, he said, as he never took a pay cut and he learned a lot about the title business quickly at Chartres Title. A year and a half later, he and Kathy opened Bayou Title.

He started the business with three former co-workers in November of 1999. By January of 2000, Kathy came aboard. She is currently vice president, chief operating officer and chief finance officer of Bayou Title.

“It was a great opportunity for us because she was a lender for many years, so she understands what the other side of the transaction looks like. She brought some inside knowledge that maybe a typical title company wouldn’t otherwise have,” Brent said. “It’s been great. She and I work together, side by side.”

Theirs is truly a family business, as their four children work with them. Twins Adam and Amanda, who recently graduated law school and passed the bar, are learning the business.

Brent’s stepsons are also involved. Tony Dalmado IV is the operations manager and does closings, and David Dalmado is an abstractor.

His sister Sheila, sister-in-law Donna, and daughter-in-law Stephanie (Tony’s wife) also work there, and his in-laws Frank and Lorraine Kraus just retired in January.

Bayou Title has grown to 20 offices with around 125 team members. Brent said he thinks their approach to growth has been different than a lot of others in the space, especially with the recent proliferation of M&A deals.

“We’ve never acquired anyone,” he said. “We have probably developed half of our offices organically; we just opened them and hired people and got going. Then, we reached out to people that we had a relationship with, an acquaintanceship with, and said, ‘Hey, why don’t you join up with us and we can make you more successful?’ Probably about half of our offices were people that melded their operations and ours.

“It does me well to think about the fact that there’s a number of people that probably make three, four or five times more than what they made before joining us,” he added. “We gave it a shot to make it happen, and it’s happened. It’s been kind of fantastic.”

He attributes much of his success to connections.

“It’s all about relationships,” Brent said. “No one deal is going to make me enough money to retire, so I better do a lot of deals, I better have a lot of relationships. I don’t need to make a killing off anything; if I can do something and make less money but get more relationships, we grow.”

He also attributes the company’s success to his team’s willingness to show up and work to the best of their ability every single day.

“It doesn’t matter what I closed in January. Come Feb. 1, I haven’t opened a file yet and I haven’t closed a file yet. So, I better show up and go to work every single day. I’ve seen people have success and get too relaxed, and then they want to know why they’re not continuing to be successful,” he said. “I have 125 employees, with husbands and wives and partners and children, so I’ve got to show up and go to work every day because they’re counting on me, and I’m counting on them.”

Technology and automation allow work to be done more quickly and efficiently, Brent said. Those tools have become much more prevalent since the pandemic, he said, especially e-recording.

“A lot of the parishes where we do a lot of work in, we weren’t e-recording anything, because they didn’t have capacity for that or because we were down there every day anyway,” he said. “But then with COVID, you couldn’t be down there every day. Now we actually e-record any parish where it’s available. We’re probably e-recording 70 percent of what we do now.

“Now our process is, we can close, e-record, get it back, do a policy and maybe have everything done within seven to 10 days, which is phenomenal, thinking that six months ago that might have been two months. That’s going to resonate with Realtors and lenders.”

Bayou Title also has celebrated its one-year anniversary with SoftPro, signed up for Salesforce and is pursuing other technologies.

“We’re getting ready to do some AI to try to help satisfy some of the requests of clients without as much human interaction,” Brent said. “We’re trying to take advantage of as many things as there are out there.”

He is very active in the industry, currently serving as president-elect of the Louisiana Land Title Association and involved with the American Land Title Association, which keeps him informed on the latest in the industry.

“I see what goes on, and I think it positions us to maybe ask the questions, ‘Would this be better for us? Can we use this to our advantage?’ I think that’s what gives us an advantage over a lot of local operators that maybe don’t see what else is out there,” he said.

There’s a delicate balance between utilizing technology that expedites the process and preserving the face-to-face contact that such a momentous occasion like buying a house deserves, Brent said.

“It’s a big moment. For most people, it’s the biggest purchase they’ll ever make in their lives. You’d hate to have it diminished to where it’s nothing more than a virtual transaction. You’d love to have the interaction, that community, of sitting down together and talking about it,” he said.

“I defy anyone to sit in a closing and watch someone experience the joy of buying a house for the first time and not be genuinely touched by it. Sometimes I still find myself tearing up because it’s such a good opportunity for someone who has never personally experienced it, and maybe no one in their family has ever purchased a home.”

He recalled a buyer who was a professional musician.

“He was so happy he pulled out his trombone and started playing right there. Now how could you not be affected by that?” he asked.

It’s those moments that remind Brent he made the right choice pursuing a career in title.

“I always felt like this is my calling, it’s what I wanted to do,” he said. “Even though when I got out of law school, a lot of my colleagues said, ‘You’re just going to be a real estate lawyer. I’m going to go out there and chase ambulances and make real money.’ I said, ‘I’m going to do what I enjoy and I’m going to cash a lot of checks. They may be small checks, but I’m going to get paid every day for doing things I enjoy.’ I’m proud to say almost 30 years later, I probably enjoy what I’m doing more now than I did then.”

Brent doesn’t have a lot of down time, but when he does, he enjoys spending time in his condo in Alabama and traveling with Kathy.