The Matt McDonald Story

When  Matt McDonald came aboard as president of Memphis, Tenn.-based Realty Title and Escrow Co. at its launch in January 2001, he was Employee No. 1. Under his leadership, the Crye-Leike, Realtors affiliate has grown to become the seventh-largest title affiliate in the country by number of transactions, according to the 2021 Real Trends 500 rankings.

Today, Realty Title and Escrow has 45 offices in Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.

Crye-Leike, Realtors co-founder Harold Crye reached out to McDonald in 2000 when the company decided to enter the title business. Matt was sole practitioner of his own law firm, primarily concentrating on real estate closings and title insurance.

“We talked for a little while, and he offered me the opportunity to get in in on the ground floor, if you will,” he says.

At the time, Matt’s practice was relatively new. He went out on his own after practicing with Williams, McDaniel, Wolfe & Womack in Memphis.

“I was a bit torn between continuing the progress I had made in that role versus this opportunity,” he says.

But, because Crye-Lieke was such a big player in the Memphis marketplace, Matt decided to accept Crye’s offer.

“I made the leap and have been here ever since,” he says.

What’s it like switching from a private real estate law practice to running a multi-state title company?

“It’s probably best characterized as Baptism by fire,” Matt laughs. “It is quite a transition. What it forces one to do is to expand the focus beyond just the deals that you may be involved in, and it requires skills that a lot of lawyers either don’t have or don’t want, quite honestly.”

Matt has been licensed to practice law in Tennessee and Arkansas since 1992, when he graduated from the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law at the University of Memphis. After graduation, he served as an officer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the U.S. Army, stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, where he worked as chief of the legal assistance division, the special assistant U.S. Attorney in the western district of Texas, and the senior trial counsel (prosecutor) for courts-martial.

While that gave him an excellent foundation for his law career, it didn’t give him the strongest business background, he says.

“You start having to develop your business administration skills, dealing with the employee issues, and all of the other headaches that come with running a business,” Matt says. “I didn’t really have any formal training for that, I don’t have an MBA or anything like that, but I guess I was just lucky.”

And he got a lot of on-the-job training, he adds.

He is quick to credit the help he received for Realty Title’s growth. Matt has primary responsibility of about a third of Realty Title’s 45 offices, with the rest split between managers in Little Rock, Ark., and Nashville, Tenn.

“It was a joint effort, for sure,” he said.

The company’s relationship with Crye-Lieke, Realtors, has also been critical to its expansion.

“There’s obviously no requirement for any of those Realtors to refer business to us, despite the affiliation, but the whole idea was to make it convenient to them and accessible and provide good service, an ‘If you build it, they will come’ sort of a mentality,” Matt said. “We have had pretty good success in that regard.”

Not all of Realty Title’s business comes from referrals by Crye-Lieke agents.

“We will do business for anybody and everybody. Establishing that reputation as being a quality provider of service, doing things the right way and standing behind your work product, has played well for us,” Matt says.

An unexpected door that his title career opened is teaching.

“I come from a family of teachers,” Matt says. “My mother was a teacher and a principal and a superintendent, my sister teaches, my aunts and uncles were all teachers, so I guess I fancy myself as a as a wannabe teacher,” Matt says.

He has taught seminar sessions and continuing education classes to attorneys, real estate agents, and mortgage professionals on a variety of the subjects, including real estate law, contracts, title insurance, compliance issues, tax law and FIRPTA compliance.

“I enjoy getting up in front of folks and presenting material to them. They may not enjoy it to the extent that I do, but at least they are required to sit there for a little bit,” he laughs. “A somewhat fulfilling aspect of the role is that it does give me the opportunity to speak with folks and the setting is primarily geared toward an educational environment.”

He also has lectured to audiences at the National Business Institute, the Tennessee Land Title Association, the Tennessee Bar Association, the Memphis Area Association of Realtors, the Property Records Industry Association, and the Realty Alliance.

“If you had told me back in 2001 that I’d be teaching tax topics to lawyers and title professionals, I probably would have laughed,” he says.

To teach effectively, Matt has to keep up on the topics himself, which is also something he enjoys.

“I try to approach life that way, in terms of a continuous learning process. I tell my kids I’m still figuring things out about my job, even after all these years, and it never stops,” he says.

Matt and his wife, Kate, live in Germantown, Tenn., with their four children: Emma, Molly, Jack and Annie. He enjoys fitness activities and reading in his spare time.

Matt expresses no regrets about his decision to switch from real estate law to title.

“The one thing I like about this industry is that I suspect of all of the subsets of the real estate industry, the title professionals are the cream of the crop in terms of just quality of folks involved,” he says. “I’ve been very happy and proud to be a part of something that is not only very important from an economic standpoint, but I think stands well in the hierarchy of honor, if you will, within the real estate industry.”