| From state senate chambers to the closing table
W hen The Title Team President and CEO Nick Hacker joined the Bismarck, N.D.-based company (then called the North Dakota Guaranty & Title Co.) in 2012, it was a sort of homecoming.
 Although he’s from Alexandria, Minn., Hacker long considered North Dakota home. For one thing, he received his Bachelor of Arts in finance and real estate from the University of North Dakota in 2005. He also was elected to the state senate in 2004, “at the ripe old age of 22,” he says, serving a four-year term. At the time, he was the youngest state senator in the country.
“I was actually a junior in college when I was elected,” Hacker says. “I had a couple of business mentors in college and they really encouraged me. I had a keen eye toward politics and trying to make things better. I wanted to find ways to improve things in North Dakota.”
He unseated the incumbent state senator, who also was a former two-time mayor. “I won by 47 votes. It was close. It was really close,” he laughs.
He served as vice chair of the political subdivision and industry business and labor committee. He also got his start in the real estate industry while serving as a state senator, working as a business development manager in commercial investment in Fargo, N.D.
“I worked with a private equity fund to place about $250 million worth of investment in real estate across the U.S.,” Hacker says.
It was while he served in the state senate that he met Michelle Korsmo, then-American Land Title Association (ALTA) executive director. After his term ended, he moved to Washington, D.C., to work for ALTA for the next three years.
“In 2009, the CMBS (commercial mortgage-backed securities) market completely dried up, and that was a big piece of how we were leveraging investments,” Hacker says. “Our business slowed down, and I just started looking for a new opportunity.”
When he moved to ALTA, “the title claws got into me, and now I’m in it for life,” he says. It was there he met Guaranty’s founder, Myron Atkinson, who passed away in 2017.
“He said, ‘When you’re ready to come back to North Dakota, Nick, you give us a call,’ and that happened,” Hacker says.
Atkinson founded Guaranty & Title Co. in 1956. Today, it’s North Dakota’s largest title insurance and real estate closing company. Hacker joined the company in 2012 as office manager for the company’s new Williston, N.D., location, in the oil patch.
“I dove right in, in the middle of an oil boom,” he says. “I did title, closings and entered orders.”
He started with a staff of just himself and one other employee. Soon, the office grew to nine people. In just two years, in 2014, Hacker was asked by Tim Atkinson, Myron’s son, to move to Bismarck to lead the company as president/CEO.
At that time, the company had nine offices in North Dakota. Under Hacker’s leadership, it has grown to 31 offices across North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Montana. He helped expand the company through strategic partnerships, acquisitions, and leadership development within his team.
|
"The real estate closing is an experience that people undertake. It’s a large investment in their life. It’s a home, it’s where they're going to raise their children, and the closing is a part of that experience. And at the end of the day, that’s what we sell; we sell experience."
Nick Hacker
|
“One of the first things that I did, as we reworked our company’s strategic plan, was to find some diversification, and we began to grow the business outside of central and western North Dakota, where we had significant exposure to oil markets,” he says.
The company looked for markets that would match well with its existing markets.
“What we were looking for were communities that had a diversified approach to their success that were different than the oil markets,” Hacker says. “We’ve diversified so that other types of communities will continue to sustain the business.”
It also was critical any expansion supported new and existing staff.
“Everything at our company is about our team,” he says. “We pride ourselves on taking care of our people. When we grew geographically, we wanted to make sure we could provide support to those new growth offices.”
The attention The Title Team gives to staff support, perks and benefits is paying off, as the company has some of the lowest turnover rates in the industry, Hacker says.
“I would credit a lot of our success to our founder and how he organized the company,” he says. “I have a board that I report to. We are shareholder-owned, and roughly a third of our shareholders are actually our leadership team. So, we’re all in it together.”
Since the pandemic, the company’s offices have adopted a more flexible working environment.
“We have more people working from home permanently that want to work from home permanently, and more people working both at home and in the office,” Hacker says. “Adjusting to that new reality hasn’t been hard for us, per se, but the challenge is identifying if that’s the best environment for that employee or not. Some employees would rather be in the office all day, some want the flexibility of working both at home and in the office, and some just want to work from home. We have to insure they’re being productive in their environment, which is critically important.
“But at the end of the day, we have a massive talent void in our industry, so as leaders, we have to find ways to ‘people our people,’ and we do a lot of ‘peopling’ here, which is about developing a deeper connection than just an employer/employee relationship.”
That personal touch extends to interactions with customers, where a homebuyer or seller’s experience is paramount, Hacker says. While The Title Team embraces the technological advances that help streamline closings, which became more essential during the pandemic, he finds most customers prefer meeting in person.
For example, the company averaged 50 remote online notarization (RON) closings a month during the peak of the pandemic. Now, it’s down to around 15 a month.
“We’re finding more people want to come back into the closing room. They missed the experience,” he says. “The real estate closing is an experience that people undertake. It’s a large investment in their life. It’s a home, it’s where they're going to raise their children, and the closing is a part of that experience.
“And at the end of the day, that’s what we sell; we sell experience. We have wonderful title products. But the consumers are looking at their experience more than they’re looking at our title policy.”
However, a face-to-face closing is not possible for all customers, including military spouses who are out of the country, so it’s important to have tools like RON to be able to serve everyone’s needs, he adds.
Digital tools also are a big help earlier in process, Hacker says, and many customers have come to expect them.
“[Customers] want technology. They want their documents ahead of time, they want to review them electronically. Sometimes they want to sign them electronically in our office,” he says. “You kind of have to meet them where they want to be met.”
Though Hacker, 39, is no longer in the state senate, he still serves North Dakota. In 2015, he was appointed by then-Gov. Jack Dalrymple to serve on the North Dakota Board of Higher Education. He served as chair of the board from 2019-2021. His term ends in 2023.
 As a member of the board, he helped oversee all public state colleges and universities during the pandemic.
“While we had all these challenges going on in our private life and business life, I was in the trenches on how we supported 40,000 students and got them educated in the safest way possible, getting them back on campus, and we did that successfully,” he says. “It was a really challenging year and a half. I felt like I had three jobs.”
He also serves on the Greater North Dakota Chamber Board, the Delta Tau Delta Education Foundation, and several ALTA committees, including as vice chair of the government affairs committee.
Hacker is married to wife Kim. In his spare time, he enjoys fishing and hunting with their dogs Chloe and Rigley.
“I try to golf, but I’m not really great at it,” he says, laughing.
|