| How a small shop became a large network of title agencies in Florida
Almost two years ago, the HT Family of Companies (Florida Agency Network) had eight offices in the Tampa Bay area. In the short time since then, CEO Aaron Davis and his team have grown to 31 offices.
 “The conglomerate of the Florida Agency Network is 31 offices,” Aaron said. “It has a staff of more than 200. We have five attorneys on staff, five IT professionals on staff and we own or control several of the title products we generate. We are an agent with nine different national underwriters, and in addition we have our own underwriting counsel on staff.”
This growth came organically, through affiliated relationships and acquisitions.
Approximately two years ago, Hillsborough Title began making acquisitions. Aaron started an affiliated business relationship with a local real estate company, and then another, while growing its independent channels.
“The companies we began acquiring were well respected companies with great reputations and long standing brand names in their geographic area. With making the decision to keep several of the company names intact, we were operating under different brand names in the region, but under a unified front,” Aaron said. “I joke around and say the best and worst thing my mother did when she founded the company was to name us Hillsborough Title. That’s fantastic for Hillsborough County, but not so much for neighboring counties such as Polk, Pinellas, etc. We came to be known as the HT Family of Companies.”
When Aaron partnered with Trident Title on the east coast in the fall of 2014, he and his team realized they needed a common identity — something to brand all the companies together. So the network of companies became known the Florida Agency Network. Each office has full access to all the services available in the network, which now includes not only the full service title agencies, but also additional shared resources such as auction services division, short-sale negotiation department, centralized processing and post closing units, mobile-home transfer department and other similar services.
Aaron said a title agency at its core is concerned with doing title closings and issuing title policies. Most title agencies in Florida, he said, do on average 30 transactions or less per month.
“They are small businesses,” said Aaron. “They have five employees. They outsource the things that are not ‘closing’ to them. When you get to be our size, and do a lot more closings than that, you have to find efficiencies in the process. By bringing those other services in-house, such as a title plant, it makes sense to own a lot of our verticals. We deliver a better product for a better price to the consumers, and maintain better quality controls.”
Before the verticals and expansions, Aaron was growing up in the Hillsborough Title Agency his mother owned.
“Most of us in this industry didn’t grow up wanting to be title agents,” Aaron said. “We typically fall into this industry by accident or we’re born into it. In my case, I was born into this industry. My mother, Gail Calhoun, started Hillsborough Title in Plant City, Fla. in 1984. She was 26 -years old and recently divorced from my dad. She had two little rugrats in tow; I was 9 and my brother was 6.
 “When you start a business of any type, including a title company, you may not have babysitters so it’s ‘Sit in here and put these OR books away’ or ‘File away these folios’ or ‘Refill all the staplers in the office.’ I tell people I got my start in title when I was 9 years old. There were always projects for us kids to do around the office.”
At 16, Aaron was a company courier. At 18, he was getting into the post-closing process and by 20, he was on the processing and closing side of things. But his goal was never to stay in the title insurance industry. He “escaped” title for a short period of time and attended the University of Florida, where he got a bachelor’s degree in business administration and majored in finance. He then went to work in the financial sector for a few years and became a Series 7 licensed securities officer.
“I loved financials,” he said. “I loved balance sheets. I loved P&Ls (profit and loss sheets). I’m a walking Excel spreadsheet. I still have passion for financial planning.”
But, in 2001 he had a conversation with his mother. She had encouraged him to do whatever made him happy professionally, but told him the title insurance industry is where he belonged. She showed him the inner workings of the company and the financial aspects and he realized that is where he was destined to be.
Aaron purchased the company from his mother in 2008 and expanded it tremendously across southern Florida.
“We’re still that mom-and-pop title agency at heart,” he said. “The growth of the company sometimes still boggles my mind. My staff is practically family. We see each other more than we see our families in some cases. We’re still a very humble company, still very grounded. I can tell you growth and expansion isn’t always easy. To do what we’ve done is by no means for everyone. We’ve grown in experience, knowledge and know-how doing this.”
 Now he’s concentrating on getting through the TRID implementation.
“In 2016, you’re going to see a lot of fine tuning to the process — a lot of innovation,” he said. “We’ll see a push for eClosings, eNotarizations, paperless closing initiatives, and everything that will get us to where we need to be in the industry.”
Aaron hopes to keep the business in the family. He said he is “brainwashing” his two sons to become future title agents.
In his free time he, the boys and his wife enjoy the beach. He said they love boating, fishing, traveling and vacationing.
“Life mostly revolves around my boys,” Aaron said.
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