At Thoroughbred Title Services we pride ourselves on providing the best customer service in the title insurance industry.  Sometimes this means being extra dilligent regarding title issues and other times it means helping clients or non-clients with non-title issues in order to get a transaction closed.  Recently I dealt with two scenarios that illustrate this point very well.

In the last two weeks we have been working on clearing a purchase transaction where a fairly unique issue arose.  Our title examiner was extra dilligent and provided us with a copy of a pending lawsuit that was not found in the Land Records section at the County Clerk's Office.  The lawsuit was filed by a prior prospective purchaser of the property that had walked away from the property and was trying to get his contract deposit back.  Since he was no longer interested in buying the house, the prior purchaser did not file a Notice of Pendency (a legal device to put the world on notice that an action has been commenced that affects the real property).  This would have effectively tied up the property and forced the seller to return the deposit as no title company will allow a closing if there is a valid Notice of Pendency on the premises.

Some title companies do not search the pending lawsuit section of the County Clerk's office and would not have found this action.  Our Examiner did and we raised it as an exception to title and we were able to work with the parties to the current purchase and our Underwriter to come to a resolution where we could allow the closing to be scheduled and the property to be insured.

Last week another good client of ours was representing a purchaser who was buying a home with a slightly leaky roof.  Obviously, a leaky roof (or anything else dealing with the condition of the house) has nothing to do with the title to the property and we are not usually involved with these types of issues.  In this case however, we assisted the purchaser's attorney with resolving the issue.  The seller apparently had attempted to paint over the area on the roof rather than have the flashing properly repaired.  We participated in a conference call with all the parties and were able to help them settle on an amount of money to be held in escrow until the necessary reapairs were completed. 

The moral of this story is that we are all in a customer service business and "going the extra mile" can often distinguish your company from the competition.  We at Thoroughbred Title Services view every interaction with clients and potential clients as an opportunity to let our customer service abilities shine.