Title companies feeling the impact of market squeeze.The credit crisis has slowed the pace of commercial real estate sales transactions as buyers have had more difficulty securing financing for deals and sellers have pulled properties off the market to see if they can wait out the dip in pricing that has occurred as a result of increased borrowing costs. Ancillary Subordinate; aiding. A legal proceeding that is not the primary dispute but which aids the judgment rendered in or the outcome of the main action. A descriptive term that denotes a legal claim, the existence of which is dependent upon or reasonably linked to a main claim. businesses to real estate are feeling the pinch pinch, n a small amount of chewing tobacco (snuff) an individual takes to use the substance for its desired effect. A “pinch” is called a quid in Britain. , among them the title insurance companies who thrived in recent years on the glut glut pronounced as rut, slut Vox populi An excess of a service or skilled labor in a particular area. See Physician glut. of deals. "I think volume wise, we're definitely in for a slowdown For articles with similar titles, see Slow Down (disambiguation). A slowdown is an industrial action in which employees perform their duties but seek to reduce productivity or efficiency in their performance of these duties. right now," said Jarett Fein, president and founder of Vanguard Vanguard Any of three unmanned U.S. experimental satellites. Vanguard I (1958), the second U.S. satellite placed in orbit around Earth (after Explorer 1), was a tiny 3.25-lb (1.47-kg) sphere with two radio transmitters. Title Agency, Inc. The rise in real estate prices in recent years was such that it fuelled an unprecedented volume of transactions when the scramble To encode (encrypt) data in order to make it indecipherable without having a secret key to "unlock" it. The term came from the early days of cryptography which camouflaged analog transmissions with secret frequency patterns. of investors to cash in on the boom was met by an increasing willingness among even long-term owners to part with assets at the peak values the market was ready to pay. Every deal, whether a refinancing Refinancing An extension and/or increase in amount of existing debt. or a sale, requires that a title company perform a title search, a process in which the firm investigates whether a property has any hidden liens or ownership interests and provides insurance against that possibility. The slowdown has not only thinned the pipeline of searches for many title firms, it has also forced them to share their business with other companies. Usually two or more title insurance companies are used on transactions that are many hundreds of millions of dollars in size in order to spread the risk between them if there is a claim because it could be so costly. But Fein said that now on even smaller commercial deals, where previously a single company would be used, it is becoming increasingly common to see more than one title company working on the deal, a situation that is eating into the industry's already tight profit margins. Because the buyer in a real estate transaction pays for the title insurance, it typically gets to choose which company it selects. But lenders have increasingly had the leverage in past months as a result of the tightened lending market to choose their own title company to work on the deal. Title insurance is an important service for them as well because it insures that their claim on the collateral backing the loan they provide isn't subordinated to another interest. "Everyone wants to put their own title company on a deal because it's a relationship business and you want to use who you feel comfortable with," Fein said. "Buyers are more beholden be·hold·en adj. Owing something, such as gratitude, to another; indebted. [Middle English biholden, past participle of biholden, to observe; see behold. to the banks because there are tighter lending standards and fewer lenders so I've seen in some cases where the lender has more control over that aspect of the deal, deciding who the title company will be." That situation works both ways however, Fein said. "It also opened up doors for us because now that there are more title companies on a deal that means there are more opportunities for us to participate," Fein said. "We have good relationships with lenders so sometimes we're the ones The follow-up of ABC's Still the One slogan from 1977 was We're the One (In a Million). It was also the premiere slogan for the United Kingdom's Sky Television (now British Sky Broadcasting) in 1989. that they're inserting into a deal." |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion