Acquisition of Safeco May Bring Closure of a Computerized Records Plant : Staid L.A. Title Search Industry Faces Change
By law, Los Angeles County keeps track of property records. But when county officials want to check on a piece of land, they often turn to a private title plant. It’s faster.
Title plants are not places where movie moguls concoct names for motion pictures. Instead, they are computerized warehouses full of property records maintained by title insurers who need such a shadow Hall of Records to aid in the research they conduct before guaranteeing the legitimacy of a deed.
Los Angeles County is home to three private title plants, including what may be the nation’s busiest, a product of the $400-million-a-year title insurance business locally. Title plants are a long tradition in the West and tend to sprout in places with large numbers of land transactions.
But the humdrum world of local title records may be in for some changes soon, thanks to the recent agreement by Chicago Title & Trust to acquire Safeco Title of Panorama City for $85 million.
Safeco’s title plant is part of the deal. But Chicago Title already owns 20% of Title Records Inc., a plant in Sun Valley that claims to be the busiest in the United States. So in terms of Los Angeles County property records, Chicago Title will soon have an embarrassment of riches.
“They’re not going to need two plants, obviously,” said William H. Little, Safeco Title chairman.
Chicago Title says it does not yet know what it will do about the two facilities. The 21 title insurers in Los Angeles County all use such plants, partly because the Hall of Records cannot accommodate them but mainly because public records must be recorded by name rather than property number.
Thus, a title searcher using public records would have to look up each person who owned the property, and then each deed, all in separate books or microfilm cassettes. Title plants offer one-stop shopping: searchers look up a property by lot, block and tract number, and instantly get the names of previous owners.
Title plant searchers can usually do this by computer in a matter of seconds, and without the ambiguities inherent in public records organized by name.
“If you got hold of a Smith, you’d be in for some long hours,” acknowledged Richard Hughes, assistant county registrar-recorder in charge of public property records.
Title plants are surprisingly orderly places. They are far more automated than county courthouses and records repositories. The already vital use of computers increases all the time, and there is relatively little paper in evidence. Some experts think that optical storage technology, now used for compact disk recordings, eventually will replace microfilm.
John P. Lewis, senior vice president of Chicago Title Insurance, a unit of Chicago Title & Trust, said his company has made no decision about its local title plant, which it owns with four other insurers, but that Safeco’s 40-employee Panorama City facility is superior.
The Safeco plant has 60 million records going back to 1947, and eight title firms pay to use its facilities, Little said. Hughes added that Safeco also has a larger catalogue of old title insurance policies. That is important because title companies usually do not search beyond the date of the last policy, when the previous search was done.
The 50,000-square-foot Title Records Inc. plant in Sun Valley has 47 million records going back to 1963, and is used by its five owners, including Chicago Title, and six fee-paying title insurance customers.
TRI claims to conduct more title searches than any other plant in the nation, an average of 2,500 per day--more than half the total done in Los Angeles County. And TRI is adding 21,000 square feet soon to make more room for the 350 people who work at its facility.
TRI’s claims of preeminence are hard to verify. What is clear, however, is that it is not the oldest title plant.
Founded 130 years ago, the Ticor plant in Rosemead is the granddaddy of Southern California title plants, even if its age is no match for some Eastern plants. The Ticor plant can trace properties “from God forward,” said TRI Executive Vice President Doug Bello in admiration. Other title companies must resort to public records for searches that predate their own files.
Ticor’s records go back to the Spanish land grants preceding California’s statehood, and its records are so good that both the city and the county of Los Angeles have employees stationed there full-time, researching property records for government tasks.
Production manager James E. Jensen, who runs the Ticor plant, said he is not sure just how many records it has but that the figure probably exceeds 100 million. Because the Ticor plant serves Ticor alone, it is the site of only 200 to 300 title searches a day. About 300 people work there, Jensen said.
Yet Ticor, which Jensen said has a 12% share of the Los Angeles County title insurance market, is such an institution that all the title firms doing business in the county send documents to Ticor rather than to the county recorder’s office.
During the night, Ticor microfilms them, sends copies to Safeco and TRI, then delivers the documents to the county somewhere around 2 a.m., Jensen said.
The county also microfilms but it takes longer, the title companies say. They need the records right away.
The various title companies cooperate in other ways, too. Jensen said Safeco, TRI and Ticor equally divide the cost of data entry to get information into their computers.
“TRI and Ticor and Safeco trade information to offset expenses,” Little agreed.
Both TRI and Ticor are considering offering at least some of their computerized services to users who would pay a fee for the service. Both plans are months away from going into operation, however, and they will face competition from property-records services already available by computer.
