researching information and reselling it for a profit

A couple of things have to be under your belt before learning the craft of title seraching or being an information broker. One, you have to be able to read. I hope you all got this skill from school, then you'll need to relate the important facts to your clients.

Title searching or abstracting is easy. If your inclined~ take a trip to your county real estate offices, assesments, deed offices etc. You'll see that it is basically a library of all the real estate transaction in your area or county.~You'll love what you see.

Title searching starts at the initial purchase with a "deed" and then looking at any liens or "mortgages" that are also on file. You can see the history from one grantor(owner of the property) to the grantee(buyer of the property)It is possible to go backwards and locat original owners as far back as the 1800's in some areas of the country where these documents still exist. These old books sure get dusty and there is a movement in most govenment offices to scan and provide everything on computer.

Sometimes the reseach can be hard or time consuming as in doing a 40-60 year search which is all mortage, deed tax info for those number of years. If you have many owners you have to search them all to get a clear indication of transferable title. Sometimes your day can be easy as 1,2 and 3 because say client just wants you to pick up documents or copies of deeds and mortgages. The average day can be $35.00-$200.00 earned depending on client base and how much work needs done.

As in any business you have to see cycles and provide the best customer service to keep clients. For instance the financial crisis we have now started way back in 2003...to many refinances from greedy mortgage companies put a lot of people at risk today. A refi usually meant that I would have a current owner search to do where the various needs of my client wanted to know if these owners could get a new mortgage. Before the meltdown no problem. Now there are not as many refis...I am working with a number of institutions on sadly foreclosures, but I do need to provide food for my family and I want to show that there is a demand for researches today, more than ever.

How can you begin:

1) Go and get comfortable with your government agencies. See where documents and vital records are kept, the system you use to look up the documents etc.

2) start visiting other small title companies in your area see what they charge for certain services. Can you match or provide similar services at what cost..it is a competative market.

3) locate other independant abstractors and ask questions, most of us will help each other out in a pinch.

4)gather your home office equipment. A fax, a computer and a file cabinet should be al you need to start.

5) google a list of lawyers in the area specializing in real estate and see how they use someone with your service, promote yourself.

That is basically it, it does not take much as you will learn something new everyday your involved with being an abstractor.

A DAY IN THE LIFE:

There are many reasons for having your own business and working from home. I have pointed out that certain tax advantages do apply, but for me the mere fact that I can schedule my day around personal and business tasks is a flexibility that I just absolutely love. I decided to give you a condensed version of a typical day in the life of a title searcher so you can see what is involved. However the same flexibility can be found in other work from home services. In the end it's your day schedule it anyway that you want.

7:30am-start my day by getting up and quickly check the days workload and start the first process with the 20 reports that I received over night to take care of. A quick look online at the index system so I know which books/pages I'll be searching. Then grab a quick bite to eat.

8:20 am on the road to work. The ten minute oil change place was open, so I decided to throw in a quick oil change since I haven't had one in a while. Although there was the one guy and three cars ahead of me to contend with. So my ten minute oil change will take a bit longer. It's this flexibility of my day that makes me really love being an information broker.

9:15 am Well the car is finally done and it's off to work. Whoa, hold up the service dude is telling me that my card was declined..hmmm yep right card for business deductions. So an added ten minutes of driving down the road to the bank. Yes the dude let me, even though he did give me attitude.

9:30 am Came back with the cash to pay Mr. Oil change guy. As we discussed the fact that I had no problem getting cash he should have his machine looked at. He mentioned that instead of running it as a $40.00 dollar debit he tried a $400.00 dollar debit. Sure glad he didn't try to run it as credit.

10:00 am Finally arrived at the courthouse. I said the usual hellos to the other independents and set up at a computer to index mortgages. I could have completed this at home but when I saw my work load consisted of property purchase no later than two years ago I knew one that all mortgages would be in the computer. So once I looked them up I could print out the copies my client requested saving valuable time. Then the second reason is that I was lazy this morning.

10:45 am Had all the deed and mortgage information together and now just needed to cross the street and hit the next building in the process which was the pro's office. (prothonotary for the non-title searchers in the audience.)

11:15 am That was quick, well newer properties are less likely to have liens and or judgments listed against them. So I decided a quick sandwich at the pub was in order. Wow how time flies.

12:30pm Went back to the court house to pick up my copies and headed home. Typically at this time of day nothing interesting happens and I made it home relatively quickly.

1:30pm -2:20 Faxed the reports to my clients and sat back to check email and other incidentals.

2:30pm started to work on other projects that needed to be handled, articles, blog updates and web site management for another aspect of working from home I want to include in my businesses.

4:35 pm called it a day so I can start handling the personal side, shopping for food eating dinner watching TV etc. Of course I would be back and forth to throw more work in probably until later but I wanted you to see the simple aspect of working from home as a title searcher and what is typically involved with that.