Digital imaging can speed real estate closings

Speed and accuracy, that's the name of the game when you're seeking a clear title in real estate. Realtors and lenders know the faster the close, the less likely the deal will fall apart.

Fortunately, digital imaging technologies now allow a title company to complete a search and issue a title commitment in hours rather than days.

"A speedy response from a title company enables us to better serve our customers," said Janis Creek, assistant vice president, Liberty Bank, Ozark. And documents printed from digital images are much better quality than the old white-on-black copies from microfiche, she noted.

Competition

Today, it would be hard for a title company to compete without an imaging system. By 2000, many counties in southwest Missouri were providing daily recordings on digital media. Title companies purchased imaging systems and indexed the new images on their hard drives for speedy computer searches.

But decades of recordings were still archived on aperture cards or microfiche. In this computer age, no one wants to go to a box of microfiche, dig to the right book and page and put it in a viewer before being able to print it.

Bill Sims wanted his staff to be able to find old documents in their computer index and just hit print. So Sims, the president of Newton County Abstract and Title, Neosho, bought a microfilm scanner to import filmed documents into his imaging system. "The operator can even improve image quality as she transfers them to the hard drive," he said.

Sims' half-time operator scans and imports a month's archived film images into the computer in about two weeks. A computer program provided by their imaging system vendor easily links the scanned images with their existing computer index.

Productivity increase

It takes one-fifth as long to retrieve images from the computer as it did to get documents from the old microfiche, Sims said. That increase in productivity will more than offset his short-term expense of operator and the film scanner.

Unfortunately, sometimes problems with a proprietary system prevent a title company from importing images from film directly into an imaging system. Kathy Moran, owner of Moran Land Title, Springfield, thought she was making a good choice when she bought a proprietary imaging system.

One year of struggle and an expensive memory upgrade later, the system still won't work with film. "It freezes up my computer," she said. It wouldn't even interface with standard Minolta equipment, but Moran now has a "work-around" solution. The film scanner creates images from film, then sends them to a PC, from which the proprietary system then imports the images.

When time is available, Moran lets the automatic film scanner run overnight. It takes three hours to scan one roll. After about 20 rolls, the PC is full, so she imports the images into her proprietary system.

Vital technology

If digital imaging brings benefits to a single location, it is absolutely vital for a multi-office company. Lincoln-Evans Land Title, Springfield, formed by a merger in summer 2001, has offices in Springfield, Republic, Ozark, Branson and Forsyth. With the merger they have reduced their overhead and broadened their customer base, said President Kelly Jones.

It's important to stay abreast of technology, so back in the mid-90s, when Jones felt the speed and reproduction quality of imaging systems had im-proved, he started imaging and indexing old paper documents. Today, the company receives all recordings as TIFF im-ages from Greene, Christian and Taney counties.

His employees comment on the re-duced storage space, faster, easier retrieval and improved image quality. Someday Evans would like to scan all his filmed documents, too. "We'll continue to move forward and embrace new technologies in document storage and retrieval," Jones said.

Being able to distribute documents electronically is as important to timely customer service as it is to getting the deal closed. Customers appreciate getting quick copies by e-mail.

And if an incorrect document is discovered in closing, a title company with a digital Title Plant can e-mail a correct one in minutes. No paying an overnight carrier, no fuzzy faxes, no striking a line through it, no correction fluid, no handwritten scribbles, and, no postponing the closing.

(John Elkins is sales manager for EDCO Business Division.)