by Monica Chamness
Staff Writer
Chicago Title Insurance Company has moved from 200 W. Forsyth St. to 118 W. Adams St. The 150-year-old national company currently occupies 2,900 square feet on the ninth floor of the Schultz Building and 400 square feet on the second floor.
“There were a number of reasons why we moved,” said William Higginbotham, assistant vice president. “The Schultz Building folks are more accommodating on a long-term lease. Also, we’re expanding. The space we had before was inadequate. With a lot of attorneys as clients, we wanted to maintain a presence downtown so we needed additional room. We have enough room to grow three times by monthly orders.”
To enhance the operations of the Jacksonville office, Higginbotham was brought to the area in August from New York when Chicago Title’s lease in the SunBank building expired. He has been with the company five years.
“I like doing deals, helping people and I like real estate,” said Higginbotham, formerly a licensed real estate broker and mortgage broker whose family has been in real estate since the late 1950s. “I’m responsible for the bottom line in North Florida. In Florida, the decision was made to operate through agents. In other parts of the country, we deal directly with the real estate people. Here, we service agents who deal directly with the public. We’re here to service agents in North Florida and to make sure they have what they need to service their customers. My objective is to build a presence through assisting title agents. They can be corporate agents or attorneys.”
Higginbotham has set lofty goals for his new staff: a three-day turn around for 95 percent of residential orders and five days to provide historical information for 90 percent of commercial property transactions. To reach those goals, he has added two employees, bringing his total staff to 10, including two attorneys, four support people and three examiners. An examiner inspects records and follows the chain of title. The new facility will have upgraded computer systems and a new telephone system.
“Especially in the big refinance market, agents have to access records to make sure that the title is clear,” he said.
A title search establishes whether a person attempting to sell real property actually owns it and there are no encumbrances such as liens or judgments that would cloud the right to ownership.
“Our business is extremely stressful because everything’s a rush job,” he said. “Everything needs to be done the day before we get it.”
Chicago Title is a member of Fidelity National Financial, a conglomeration of over 100 companies, including Alamo and Ticor Title Insurance. What they do is underwrite transactions written by their agents: they assume the liability for defects found in the title after the fact. Their clients — agents — are the ones that deal directly with the buyers and sellers of real estate. The company maintains offices all over the state.
“This office has been in Jacksonville for many, many years,” he said. “All together, our company does approximately 37 percent of all title work [in the United States]. Our company history goes back prior to the Chicago fire. The Chicago family of underwriters has a competitive advantage in dominating the commercial market with $3 billion in combined reserves and equity.”
Higginbotham projects the growth trend in Northeast Florida will continue.
“Everything from Orlando south is pretty much built up,” he said. “North Florida has positioned itself to withstand a negative economic downturn better than the rest of the nation. There’s so much diversity here and so many major corporations are based in Jacksonville. As far as changes in the industry, we’ve been riding the high end of the curve for years. Every year it gets better, but real estate is cyclical, so at some point, it will go down.”