United Title of Texas shuts down statewide
Six Houston-area locations affected; scheduled closings today in jeopardy
By NANCY SARNOFF Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
July 30, 2008, 11:48AM
3Comments
0Recommend
/**/
Share
Print
Email
document.write("Del.icio.us")
Del.icio.us
document.write("Digg")
Digg
document.write("Technorati")
Technorati
houston_chron196:http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/buzz/5915443.html
Yahoo! Buzz
United Title of Texas has closed all its offices around the state, including six in the Houston area, because of financial troubles related to its Colorado-based parent company.
"They closed these companies as I understand because they have a line of credit for which they failed to meet covenants of," said Jim Hilburn, who had been chairman and CEO of the Austin based title company since October 2006.
United Title is a subsidiary of Mercury Cos., which owns title agencies in California, Colorado, Texas, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona.
Hilburn was told late yesterday afternoon that the company was ceasing operations in Texas.
About 60 employees in the Houston area and 190 statewide were affected.
The local offices are in Clear Lake, Pearland, Cinco Ranch, Cypresswood, The Woodlands and on Richmond Avenue. United Title also has offices in Tyler, Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio.
The company's title files will be turned over to First American, one of Mercury's largest underwriters, said Hilburn, who was waiting for First American officials to arrive at his office Wednesday morning to discuss the transition.
"We have a lot of closings that are supposed to occur," he said. "If people miss closing dates, they can lose their loans. The ones today could be in jeopardy."
Hilburn said Mercury, a family-owned company that's been around since 1946, began expanding rapidly during the recent housing boom.
The company operates a network of more than 500 branches and has some 6,000 employees, according to its web site.
But Hilburn said those ranks had shrunk significantly as the company was scaling back operations and eliminating jobs.
"They were expanding tremendously in multiple states," he said. "That takes a lot of money."
nancy.sarnoff@chron.com
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
NEISD capped schools
FYI - after call to NEISD - found out that Reagan is no longer capped because of the opening of the new high school. Here is a link to the NEISD web page about capped schools.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
MLS Conversion Notes
MLS Conversion 2008
The MLS Committee and the SABOR Board of Directors recently took action to begin steps to change MLS vendors upon the expiration of our current agreement with Fidelity National Information Systems (FNIS). Paragon will be replaced with ConnectMLS, provided by dynaConnections - an Austin based company.
Plans are to run ConnectMLS parallel to Paragon during the months of August and September, permitting members to log into either system. All listing entry will be done through Paragon during the parallel time, with updates being made to ConnectMLS several times a day. Training will be conducted during an August/September timeframe and in October the official cutover to the new system will be made. There will be no MLS fee increase to make the change to the new system.
Background: Last year, members were surveyed and focus groups held to determine the effectiveness of our current MLS system. Based on this input, those responding indicated that a change in systems was not necessary, unless a better system could be found, with no increase in MLS fees.
Using this survey information on member needs and expectations, a Vendor Search Task Force was appointed by the SABOR MLS to examine all future options. "Requests for Proposals" were sent to eight leading MLS vendors to examine all system options available to the San Antonio Board of REALTORS®. The Task Force analyzed proposals, participated in product/system demonstrations and after several months of study, made a final recommendation to the MLS Committee and the Board of Directors.
The recommendation was to enter into a contract with dynaConnections for our next MLS system. ConnectMLS runs on new technology and the system has a remarkable response time. In addition to system speed, ConnectMLS has built-in tutorials throughout each function. Our new product will also utilize "Property Info" by REIdata as part of the roll out. "Property Info" has public records in a format giving users many more search capabilities, one of which will be the ability to search public records by subdivision for those counties that provide it. In addition to tax data/public records for Bexar, Comal Kendall and Guadalupe Counties, the following Counties will be added for the new MLS: Bandera, Atascosa and Wilson.
The Vendor Search Task Force was comprised of Dwight Hale, Chairman; Gloria Byington, Linda Rasmussen; Missy Stagers and Sue Trautner. The conversion design team will consist of Tim Brown; Al Cannistra; David Bogue; Jack Jones; and Linda Rasmussen. SABOR thanks all of the members involved in this process for sharing their time, talent and expertise.
Updates will be released periodically over the next few months. Should you have any questions, please contact SABOR's Member Services Department.
The MLS Committee and the SABOR Board of Directors recently took action to begin steps to change MLS vendors upon the expiration of our current agreement with Fidelity National Information Systems (FNIS). Paragon will be replaced with ConnectMLS, provided by dynaConnections - an Austin based company.
Plans are to run ConnectMLS parallel to Paragon during the months of August and September, permitting members to log into either system. All listing entry will be done through Paragon during the parallel time, with updates being made to ConnectMLS several times a day. Training will be conducted during an August/September timeframe and in October the official cutover to the new system will be made. There will be no MLS fee increase to make the change to the new system.
Background: Last year, members were surveyed and focus groups held to determine the effectiveness of our current MLS system. Based on this input, those responding indicated that a change in systems was not necessary, unless a better system could be found, with no increase in MLS fees.
Using this survey information on member needs and expectations, a Vendor Search Task Force was appointed by the SABOR MLS to examine all future options. "Requests for Proposals" were sent to eight leading MLS vendors to examine all system options available to the San Antonio Board of REALTORS®. The Task Force analyzed proposals, participated in product/system demonstrations and after several months of study, made a final recommendation to the MLS Committee and the Board of Directors.
The recommendation was to enter into a contract with dynaConnections for our next MLS system. ConnectMLS runs on new technology and the system has a remarkable response time. In addition to system speed, ConnectMLS has built-in tutorials throughout each function. Our new product will also utilize "Property Info" by REIdata as part of the roll out. "Property Info" has public records in a format giving users many more search capabilities, one of which will be the ability to search public records by subdivision for those counties that provide it. In addition to tax data/public records for Bexar, Comal Kendall and Guadalupe Counties, the following Counties will be added for the new MLS: Bandera, Atascosa and Wilson.
The Vendor Search Task Force was comprised of Dwight Hale, Chairman; Gloria Byington, Linda Rasmussen; Missy Stagers and Sue Trautner. The conversion design team will consist of Tim Brown; Al Cannistra; David Bogue; Jack Jones; and Linda Rasmussen. SABOR thanks all of the members involved in this process for sharing their time, talent and expertise.
Updates will be released periodically over the next few months. Should you have any questions, please contact SABOR's Member Services Department.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)