Dan Gaut- Advantage Title:How A Title Company Protects Your Closing And Your Money

We sit down with Dan Gaut of Advantage Title to trace how a true startup grows from a tiny office into a multi-location title company built around service, process, and experienced closers. We also break down what title insurance really protects, why wire fraud is a shared risk, and how secure portals, identity checks, and AI are reshaping the closing table. 
• Dan’s path from underwriter rep to founding Advantage Title during the post-meltdown market 
• the realities of launching a title startup and building systems early 
• growth across Arkansas with multiple offices and a deep bench of closers 
• what drives clients and agents to choose a title company beyond price 
• title insurance explained as a one-time premium with long-term liability 
• common title claim scenarios like undisclosed interests and unreleased liens 
• why faster and cheaper can create bigger problems later 
• how email compromise and wire fraud typically happens in real estate closings 
• practical protections through education, secure portals, MFA, and verified wire workflows 
• where AI helps title teams reduce errors and future claims 
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Transcript

Welcome And Dan’s Backstory

CARTER 0:08

Welcome back to NWA and beyond your Real Estate podcast. I'm Carter Clark.

RUSSELL 0:13

And I'm Russell King.

CARTER 0:14

We're here today with Dan Gott. Founder, president, world extraordinaire of Advantage Title, Dan. Thank you.

DAN 0:22

It's nice to be here, guys. Beautiful afternoon in northwest Arkansas and I can't think of a better way to, kill a few hours.

0:29

There

CARTER 0:29

you go. Well, hopefully we don't take a couple hours.

DAN 0:32

Well, we'll see. We'll see.

RUSSELL 0:34

Hey, well, whatever happens, happens.

DAN 0:35

I blocked it out. I'm good for the rest of the day. So you

RUSSELL 0:38

needed a break anyway,

DAN 0:38

Yeah, I probably could use a couple of these, honestly. Can we do this every afternoon?

RUSSELL 0:43

Yeah, for sure.

DAN 0:44

No.

RUSSELL 0:47

All right. Well let's jump in. So why don't you give us a little backstory on Advantage and you just let it roll, baby.

DAN 0:54

I was an agency rep for a regional underwriter. I was working for security title of Baltimore. This would've been in the 2010, timeframe where there was a tremendous amount of bloodletting in northwest Arkansas with the mortgage meltdown. Still kind of working its way through the system. And there were a group of guys up here who were interested in starting a title company. And so I got a referral to come meet with a couple of realtors and some mortgage guys. And we started endeavoring to get a title company open and my real interest was to try to have a good agent in such a strong market. I was trying to build an agency, you know, base for security title of Baltimore. And so I came and met with Carter Clark and Philip tdo and a few other guys. And we talked about getting a title operation set up that would benefit the real estate company,

RUSSELL 1:49

right.

DAN 1:50

And then after a few fits and starts, maybe the better part of a year, really trying to hire key people. We were just struggling to find the right fit. A lot of folks who had survived the mortgage meltdown and had not been laid off were clinging desperately to their job. They didn't really want to take the risk of jumping in with a startup, even though the group was very strong and well respected. People just had self-interests as they should. They have a family to support, right? A job that pays the bills. And so taking that risk and jumping in with a startup was a little much for most of the folks that we really wanted to be working with. So I said to one of the partners who's no longer part of our outfit, you know, I love northwest Arkansas. I would love to be able to move my family there. I'll take the job. And after a long pause, the person on the other end of the phone said, are you serious?

CARTER 2:52

Let's go. Let's go.

Startup Lessons From The First Office

DAN 2:53

And I said, yeah, I think I'm serious. But this is what it would need to look like. And we started talking in those terms. And then lo and behold, it ended up being me and one other guy we went out of the gate and opened a little office over in Johnson.

CARTER 3:07

It was fun. The old startup, it was the true startup. It really was. So like, it doesn't really happen that much anymore where people see the true aspects of what a startup business looks like.

DAN 3:16

Yeah.

CARTER 3:17

Showing up in your suit. And we had a, a place next door that sold fish like. Pet fish. Not like eating fish, but pet fish. Exactly. Every morning there'd be rolly, pullies, all in the office.

DAN 3:29

Yeah. Our pest guy could not kill the bugs to the extent that they would stay away without risking the you know, fish that lived next door at the aquarium store. So he had to gently kill the rollie pollies without damaging the livestock that the guys next door had. And so, to Carter's point, we would start every day with a kind of carpet of, dead bugs. I would sweep those guys out and we'd be good till the next day we would start over.

RUSSELL 3:57

Man. That's hilarious. I mean, but that's a, one of those stories of like small business or startup or whatever, like nobody hears. And it's like, man, this was the thing we had to do is deal with the bugs every morning,

DAN 4:07

It was a leap of faith single day. It was 900 square feet. The break room was in the closet that had the hot water heater in it. We had a microwave and a coffee maker.

CARTER 4:17

Wow.

DAN 4:18

That was the break room.

CARTER 4:19

And that's how we started.

DAN 4:20

That's how we started. And we were there for about a year.

Scaling To Four Offices

CARTER 4:23

So talk a little bit about where we are now.

DAN 4:25

Yeah, that's a big difference. Four offices we're in, hot Springs and Hot Springs Village and then we have two locations in northwest Arkansas with Bentonville and with Fayetteville. And then we are servicing the River Valley with remote closing. We have a really good closer down there who lives in the River Valley and she's probably closing. 25, 30 deals a month as a remote closer. And so that keeps our, toe in that water and certainly it would be something down the road that we would revisit potentially, but pretty happy with the four we got, we like to expand and now that the market is improving and we feel pretty good about things, we will have our head up and start looking for other opportunities.

CARTER 5:08

We got tons of really good closers. Right. So yeah, talking about kind of the background of some of the people that we got on the team from Hot Springs to. Fayetteville and Bentonville. Right.

DAN 5:18

Well, the big hire for us as a company was we were able to hire Brandy Hoskins and then Brandy joined us. And Brandy has 30 plus years in the Fayetteville market with a couple of different employers and really is. A top shelf closer, she can get it done. There's very few scenarios that she hasn't had to deal with in those 30 years, and she's a tremendously, hard worker and a great asset. So that's kind of the prize. That was the thing that we built around as we started to really get our hooks in northwest Arkansas. But we've been able to develop a few people as well. We have Caleb Phillips, who works in that Fayetteville branch with Brandy and has. Managed a few, locations for us over the years. Started out in Hot Springs and did so well that we were like, Hey. We have a need in northwest Arkansas, we would love for you to move up here. And so she moved up a few years ago and has done very, very well, as well. Then down in Hot Springs and Hot Springs Village, we have Karen Lee, who was in the Little rock market for many, many years, working for one of the great institutions of our industry, Janice Clayton, and learned the business from Janice directly when Janice was that first national title. Karen worked there with her, spent 12 years working with Janice, closing a hundred deals plus a month. Karen is a great asset and has managed that branch in hot springs and closes and just kind of is the pivot point for that operation in Hot Springs. Amanda Clark works with her. Great Closer. Used to be at Realty Title, joined us about three years ago. That's a really good team. And then Hot Springs Village. We have, Marla Caldwell, who we were able to entice away from banking many years with, I wanna say she was at US Bank as a loan officer when she joined us, and she's been with us for a good five years, six years now. And as an experienced closer, has a great following. She is joined by our regional down in Hot Springs Village, Brian Lambert, who's been in that business, for another 10 or 15 years. Easy and his local grew up in that area, fountain Lake guy, and has a lot of local experience. Who am I missing in Bentonville? We recently were able to add Steve P to the mix. Steve was around for a long, long time with the guys at First National and has a tremendous following himself. Steve is primarily doing sales for Advantage Title, and we feel very fortunate to add Steve. And then we have a couple of newbies up in Bentonville that are transitioning from lending in, Mindy Dore and, uh. Her assistant, Alejandra. Uh oh. Then I would be remiss if I didn't mention Jana Palmer, who originally started with us, came up through the ranks as an assistant and then graduated to closer. Jana probably has six, seven years under her belt as a closer and has been in this business going on 10 years now. So we've got a lot of experience. We've got a lot of really. I'm sorry, I forgot about s Shyla, the remote closer that I was alluding to. There's another person that started out with us as an assistant in an office and then, learned her trade well enough to graduate to close her, and like I said, she's closing 20. Deals a month now of her own. So that's kind of the, it's

CARTER 8:51

a

DAN 8:51

little roster different than,

CARTER 8:51

uh, than sweeping out rolly pollies in the morning.

DAN 8:54

It's nice to have help.

CARTER 8:55

Different setup now, a little different setup.

DAN 8:57

It's really nice to have some people on board that can carry that water on the title side, very solid. Evan Smith, 20 plus years runs a title department for us. Alison ptt works with him as another really experienced person in Garland County. And then we are blessed to have Danielle Thorn as counsel at Advantage Title, and she keeps everybody in line. Mostly me, but it's good everybody else as well.

CARTER 9:23

That's great.

DAN 9:23

Yeah.

CARTER 9:24

So one of the things I think that's always interesting that, a lot of realtors or the public doesn't know, like what is it that drives somebody to a title company? Like what makes'em pick advantage over. X, Y, Z out there though. What drives'em to get to come to advantage?

What Great Title Service Looks Like

DAN 9:40

Yeah, I think that's different for everybody, and I think that's kind of the secret to unlocking sales is really understanding what the value proposition is for the person that's in front of you. Because no two are alike. We're all very different. That's why they make vanilla and chocolate ice cream, right?

CARTER 9:56

Yeah.

DAN 9:56

So it's about choices when it comes to that. You, you may for whatever reason, work with one person over another, a little better. You have a better, rapport with that person, but at its root. I think what we do is a service driven gig, and if one can provide quality service and good communication and give the customer a feeling of security and comfort that they're working with good people who know what they're doing and can navigate all of the fun things that we run into, I think that is probably the most consistent, piece for most people. I feel comfortable, I feel confident in who I'm working with.

CARTER 10:41

Would you mind sharing a little bit about what title insurance is? I mean, it says insurance, right? So

DAN 10:47

Right.

CARTER 10:48

Your average person would think insurance is like their car or their house. They gotta pay it every month, once a year, whatever.

DAN 10:54

Right?

CARTER 10:55

And don't really understand what title insurance is and what value it brings in the transaction and how it plays into the real estate transaction. Lay it out like I've never sold anything in my life getting ready to buy my first house. So what would your simplest definition of what title insurance would be for Joe Public.

DAN 11:15

I love that. That's not as simple as one would like it to be, honestly, to boil it down, go along with your point Carter. I think most people think of that as that's a place where we closed, that's where we signed all that paperwork.

CARTER 11:27

Agreed.

DAN 11:28

They don't really think about that liability product on the backend. So I think there's a couple of key things when you start trying to talk about what separates title insurance from the insurance that everybody's familiar with, like your home and your auto, right. We are all paying those things. We're all used to that. We kind of understand how that works. Those things are what we would call, uh, based on recurrent premium, right? So once a year, maybe once a month, however you set you up your payment schedule, you are paying premium to protect your home premium, to protect your auto. With title insurance, it's a one-time shot. So we get title premium when you close in order to issue an owner's policy or a loan policy on behalf of the lender. And then whatever we collect needs to be good, right?

RUSSELL 12:21

Yeah.

DAN 12:21

Because we're not gonna get another swing at that. There is no second bite at that apple. And you may be out there on an owner's policy for 50, 60 years as long as that buyer owns that property. They're insured. They have a title insurance policy with the lender. We're insuring mostly first lien positions so that they can foreclose and get their money out of their asset that they're lending against. And most of those mortgages are set up to be 30 year mortgage. So you're gonna get premium one time and you're gonna be on the hook for quite a while. And so what are you on the hook for? This gets down to what are you being insured around? Well, you're being insured around a couple of really key things, which is someone can't come back against the property with a claim of interest that would cause you as that new owner. Heartache or hardship or financial loss. So if Russell owned a property and got a divorce and his wife had an interest in that property and sold it to Carter and we never cleaned up the ex-wife's interest, and she showed up one day to the new house and said, Hey, I'm the wife and what are you doing in my house?

CARTER 13:38

Where's half my money?

DAN 13:41

That's a title claim. And so it's really unaccounted for interests and that could be a lien or a judgment or anything. But really what it comes down to is it protects primarily, it does a lot of things, right? You're being insured around having legal access to the property, you're being insured around. The terms of the plat of subdivision, the terms of the bill of assurance and things like that. So without getting too far in the weeds, I think for most people the big thing is, hey, if somebody were to ever show up and make a claim against the property in some form or fashion, I can roll back on this policy and I have a way to, allay that risk or cost and all of those things.

RUSSELL 14:26

That's good. Thanks for digging into that.

DAN 14:28

Yeah.

RUSSELL 14:28

Yeah. I think you're right. I think a lot of people just go, well, that's where we close. I don't know what it all means. I just, papers we try

DAN 14:34

To explain, yeah, you have a policy, and they're like, what?

RUSSELL 14:36

Yeah.

DAN 14:37

Yeah.

RUSSELL 14:37

I know my mortgage was probably involved.

DAN 14:39

Yes.

RUSSELL 14:39

But I don't know what everything else means.

DAN 14:41

Yeah.

CARTER 14:41

That's the closing piece of signing all the documents, assimilating it all together from the. Tile, the termite, the mortgage, all that stuff, and putting it together in nice, easy bow to make it smooth for that buyer or seller really.

DAN 14:54

And in our business, that's the customer facing side. Those are all those closers that we're talking about. That's what they're doing. They're public facing and they're trying to get it all organized and get it to close on the date, on the contract, or before, right? With as little exposure as possible. So we gotta do it right. We want to do it right to prevent claims. We know we will have claims. If we didn't, we would be selling snake oil, right? There's gotta be a claim against an insurance policy for it to have any value, but we want to mitigate that and limit it as much as we can because we only get the premium at closing.

RUSSELL 15:31

Good. That's good stuff.

DAN 15:34

So that's one that, if you asked. Two different guys. You would get two different answers. But I think the key part of the thing is understanding from our side of it, it's a service deal, but it has a liability product on the back end. So there's risk.

RUSSELL 15:48

And you mentioned, I wish it was as easy as it, you know. It's not as easy as one would wish it would be, I think is what you said, but Yeah, you, you know, you've also got that on the seller side, so you get your owner's policy, you've got your mortgage side if there's a, mortgage involved. And so that's why it's important to pick somebody who's professional and knows what they're doing, rather than, well, I just want the cheapest rate, who can close me cheaper? Yeah. I, I would say who can close you better,

DAN 16:09

cheaper, and faster is not always the best idea. Yeah. Sometimes there are some significant things. That have to be done on the front end. Some kind of curative issues that need to be dealt with in order for that buyer to have a good owner's policy. I don't think anybody would want to be in court six months or a year later. In order to have closed three days earlier. Maybe that two or three days that it's gonna take to clear up that issue is worth it in the long haul.

CARTER 16:39

Yeah. That's great. Thanks for the kinda laying it all out and making it kind of clear to help a understanding from somebody that's thinking about buying or selling. Even a lot of agents don't understand all the stuff that goes in the back, right?

DAN 16:51

Yeah.

CARTER 16:51

Just know they

DAN 16:51

need

CARTER 16:51

to do it. They know that, that this is the next step to get this across the finish line to where my buyer can have. Clear title or seller can get this moved on and get their check and be on down the road. But I think there's a lot of people that don't understand the importance a, the exposure, right? Yeah. So they don't, they don't understand why we can't just sign it and fix it later.

DAN 17:09

Yeah.

CARTER 17:10

Because that's not a possibility.

DAN 17:11

No, not a good plan. Yeah. You know, I say that all the time. Like you, we don't get paid unless we close either.

CARTER 17:17

Yeah.

DAN 17:17

So we do a lot of work on the front end and a lot of that, is time and money, and then you get to the closing date and we have to hold it up and people start to get frustrated and they just want to close. And that's common answer from me to those guys is like, Hey, I understand the frustration, but at the end of the day, I need to close two. I just have to do it. Right?

RUSSELL 17:38

Hey, I got a question. Yeah. So from a title standpoint,'cause your world's a little different than ours. What's the one statement maybe that, you wish agents knew about title that you don't always see?

DAN 17:54

I think that,

Fighting Wire Fraud With Secure Tools

CARTER 17:55

let's dig into that.

DAN 17:56

I

CARTER 17:56

think let's, let's switch to fraud.

DAN 17:58

I think a lot of people see that as that's your risk, for you as the title agent, you guys need to figure that out. You guys need to do what you have to do to protect the closing or whatever. And the reality is that the fraud thing has grown to the degree that we just can't do it on our own any longer. We really went through a lot of industrywide scrutiny after the mortgage meltdown. You had the Dodd-Frank legislation passed. You had the formation of CFPB. By the federal government and you had a real shift in the way title companies were viewed. You went from kind of being an independent part of the transaction to being treated as a vendor on behalf of banking lenders. Uh, and that was an attempt, I think, to kind of. Point the gun at the head of the banks to say, Hey, you guys need to care about these title agents that you're referring business to. And then they tried to regulate us that way and they set up best practices and did a lot of things. One of the things that, a lot of that was positive, you know, bureaucracy is uh, its own struggle, but oftentimes there are some good things that come out of that. And one of the things that came out of that push for best practices was. You need to secure your email title companies. So you're talking about 2015, really, when that stuff starts to really become. A general part of what we do, and people are talking about best practice audits and the pillars of compliance and all of that, right? And in that environment, we are all trying to harden our email and make our email more secure because people already at that point understood that email was kind of a weak point. Fast forward to around 20 19, 4 or five years later. The fraudsters of the world figured out, Hey, title companies move a lot of money. They send a lot of wires. If we can get in the middle of these deals, we can steal, and their first attempt would've been to corrupt. Or subvert the email accounts of the title companies. I'm sure they were trying it with the banks as well, but the banks were ahead of, banks were

CARTER 20:20

already secured.

DAN 20:21

They were ahead of everybody

CARTER 20:22

more than the title companies.

DAN 20:23

Oh, for sure. So we were becoming more like that and we were becoming harder to kind of, for lack of a better term hack, but the general public and realtors that we dealt with didn't have that sort of heads up and understanding and knowledge. And so it rapidly, as we know, um, just evolved to the degree that it's pervasive, the fraud that we deal with, and it is really inventive and very clever. And so the fraud that we were dealing with back then is nothing compared to the fraud that we're dealing with now. And all of the resources that we all enjoy, you know, like AI and things like that have made fraud easier. For the bad guys and the bad guys have really figured out how real estate transactions are supposed to go forward and they know how to insert themselves in your transaction.

CARTER 21:18

Yeah. So there's a lot of ways that I've heard about that fraud's taken place. So people that act like fake sellers.

DAN 21:24

Yeah, that's

CARTER 21:25

common. You know, they don't even, they find a vacant piece of property that's a big one. And then they go, Hey, I'm call a realtor. I wanna sell this piece of property. But realtor never meets them.

DAN 21:33

Yeah.

CARTER 21:34

Everything's done on online. They're not actually the owner.

DAN 21:37

Right.

CARTER 21:37

You know? One, the big one is getting in the middle of the emails.

DAN 21:41

Yeah.

CARTER 21:42

Where they wire$300,000 at the end of a closing to somebody that's not the right person

DAN 21:47

posing as the right person.

CARTER 21:49

Yeah.

DAN 21:49

Sometimes the title company,

CARTER 21:51

so, so, right. So the title company's working to protect that, but is there any outside sources of protection that help the public, the title company, all that sort of things, like what do y'all do for security for um, protecting those?

DAN 22:04

That's a good question. So that. Goes right to the point, right? Uh, we could harden our email. We could get better around our email,

CARTER 22:12

right?

DAN 22:12

But, and we did that, but we couldn't protect the general consumer. We couldn't protect the agent. So we went a vantage title. We went on a speaking tour across Arkansas. We tried to get in front of as many people as possible to kinda raise the alarm. Mostly what we wanted realtors to know what the risk was, not only to themselves, but to their clients. If emails were corrupted, so the bad guys. Are gonna have a harder time beating a good-sized title company that's taken security seriously. But they're not gonna have a hard time beating a middle-aged person saving up to buy their first starter home, who's maybe got some sort of antivirus on their computer if they're lucky. And they're not savvy, they're not used to these phishing emails that we see all the time. Yeah. So the first line of defense around something like that is to get out and make people aware of it. Give them examples. Try to let them know what it's gonna look like when these bad guys come at you. So that's the first thing that we did. And then the next thing that we did was invest in a secure portal where we try to steer really sensitive information and sensitive conversations like, Hey Russell, we're about to close on this deal. If you wanna reach out to your buyer and let him know what his cash to close is, and tell him he's gotta bring a certified check. Here's what we need. We're not trying to do that via email.

RUSSELL 23:41

Yeah,

DAN 23:42

we're trying to do that in the portal, if at all possible, because the bad guy is not gonna be a party to those conversations. However, if the buyer or the seller is beat, if the realtor is beat and the bad guy is in that email. Now they have information that they can act on. So I know people get frustrated about these things and it's like, I don't want one more portal. It's gonna send me a code to my phone, right? Yeah.

CARTER 24:10

Two way.

DAN 24:11

But hey, you know, you're probably gonna be buying a home for maybe 90 days. Turn your multifactor authentication on and get your antenna up and understand that now you're involved in this kind of a financial transaction that is being targeted. Yeah. By the bad guys, know that and then act accordingly. And if we ask you to join us in the portal, maybe

CARTER 24:33

there's a reason.

DAN 24:34

Figure that out. Yeah. And get on in that portal.

CARTER 24:36

What about certified?

DAN 24:38

Certified ID is, uh, a service that was developed by a guy who owned a title company, uh, to meet the need, I think is, if I'm saying it right, Thomas Kre. But, he obviously was struggling with the same things and must have had a bent for, some technology and figured out a way to authenticate. First wires and keep wires secure, to the tune of Lloyd's of London will back his product with a two and a half million dollar, policy that is payable directly to the title company.

CARTER 25:17

So I, let's stop right there. Yeah. Because I think that's something that most. People, realtors included. Mm-hmm. Don't understand that. They think if somebody gets beat Yeah. There's insurance for it.

DAN 25:27

Yeah.

CARTER 25:27

And there's not really much fraud insurance out there just because it's such a targeted environment. Regular business insurance, title insurance doesn't cover fraud. And so that's why you're telling everybody. Be careful.

DAN 25:39

Yeah.

CARTER 25:39

And then you're using certified ID for a$2 million wire coverage if something were to happen.

DAN 25:44

That's right.

CARTER 25:45

Because I think the misconception is, oh, there's insurance for that. Yeah, well, there's really not. Right?

DAN 25:49

I mean, there was, and uh, it has dissipated because like any insurance product, if it becomes a loser, then these insurance companies are not gonna offer that any longer, or they're gonna really start to back up on the coverage. It, they'll tell you, Hey, you've got a cybersecurity policy, and then when you dig into the details, it's not really gonna help you. Um, it might pay for some legal fees.

RUSSELL 26:12

Yeah. And I've seen a simple. Attempt on this, which is somebody, you know, somebody SPOs my email, sends my buyers and says, Hey, here's your new wiring instructions. They click it, it had nothing to do with the title

DAN 26:24

company. That's the one too, man. That is like the most common way that gets done. And the way that typically happens is the bad guy's in somebody's email and you send an email and now they co-opt your signature line and your email address. And it looks seamless to the people on the other end. It doesn't look any different than the other emails that you've sent them.

RUSSELL 26:43

Right?

DAN 26:44

And then they act on that good faith. That's one of the key things that the bad guy is counting on is that. They know you. Yeah. They trust you and they've seen your email. Right. So now they see your email and they just act on the information that's being provided to them.

RUSSELL 26:59

Right.

DAN 26:59

And un unbeknownst to them, you know, it's the old, uh, Fox in the hen house thing,

RUSSELL 27:04

man. That's good.

DAN 27:05

Yeah.

RUSSELL 27:05

All right. So t tell, you know, let's kinda lay it out just a little bit on that now. How, how does it work with Advantage? And tell me about your software. The portal. How it's easier for agents in the, public, you know, a client with all

DAN 27:17

Yeah. Easier is one thing. Uh, safer. I'll, I'll lean in on safer.'cause I struggle with easier for sure. And that's the thing, right? That people don't want to do it if they're not used to it and if it, they feel like it's complicating their situation. That was, you know, the example about, I don't want one more portal that I gotta log into. Yeah.

RUSSELL 27:33

So better.

DAN 27:34

But safer is definitely the thing, and we use that portal from the front of the transaction. So we, when we make the welcome call to the parties to say, Hey, Russell has sent us a contract. We are gonna be working on the sale of your home. One of the first things we lay out is you're gonna get an email from us with this link. To this portal. This is why we're using said portal and this is why it's important. So we try to get the consumer on board with that from jump. Um, then we. Obviously are telling our closers and, and our folks to limit things around account numbers, social security numbers and things. Really NPI, non-public information, we're trying to limit that in any of that email, general email correspondence so that it's. Not out there. And then when we get ready to move money and send wires, we're gonna ask people to log in. People being the consumers to log into certified ID and verify their identity. Yeah, verify their bank account information. Through certified, and then we know that we've got a fairly airtight scenario and we can move forward and start closing the deal, moving the money, and doing all the things.

RUSSELL 28:54

Man, that's good.

DAN 28:55

Yeah.

RUSSELL 28:55

You got me thinking on an agent side. I struggled with the little easier part a minute ago. Yeah. But I'm like, you know what? As an agent, it's easier to say, listen, here's why we're gonna do it. To go through why it's safer.

DAN 29:06

Yeah.

RUSSELL 29:06

And it has been easier to have that conversation rather than, well, just tell me what the numbers are, or just send me an email.

DAN 29:12

Yeah.

RUSSELL 29:13

It's like, we're not gonna do that and here's why. And they go, oh my gosh, I'm so proud that I'm using you because you're safe. And

DAN 29:18

I'm saying.

RUSSELL 29:19

Yeah, I don't mind going through a couple of hurdles if I, it keeps me my money.

DAN 29:22

I'm saying, I mean, you think about that. How many people that you guys have worked with over the years have been saving up for that house for a long time

CARTER 29:29

and they accidentally wired it to Egypt, Nigeria, and it's gone and there's no getting it back.

DAN 29:35

Yeah. That, I mean, that's another thing that we struggle with at the beginning was this idea that you're dealing with some high school kids who came up with a scam and they're working it out of their mom's basement. You're dealing with like. Legitimately industrial fraud outfits and state actors. That's all

CARTER 29:54

they do. That's what I'm saying.

DAN 29:54

So you could be working against North Korea's military. Yeah. You could have Iran in the middle of trying to steal money and cause disruption in the American financial institutions. It's all free money to those guys, they probably get a medal, based on, you know, how much money they can steal from the American consumer. It's just part of it. It's part of, you know, unfortunately, you know, it's become part of the international kind of nation's, uh, interactions with one another. Right. If they're not friendly to one another, then I guess you get. Put on a list like, Hey, steal from the US all you want. Just don't steal from our allies or whatever.

RUSSELL 30:35

Not to mention the, the kid in his basement, they got really good at Nintendo Switch. Isn't another

DAN 30:39

another

RUSSELL 30:40

person? Guy

30:40

still

CARTER 30:40

out there? He's not as good as the other one.

DAN 30:42

That's right. He's probably working for one of those guys. Yeah. He's

CARTER 30:44

just not as good as the

DAN 30:45

other ones. Yeah.

CARTER 30:46

So the technology's changed tremendously and it makes it to where. From an agent's perspective, they can get on there, see every transaction, see all the documents that are in it, see all that.

DAN 30:54

Yeah. There are some, there are some things. That's a good point, Carter. I'm glad you threw that out there'cause you're definitely one of the guys who jumped on early and saw the, the fact that that could be a resource and not just one more thing to, one more hurdle to get over to get into a closing. That, um, quality portal basically accumulates. Documents and things associated with closing, um, that we use. And then we are able to set up permissions so that the realtor can see these five things, the buyer can see all of these things and and so forth. And then if you're a regular user of the Quality Connect portal as a realtor, for example, you can log in and pull. The stuff that you were associated with in that previous closing

CARTER 31:47

from two years ago.

DAN 31:48

Forever and ever. Yeah. Yeah. Ideally

AI Comes To Title Operations

CARTER 31:50

so. So all the technology's fun. So like, and, and the last thing I kinda wanna talk about is the, the biggest thing that's on the news every day now is ai.

DAN 32:00

Yeah.

CARTER 32:01

And I know it's affecting our business in the brokerage side. Everybody's dealing with it every day. It's on the news, it's on CNBC every time you turn it on. How is it moving into title? Has, has AI tapped into kind of what's working on the title side? Does it make y'all better? What does that look like?

DAN 32:20

Ideally it will make us better. And there is no resisting ai. I, you know, all the articles that I read from industry folks right now are really encouraging title agents to get their head around it. So you're either moving towards using it on a regular basis, uh, or you're already dipping your toe in the water. And we have been, one of the things I think I'm very proud of, I don't think I, I am very proud of the fact that we've. Uh, really looked for good tech resources throughout the history of the company. We jumped in with a software called RamQuest, which was at that time, back in 2012, uh, was a, really, pivotal, very well respected, software, and I think their minimum was five users. And we were like, well, we'll buy five slots, but we only have two employees. Right? So from the beginning we were probably a little ahead of the curve and, and investing in the tech, and we've kind of kept that up. And so eventually we. Landed in this world where AI is a burgeoning thing and we have embraced it and started to leverage it as well. One of the things that AI is really good at is collating data and organizing things and at a level where, um, the human frailty would not allow an employee to do that same kind of collating and organizing as. Nearly as accurately as an AI would. Mm-hmm. And so those are the things that you're seeing an immediate benefit around. Uh, you don't miss things because it can review the file and tell you, Hey, you missed a date. You missed a signature. That's the very. Surface level, uh, efficiency that you're gonna see from here. It's, it's all up from there. You're gonna see it, reviewing settlement statements, you're gonna see it, reviewing legal descriptions. Um, it's really almost limitless and we are at the very, very forefront of that. But I would say what that looks like today and what that looks like in six months. Will be a significant difference and what that looks like in six years. Who knows? I think there are probably a few jobs that could go away over time, but we're not there yet. Yeah. We're still very much using AI as an assistant to do your job.

CARTER 34:45

Yeah, we're, we talk about it all the time. It's the crazy part is the people that aren't using it, it. Mind-boggling to me because it's the worst it's ever gonna be today.

DAN 34:54

Yeah.

CARTER 34:55

And it's just gonna continue to improve. And with the amount of data that you guys are dealing with, the amount of papers between mortgage docs, title docs, surveys, all that stuff, the more that it can read and find, it just seems like a no-brainer that AI's gonna continue to improve y'all. Positioned to be less liable. Yeah, ultimately, right?

DAN 35:15

Yeah. Yeah.'cause it's all about limiting mistakes because most of the time you have a claim, it's because somebody made a simple mistake. Not always. Sometimes it's a gross error, but most of the time it could, you know, it's a small mistake and then that that results in a loss. And when your margins are thin and our margins are thin because we get. One swing at that pinata when we, um, you know, issue that policy on the front end. Um, all those little kind of cuts by, uh, you know, those, the attrition by a thousand cuts, you can limit the cuts to hundreds of cuts instead of thousands of cuts. Yeah, way better. You're gonna save money, you're gonna have less problems down the road. That's better for everybody. That's good.

RUSSELL 35:57

Dan, thanks so much for coming in.

DAN 35:58

Hey man, anytime. Thanks for inviting

CARTER 36:00

me. We appreciate you taking the time to sit down with us. Yeah, lay some of this out. Share what you're doing with Advantage and yeah, all the things that are helping, helping separate y'all from the rest of the pack.

DAN 36:10

Come see us and uh, I appreciate you guys

RUSSELL 36:13

man. Thanks. You

DAN 36:13

alright guys?

RUSSELL 36:14

Alright. That's our cha for today. Thank you so much for spending part of your day with NWA and beyond. Please like, follow and share wherever you listen to podcasts.