Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeff Edrington.
Jeff, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I grew up in Kentucky and started in 1992 in the title searching industry while attending paralegal school during the day, and college at night. I was trained by an attorney and by the paralegal school to run titles in Kentucky and in 1995 I moved to Georgia to complete my college degree at the University of Georgia. As soon as I arrived to Georgia I received a job from the Winder, Ga law firm of Russell, Stell, Smith & McLocklin. I was trained and taught about Georgia real estate law through this firm. While attending the University of Georgia, I worked part time for this firm and in 1998, I dropped out of the University of Georgia (my senior year), and started my real estate title company. Until 4 years ago, I only researched in 5 counties (of 159 counties) across the State of Georgia.
After the mortgage meltdown, I started seeing mergers and conglomerations and decided to expand Southern Abstracting to cover all 159 counties across the state. I have been very blessed to have tremendous growth with my business Southern Abstracting, which currently employs over 10 staffers.
As Southern Abstracting has grown I have noticed a tremendous need for documents and search engine searches not available online (only at the local county courthouse). In the State of Georgia, there are many counties that have enough information for a title search to be completed online except for about 1% of the documents needed to complete one title search file. To complete this file, you may have to drive one-two hours one way to get to the courthouse your property is located in (to only spend 5 minutes in the courthouse gathering the 1% of the information you can’t get online) which has become a very costly time crunch for those (title searchers, attorneys, real estate agents, appraisers) needing a public document retrieved at a courthouse. Professionals are not the only ones that need a document from a courthouse.
Imagine a person having to take off of work to go to a courthouse to get a copy of his divorce, property plat, deed, name change document, a proof of cancellation for a lien showing up on his credit report. This is very time consuming for non-professionals as well. Fee Favor wants to change this. Just like Uber connects drivers to riders, Fee Favor will be connecting on site courthouse researchers, with the rest of the world’s needs in any given courthouse. Instead of having to hire an attorney or having driven to the courthouse yourself, you can now place an order with an on-site courthouse researcher and know exactly how much you will have to pay, as well as, when your document will be returned (usually within hours) the same day.
Technology in our industry has not caught up with the demand of professionals and non-professionals alike, and we will be striving to change that. Fee Favor will be located in Athens, Georgia and will launch in 2017.
Has it been a smooth road?
The road to expand Southern Abstracting has had its challenges, We grew at a much faster rate than I anticipated and like any company with rapid growth, we worked long hours to identify areas that we could do better. Fortunately, we have some very committed & determined employees and some very loyal customers that I have worked with for decades.
My past experience in dealing with high level growth has helped me prepare Fee Favor for launch and rapid growth later in 2017.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Southern Abstracting and Fee Favor story. Tell us more about the business.
We perform title searchers for several different law firms across the State of Georgia. We handle both residential and commercial title searches. Our final work product is what sets us apart from others. We set out issues that other title search companies fail to address. because their employees are not properly trained and fail to keep up with new laws.
Each one of our staff is eager to learn new things and always rise to any challenge put in front of them. It is a joy working with people that always want to improve their learning and understanding.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
The documents utilized by our industry continue to go online. There will be some technology shifts as more and more software is developed. Our industry is very slow to develop new software and when you have 3200 courthouses and 3200 probate offices across the country, you are never going to get each state, or county to agree on which software to use locally. This greatly slows new software development in our industry, because of the state and local governments inability to agree on one or two software programs across each state.
Contact Info:
- Address: Southern Abstracting
753 Christmas Avenue,
Bethlehem, GA 30620Fee Favor
345 W Hancock Avenue,
Athens, GA 30601 - Website: www.southernabstracting.com and www.feefavor.com
- Email: jeff@feefavor.com or support@southernabstracting.com
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