Title company fights to keep more business in Cape Coral
Instead of complaining about national lenders sending title business out of Lee County, one local business owner took matters into her own hands and approached those lenders directly.
Marianne Jackowski, president and director of Cape Coral-based SRS Title Services, Inc., went to the national boards of lenders, made her argument for keeping business local, and brought back to Lee County the commitment to handle closings for thousands of area foreclosures in the Cape and throughout Lee County.
“I believe the best and only way to get the job done is through local businesses,” Jackowski said.
Real estate sales have picked up in the local real estate market, according to Paula Hellenbrand, president of the Cape Coral Association of Realtors. The association reported sales of single-family homes and condos in Cape Coral for March at 714, up from the March 2008 figure of 329. Hellenbrand cited a figure for Cape Coral of 424 foreclosed properties sold in March, 59 percent of the total volume.
However, some local businesses have not reaped any benefit from this market increase, particularly as it pertains to lender-owned properties.
The bank practice of sending title business for foreclosed local properties outside the Lee County area has hit local attorneys and title companies, and they’re feeling the loss to their bottom lines. Some locally-owned title companies have permanently closed their doors and several large, national title companies no longer operate offices in Cape Coral.
This loss of local business can have a domino effect on the rest of the economy by adding more vacant office space to an area already feeling the hit in its commercial market, Jackowski said.
She decided to address the issue head-on.
“I’ve been in the title business for so long I think I live and breathe it, and I will fight to keep it,” she said. “If I run into a wall, I don’t climb it, I knock it down,” Jackowski said.
Two savings and loans agreed to use SRS Title Services, Inc., keeping the money here.
Jackowski has been handling the title insurance needs of local homeowners and businesses since 1997. She opened SRS Title Services, Inc. in 2006.