Publicize Licensing, Affiliation and Fee Data

The clandestine world of residential real estate is going to be opened up for public view with this mammoth project.  Beginning with Minnesota and then rolling out our successes nationwide , it is our intention to collect licensing, fee, affiliation and other data for appraisers, home inspectors, title companies, mortgage companies, Realtors and attorneys.

We’re starting with title companies because we know title companies best and consumers know the least about them.

Step One:  Collect all the licensing data on all title insurance agents in Minnesota.   Collect filed rates for all title insurance underwriters in Minnesota.

Just collecting public licensing and filed rate data is proving to be a difficult problem.  We hope to find a resolution in Minnesota that will make this process easier in other states.  The above-referenced information is maintained at the offices of the Minnesota Department of Commerce and is proving to be difficult to obtain.  All licensing data used to be available free of charge on the Commerce Department’s website.  That feature has been disabled and individuals seeking this information are directed to the Minnesota Book Store where you can only obtain this data by paying a government bookstore employee to compile it for you.  In order to obtain the filed rates for all the underwriters in Minnesota, you must first know the names of all the underwriters or the Commerce Department won’t provide the data.  But there is no way to determine the names of all the underwriters utilizing the Commerce Department’s website.

Step Two:  Surveying title companies to find out their fees, affiliations, types of title insurance policies that they issue, their underwriters and other important information which must be made public so that consumers can make informed decisions.  In order to increase our success rate, we would prefer to partner with either the Commerce Department or Attorney General’s Office in gathering this data, but so far have received no response to our request.

Step Three: Publish our findings on the website and roll out this program nationwide.

Step Four: Determine data needed for appraisal, home inspection, mortgage, Realtor and attorney research.

Step Five: Roll out to other states.

We need help getting this project off the ground.  If you have an interest in helping, please contact our Executive Director, Doug Miller at dmiller@caare.org