RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:Small Raise - 500,000 sharesHow many title companies? Great question. Tommy Sullivan who’s developing RB and who s companies are on record as being the first customers of RealBloq is a respected and very influential guy in the industry. He knows all the big players and I bet most of the smaller guys too. He probably knows everybody.
His dad Tommy Sullivan Sr founded or bought their first agency a long time ago (they bought the second one in the last 5 or so years I believe). So think about how many people you meet going to decades of their annual conferences, golfing tourneys and dinners attended by his him and dad, lol! He is the biggest player in Arizona selling title insurance and in escrow.
Escrow is where they hold the money from the buyer and after all the i s are dotted, they transfer the money from the escrow account to the seller. So these title insurance co don’t just involve themselves in charging a couple of thousand bucks for title insurance policies and not getting their hands dirty (so to speak,) They’re really involved with the entire financial transaction of the buying/ selling!
So what’s the value of real estate transactions in the US per year, and don’t forget buying title insurance when you buy property down there is mandatory. So we are talking in the trillions of dollars in terms of money changing hands. I don’t know if some of this is handled by lawyers trust accounts like in Canada. But ‘my understanding’ is that the amount going through these title insurance co escrow accounts is in the trillion(s) of USD.
First American Title (FATCO) which is a 20% owner of one of Sullivan’s two Big Arizona agencies is the second largest title insurance firm in the US and they did $6 billion in sales in 2017. The amount of profit they are forecasting is US 14 m after 12 mo. I don’t know what the revenues would be. But when one firm does $6B in one year the cost charged by RB is minuscule in the scheme of things.
I DO NOT KNOW WHEN OR IF FATCO WILL BECOME AN RB CUSTOMER. But you can safely bet a lot of money that they’ve heard the pitch. I also know that FATCO is certainly not included in that $14m no.