First American Title

I had a difficult mortgage due to a legal matter. FAT made this worse by allowing the opposing party — who was not on title or loan — to enter into discussions with them. They threatened to drop my escrow because the other party was causing problems with them, which is their own fault because they shouldn’t have been dealing with them at all in the first place. After some convincing by my realtor, they agreed to continue to handle the escrow, saying they would not get involved in interpreting court (mediation/​arbitration) matters or documents and that they just wanted direction from me, the rightful property owner.
Later, as we approached the deadline for closing, FAT started going over the court documents and started making interpretations of the documents — exactly what they said they would not do — and they got several things wrong, causing more problems. After that was fixed, three days before closing they demanded to get the other party’s signature before they closed escrow, which nearly caused the whole deal to fall through. In other words, they made up this requirement on their own even though it was not required by the mediation/​arbitration and it caused a lot of stress and nearly ruined the deal.
A lot of these problems could have been avoided if they had simply kept to what they had said in the first place… that the other party was not on title or loan and thus should have NOT had any dealings with escrow.
In closing, while I admit I had a difficult escrow because of legal matters, FAT made it worse by allowing the other party to get involved, threatening to drop the escrow, interpreting legal matters that they didn’t need to (after they said they would not do this), miscalculating distributions, and coming up with a bogus requirement that nearly ruined everything at the 11^th hour. I would not do business with them again and do not recommend their service.

Nothing spectacular. Escrow agents here don’t seem to find urgency in your transactions delaying sales.

Nice People — Easy to work with — Good follow thru — Did 3 escrows this year and First American did their part well (no matter what the others did (banks — agents — brokers — sellers — etc). So use them and be happy! Thanks to Kathy B.