Good afternoon —
Last week I talked about how everyone wants in on title, and now we've got data on which private companies are growing fastest in that area. The Inc. 5000, a list that measures company's revenue growth over a three-year-period, was published last week. HousingWire did a deep dive into the 183 companies in mortgage, real estate and fintech on that list. Title came in strong, with 12 companies represented.
The highest ranked title company is Priority Title & Escrow, based in Virginia Beach. The 15-year-old company enjoyed a 617% revenue spike between 2017 and 2020, and all of that was organic. I interviewed Priority's CEO, Joe LaMontagne, to find out what factors led to that growth.
He said the company streamlined its customer onboarding process in 2019 to handle more volume — a serendipitous move as it turned out. The company also ramped up staff.
When the pandemic hit in March 2020 and mortgage rates went through the floor, Priority Title was ready to handle the massive spike in business.
"Some other companies could not keep up, but we were positioned really well," LaMontagne said. "We had done all this hiring, so our service level was really high. We continued everything we started in 2018-2019 and our management team was dialed in to what our next steps needed to be."
Other title companies saw huge revenue growth between 2017 and 2020, including:
- Signature Closers, 448%
- AccuTitle, 299%
- World Wide Land Transfer, 278%
- Escrow Options Group, 192%
We broke out all the title companies in a table that provide not only the Inc ranking but also more HW-specific information, like links to Tech100 profiles, demos, videos, press mentions, and more. See the title list here, and the overall list (with all 183 companies in our space) here.
Both of these lists are part of the premium content we write for our HW+ members. Not a member? Sign up to HW+ here and start enjoying exclusive content, discounted passes to our events and more.
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