Lenders today are under constant pressure to increase margins without increasing volume—but what if the answer is already sitting inside your existing pipeline? This episode dives into one of the most overlooked opportunities in the mortgage industry: capturing title revenue from your current book of business. Industry experts break down how lenders, brokers, and real estate professionals are turning closings into consistent, “stackable” income streams while also building a sellable asset with significant enterprise value. From minimal startup costs to high capture rates and operational support, this conversation reveals why more forward-thinking companies are taking control of the closing process—and why those who don’t may be leaving serious money on the table.
[David] Listeners, There’s a lot of opportunities to create revenue for your company out of the book of business already have. We interviewed Joe, the other day and we’re now going to interview Roy and have a special guest on actual user we could talk to. Roy, good to have you joining us here, friend.
[Roy] Great to be here. Thank you for having me and excited to visit with you, David.
[David] Well, congratulations on the job there too. what I love about you, anyone who’s fortunate enough to have you repping for them or working with them, you’re just a class guy. when I say class, you’re into selling. Yes. But you do it through a relationship or relationship building. It’s real. And you’re just real kind of guy. And I really value your approach to sales. It’s not a pressure tactic. It’s a relationship tactic. So kudos to you and landing with a great company.
[Roy] Thank you very much. Very kind words. And I do appreciate that more than you know, a lot of folks have said to me over my career, Roy’s just a great salesperson and there are times David in my career where I’ve actually taken offense to that because I think I don’t sell really anything. I tell stories about things that I’m passionate about and I am blessed to just have a lot of friends who are kind enough to, hey, Roy, what are you up to? Tell me what you’re doing. So I just say, yeah.
[David] It’s in the story. really is a lot of it’s in the story and we’ve got a great story. Introduce our guests.
[Roy] Absolutely. Well, I’m very proud and very happy to work beside Jason Bilbruck. Jason has actually been with our company a lot longer than anyone else that I’m aware of. He just had his four year anniversary, so he’ll have tremendous insight with all things, not just title related, but in regards to Joe D’Urso, our CEO and chairman, as well as the title industry on a whole. So Jason’s a great guy and I’m sure you’re going to enjoy getting to know him.
[David] Yeah, Jason, it is really good to have you here. Let’s talk about what drew your interest to TitleEase.
[Jason] Well, you know, like Roy had said, four years ago, they actually approached me about coming to work for them and I think I’m actually their second employee. And so I’ve been here since the start. One of the biggest things was I love this franchise model. It made a lot of sense to me. I’ve been in title now, gosh, about 25 years. And this was just a brilliant concept where brokers, lenders, all sorts of different people can own their own title company without you know, having to deal with a lot of people breaking their financial bank by hiring a lot of people. But the biggest reason I came to work here was I believed in our leadership. Love Joe D’Urso, Jennifer Johnson, who’s our President, does a great job. So it was really the total package that made me want to come over to Title Ease and then down the road, I was lucky enough to work with Roy.
[David] Yeah. Roy’s a great addition to the team as well. mean, so I think it’s, and I really am impressed with the people that you have there. This story, Jason is one that gets exciting to tell because it can make such a difference for companies. You’ve been there as number two employee. Let’s get into some of the stories that you can tell us about, or listeners about, successful journeys that companies that have signed up with Title Ease.
[Jason] Definitely, you know, and we have some great franchises out there. You know, we have one, I’ll speak very highly, a lady in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma and I had met her husband at a private lending conference. She was an escrow officer, kind of sick of working for the big company, kind of, you know, didn’t like the daily corporate grind. So, they her and her husband bought a franchise there today. One of our top franchises. Gosh, think they’ve been with us now about two and a half Empire Title. They’re doing about 120 to 140 transactions a year. just opened their second branch office there in the Broken Arrow, Tulsa, Oklahoma area. They have a great, great footprint in the Hispanic community and they’re up to, I think they’re up to three or four escrow officers and they’re thriving. They’re looking to expand into other states now. So, the TitleEase model really helped kind of thrust them into this operation they have now.
[David] And they were a private lender. I hadn’t even thought about some of the private lenders.
[Jason] Well, so the husband’s a private lender. was actually an escrow officer and she had, yeah, she had quit and was working for him as kind of, you know, sales and marketing and mistitle, which I don’t, you know, a lot of people do that and wanted to get back into it. So this, with her husband’s business, but they, they quickly found out that they could gain so much more traction by not just going after their husband’s business and they’ve blown up. They have a lot of realtors, lenders, builders in Oklahoma who are using them now.
[David] So, this is actually an interesting angle that I hadn’t anticipated about someone starting getting a title, franchise. That’s not really an independent mortgage banker. they went to you and actually launched this business as an almost like as a startup business from scratch. it’s not augmenting their other income as like an IMB lender would.
[Jason] Right. And you know, we’ve had a few of those. Obviously, if you’re a big broker of real estate company, having in-house title is a great ancillary service.
[David] Yeah. That’s a no brainer. Yeah. When it, when it comes to the fact that you could have additional income streams off the same book of business with very little investment and effort, that’s pretty significant.
[Jason] Well, and Roy will tell you, we get a lot of people who will talk to us and say, the revenue is great. Who doesn’t love extra money? But more than anything, now they have a control over the whole process. They have control over their closing. So I hear that almost just as much as people who want the money.
[David] Yeah. it’s Roy, as you’re going on selling this product, what are some of the aha moments that really kind of open up the eyes and ears for people when you start telling the TitleEase story?
[Roy] That’s a great question. It kind of depends on the audience. I’m sure we’ll talk about other verticals that can benefit from our model as well. But David, think probably one of the most prominent thought is, first of all, the upfront expense is almost negligible. a lot of folks, if they look into a title enterprise without knowing about TitleEase, it’s overwhelming. So they think it’s a lot of time, a lot of money. The licensing is a headache and who do I have that’s going to be the quarterback of this project? And so it’s daunting and so when they turn to our franchise and they look at all the things that we do as part of our franchise agreement, because we do all the middle and back end heavy lifting with the licensing and the technology and the support. So then they look at me they say, well, I don’t have as much to do and it’s not very expensive upfront. And I think probably one of the paramount thoughts that the light bulb goes off is, it’s not an expense. lot of technology and lot of vendor relationships, when they talk to IMBs, they look and they say, how much is it going to cost me per loan or per month or per seed or a license? That’s not the case with us. We’re not an expense. We are an actual revenue generator. And I started kind of self-coining the phrase stackable revenue. I saw an article in Inman about four or five weeks ago, and I kind of borrowed that and I just aid, hey, look, people can stack revenue. Everyone’s looking for ways to increase margins, but this way you can just organically create revenue on, like you said, business that you’re already conducting. when you share that story with people, they become less intimidated and they’re more interested in learning how they can do that.
[David] Jason, this has been in my mind and IMB play, but this banks and credit unions can get involved in this as well. Is that correct?
[Jason] Yeah, basically anyone, builders, developers, flippers, know, but it’s great for big real estate brokerages or IMBs because they do have in-house business and I talked to a guy today down in Houston, Texas, who has 20 loan officers, and he said to me, think about all the money we leave on the table each year or we give to title company A, B or C. He’s like, we need to keep that.
[David] What percent, what’s the capture rate, Jason, that you’re seeing that most lenders are getting when they have their own title insurance company?
[Jason] Usually on a lender’s side, they can generally get somewhere between 60 and 70% of their loans. The big thing is most of the consumers really don’t care unless they have a family member or a buddy. All the title companies, they feel do the same thing. That’s where a franchise really, you can kind of gain capture because you can provide better customer service. Every deal you bring in is more important because not only is it your title in escrow, but it’s also your lender. So you don’t want to.
[David] How do you find yourself competing with a realtor in this? Because a realtor has been directing a lot of that business in the past. That’s a high capture rate though, by the way. 67% is very high capture rate.
[Jason] That’s just on refi business on. Yeah. On the lender business, it is a lot lower because like you said,
[David] (08:58) That’s a refi.
[Jason] Yeah, on the lender business, it is a lot lower because like you said, they have relationships, they direct it. But it’s kind of the same thing. If a realtor is going to use one of our franchises, it’s because they’ve probably formed a relationship. And a great example of that, Oklahoma one, they get a ton of realtor business just by being active in the community. it is.
[David] Yeah. It’s their own channel of business. I mean, it’s not like it’s a, add on like, or you can, it’s an optional thing. mean, you could drive this as a business. You make this stand on its own and it, you know,
[Jason] I had a real estate broker today tell me that typically they get about 50% capture rate sending their business to the title reps they want and I said well think about it if you can capture just 50% you’re gonna make 50% of every deal that’s big dollars.
[David] Really big dollars. And the thing that I enjoyed the moment I had with, with, I was talking to Joe was the fact that this is an asset. It’s not just a revenue stream. You, you, the owner, whoever buys this franchise owns this as an asset. And that is a significant part of this story.
[Jason] Well, it’s funny you said that David, because that company I keep speaking of in Oklahoma, they’ve already had two offers to buy them. And they’ve been in business two and a half years, and they’ve already had two offers because they’ve built such a good reputation in the state. And I don’t know if you know this David, but title companies sell generally about seven to 10 times their value.
[David] Really? That’s way more than a mortgage company. The multiple mortgage companies. I did not know that. That’s a new piece of information, Jason. That’s significant. Roy, you talked about multiple verticals. Jason just referenced some of those. What are some of the verticals you are seeing the opportunities in?
[Roy] Well, it’s funny, and I didn’t even think about this until after I joined the company, but just a small coincidence, they talked about, hey Roy, we’ve got a friend out in Denver who’s actually has a servicing platform. And they own a franchise. so lo and behold, there was a good friend of mine who I know pretty well. And they’ve had a franchise for, I don’t know, two-ish years, maybe longer. And so I called my friend and I said, Hey, what are you doing to recapture? know, basically you’re a servicing company and every single opportunity you have to, to recapture a loan, needs title policy, right? And so he said, Roy, the only thing that I don’t have, I need a true origination platform. So I said, well, there’s another light bulb. So anyone who has like a consumer direct model, who is not really truly like, I think they kind of fall in between an IMB possibly and banks and credit unions, but there’s a handful of really sophisticated national footprint consumer direct platforms out there that they do get to drive a lot of that title. Yeah. then the third vertical that was kind of an aha moment for me was, and Jason kind of alluded to it, the real estate community, because those folks they’re still very, very close to the borrower. And like Jason indicated, the borrowers don’t really have anything. Unless they have a friend or family. So if the real estate agent sees the value in owning their own franchise, the title franchise, they get elated because you can drive a lot of revenue and you get a lot of the decision making influence with title insurance. it is such a sensible business model for people who are real estate and any lending vertical. So yeah.
[David] Jason, what kind of revenue you split the revenue 50 50 with the franchisee. And so you guys are working with them on that. That’s pretty generous of split and you guys are carrying the looks like a most of the water in this transaction, other than the relationship part of it. You let the franchisee franchisee, the lender, that owns the franchise carry the relationship. You guys do the background work, but that can be a significant amount of income. Give us some, give us some ideas. Can you give us some numbers, some examples?
[Jason] Yeah, you know, it’s kind of a ballpark. A lot of it based in the lending world is based on the loan amount because that’s where the title policy pricing comes in. Purchase, it’s the purchase price. But they’re seeing anywhere from, say, $700 to $3,000, $4,000 in their pocket per transaction. Now the higher amount obviously is going to be a bigger loan luxury property or something in the commercial space but there there’s big revenue you know if someone’s doing just a decent amount of two hundred thousand dollar loans you know they’re going to need volume to make that money but if someone can mix in a commercial a million dollar property there there’s good revenue to be made.
[David] Wow. The time, Jason, it takes to get set up. You’ve been there again since employee number two, so you watched this grow. You must have improved the efficiencies over time and the amount of time it takes to set one of these up. If someone were to sign up with you today, and assuming they dedicated the resources to this, how long does it take to have an operational unit?
[Jason] That’s a great question. Everyone asks that. We generally say 60 to 90 days, but what I’m going to say is the biggest component is licensing. We have people who they want this up and running yesterday, so they make it a priority or they assign someone to make it a priority within their company. We can technically get someone running in 30 to 45 days as long as they have that license. They have their ducks in a row on their end. On our end, there’s a few little things we need to do, but training their employee.
[David] Yeah, let’s talk about the licensing because that’s a component of this. It’s their responsibility to get the license because they own the business. Right.
[Jason] Right, technically to earn revenue in title and escrow you need to be licensed in the states you’re doing business in.
[David] Okay.
[Jason] So what we do is we kind of help guide them that way and help them do their licensing. We can’t do it for them because they’re their own entity, but we do have licensing counsel that we use across the country. We use them internally for our licensing and those guys are good. They can get you a license in generally a third of the time it would take you to do it on your own.
[David] What’s the cost to set something like this up, Jason?
[Jason] In terms of the licensing alone or the total package.
[David] Yeah, the license. I mean, just before you start making dollar one, what kind of investment are we talking about?
[Jason] Call in you’re probably without an employee you’re somewhere around 20-25 thousand dollars.
[David] That is so reasonable. I mean, that’s like, just gets more and more no brainer kind of like 20, 25,000. can create my own book of business. I can trade. was the multiple again? Five, seven to 10 multiple, and you’re earning 50 % of the revenue. This is like one of those things, right? Is this called sales or is this order taking for you almost? mean,
[Roy] Unknown challenges for folks that are interested in a franchise model is finding the right person or people to run their franchise. Because if you talk to a small independent mortgage bank, their first thought is, who’s going to do this for me? Because I don’t have the time or the bandwidth to do it myself. I’ve got to go find someone who I trust that basically runs their own little entity, even though it’s connected to my organic origination model. finding the right person can take a little bit in addition to getting the licensing squared away and then the other thing, seriously, it is almost like, you know, taking orders, ⁓ once you get it set up the right way and I think, again, Jason’s been here for four years. He can share more success stories, but every single person that I’ve talked to or been connected with, they just say, look, this is just, it’s been exactly what was described to me. Once I got through the rough edges of getting my licensing score to like, and a lot of people, they say, look, I’m going to business in eight states or ten states and we kind of say well tap the brakes a little bit you know let’s start with two or three of your most popular states you don’t want to bite off too much up front let’s you know walk before we run kind of thing and well when they do listen to our advice then they’re happy so yeah
[David] Jason, he touched on the hiring of an employee. You guys guide them through the legal process. I mean, at least you have resources that will help you. You don’t do it. That very important distinction because they’re franchise, they got to do it. But the hiring, do you also get involved in interviewing them and helping them select the right person? So that’s like, I mean, they’ve got a very modest investment in 20, 25,000 , then they’re now hiring employee. That’s where some of the picking the wrong person can cost you money. So
[Jason] We do and it’s funny you say that because we’ve had some franchises who have made their own hire and hasn’t been a great partner for anyone but we do get involved. We will help them, advise them on the verbiage for the ads. Tell them where to run the ads, but we also do the initial interviews We just just had a franchise in Texas this week that we conducted interviews with four potential employees What we do is after we interview them make sure they know what they’re talking about Make sure they’d be a good fit for not only the franchise but for us and then we go back to the franchisee and say hey So-and-so would be your number one hire and this week it actually worked out great and we helped locked up an escrow officer for one of our new franchises down in Houston, Texas.
[David] That’s good. I mean, it’s a full service operation. just makes no sense. Why would someone not jump on this? I’m so excited about what you guys are building. Anything that we, our listeners should know about as they’re considering this, Jason, then I’ll ask the same question to Roy.
[Jason] Yeah, I mean, you’ve got to have some business one way or another. Well, if you’re a lender or a broker, you need to have enough volume to make it worthwhile. You know, doing one loan a month, two loans a month, you’re not you’re never going to be profitable. But you can tap into a lot of people you can tap into your network other loan officers, realtors you know, know you if you want to run it more as an independent company You can go out and hit up anyone builders developers you go to all these conferences, all these Networking events. I just tell these people the biggest thing is having business right, but that’s any title company Every title company down the street. They have marketing reps out there trying to drum up business So that’s kind of the biggest thing I tell everyone. Make sure you know you’re gonna have some business and keep your overhead low.
[David] Good, right?
[Roy] You know, I think one of the elements I think I like to shine a light on a little bit, David, obviously the last since COVID, know, technology has become such a buzzword in every vertical in our industry. And I think it’s important to let people know who are going to become franchise owners and partners of ours that from day one, our company has been 100 % paperless. We are very front end of all things technology and we are not afraid of it. And we’re not we’re not ready shoot aim. We’re we are on the front end and we’re doing a lot of things that surprise people when they ask about the technology component of our of our model and they are always pleasantly surprised so we embrace it and we’re not afraid of it and we we think that that’s going to be a separation between us and other folks that may try to follow us once they really see what we’re doing.
[David] Now there’s the thing that I was talking to Joe, there’s not a lot of real competition for the words you are. I you guys are out there by yourselves creating a huge revenue source or income stream and an asset. That’s, that’s no brain.
[Roy] You’re spot on David and I think a lot of that is people, if you’re in the title space and you’re curious about what we built. I don’t think a lot of people have the vision and the commitment and the know-how that Joe D’Urso, his vision five or six years ago, because it takes a lot of patience. It takes a lot of money. And for instance, you know, we’re one of the few that can do business in every single county in California. And there are not many that can do that. If you want to do license as a title entity today. And you just said, Hey, I’m to go play in California. What is it going to take? Well, it takes about three years and between five and $6 million to get set up to do title in the state of California, just that one state. And we are able to support the state of California. yeah. Absolutely. We have a solution for every state. Yes.
[David] In its entirety, as well as almost every all 50 other States as well. wonderful. Gentlemen, it’s good to learn more about TitleEase. We’re so thrilled to have you as a new sponsor to the podcast. And I really want, but most important, I get excited when we have a sponsor that adds value, real value, tangible value to our listeners and the companies that are, that are part of our podcast audience. Thank you both for being here.
[Roy] Absolutely been a pleasure. Thank you for having us always good to be with you
[Jason] Thanks, David.
[David] You bet. So when it comes to sales, you’re both involved in the sales process. So what’s the best way for a lender to, or anyone interested in this to who should they contact?
[Roy] Both of us. Either of us. And you know, David, seriously, I want to close with this notion that…
[Jason] You know, the culture at this company is why Jason and I are really committed and attracted to this company. And I’ve spent a lot of quality time with Jason already and we are so friendly with each other. Jason knows a lot of people from the title space. This is year 33 for me in the wars lending world. And we just, we support each other. We help each other and we just, there’s no ego. We just say, Hey, let’s work on this together or Hey, why don’t you take this one and hey, Jason, I think this is a better fit for you. And so we truly do that and it’s sincere and we are very friendly. So yeah.
[David] That’s really good. All right, so Jason, what’s your contact information? What’s the best way for people to reach you?
[Jason] Jason Bilbruk, 949-500-5187.
[David] All right, Roy, how can people reach you?
[Roy] Yeah, well lot of folks know me, but my cell phone is usually the best way and that’s area code 972-948-1307. And both of our emails are first initial last name at titlees.io.
[David] Good. Gentlemen, thanks for being here today. It’s real honor and excited to have our listeners start profiting from their own book of business in a new and fresh way. Thank you.
[Jason] Thanks, David.
[Roy] Thank you, David.
