Our Services

County Title operates as a full-service title insurance agency. We have underwriting contracts in place with one of the largest title insurance underwriters in the world and the largest attorney-affiliated underwriter in the State of Illinois.

Our primary services to our customers are:

• Issuance of title insurance commitments and title insurance policies.
• Closing of real estate sale and real estate loan transactions.
• Helping homeowners, lenders, real estate agents and attorneys sell and finance real estate in Illinois.

Please contact us to ask any questions you may have and to let us know how we may be of professional service to you in fulfilling your needs for title insurance and real estate closings.

Title Insurance Commitments and Policies

One way of describing the process of issuing title insurance commitments is to say that we collect, analyze, report and insure information about real estate.

• Collect
• After we collect all the information we need, we then analyze it. Our own in house legal and support staff does the analysis. Occasionally, we rely upon our trusted business partners to assist us.
• Report and Insure
• After collection and analysis, we report and insure the results. Our first report takes the form of a title insurance commitment, where we bind one of our three title insurance underwriters to insure our customer that the information collected and analyzed is accurate. The customer pays for the title insurance based upon the dollar amount of title insurance requested and the specifics of the kind of title insurance coverage they want.

Our fees are almost always at or below the prevailing market price. As a general rule, our title commitments are delivered to customers within 48 hours of the time they are ordered, excluding weekends. Our accuracy rate is off the charts. While we are not perfect, we have won awards for our high operational standards, and claims for errors have been either exceedingly rare or non-existent in all the years of our existence as an agency.

Real Estate Closings

Some real estate transactions require a closing. When a title insurance agency conducts the closing it is sometimes called an “insured closing”.

• A closing occurs when all the necessary people involved in a real estate transaction collaborate to exchange signed documents and sometimes money in order to complete a real estate sale or real estate loan or both. There are other kinds of closings such as for leases, easements, tax-free exchanges and so on.
• A closing typically occurs in one of our closing rooms where everyone sits around a long table and physically passes documents around for signature and authentication. However, there are also other types of closings, sometimes called “escrow closings” where every necessary person is not in the same physical place at the same time. It may even be the case that some of the people involved may be in other parts of Illinois, the United States or the world. Our affiliation with our three underwriters assures our customers that we can normally locate a sister/brother affiliate with whom we can arrange a convenient closing no matter where the necessary parties happen to be. There are, however, special rules governing the authentication, or notarization, of documents outside the United States. Depending upon the country involved, it may require a visit to the American embassy or consulate.

We are almost always able to accommodate a customer’s request to schedule a closing. It is not our policy to deny, or “shut out”, a closing request. We can usually find a way to schedule a day and time that meets the needs of our customers.