By Vicki Campbell, CLS
As the United States looks to strengthen its domestic workforce and reduce reliance on overseas labor, a quiet but critical piece of the real estate puzzle is coming into focus: title research. For decades, large segments of title abstracting have been offshored to countries like India, where skilled researchers pore through property records, liens, and ownership histories at a fraction of the domestic cost. But that era may be ending — and America is alarmingly unprepared for what comes next.
Title research is not glamorous, but it is essential. Every home sale, mortgage refinance, or commercial real estate transaction depends on an accurate and timely title report. These reports are the result of meticulous research — often done by experts thousands of miles away — who understand how to trace ownership across county courthouses and decipher decades-old documents. If onshoring continues, as industry trends and privacy concerns suggest it will, the U.S. faces a massive capacity gap.
Simply put: we don’t have enough trained title abstractors onshore to handle the volume. The problem is compounded by a demographic shift that’s long been predicted — the “silver tsunami” of retirements sweeping across skilled professions. Many of the most experienced abstractors in the U.S. are aging out of the workforce. And here’s the catch: those who remain are often working remotely, sometimes as contractors, with little incentive or infrastructure to train the next generation.
This is the heart of the crisis. We need new abstractors, and we need them fast — but the institutional knowledge is locked away in remote offices, freelance contracts, and gig-style work. There are few formal training pipelines, few apprenticeships, and little national coordination. Title companies are squeezed on both ends: offshore support is drying up, and domestic expertise isn’t regenerating.
So, what’s the solution? We must invest now in structured training programs — whether through community colleges, online certification platforms, or industry-funded boot camps. We need to incentivize experienced abstractors to take on mentorship roles, perhaps through hybrid training models that allow them to guide newcomers while continuing their remote work. And state governments, especially in high-volume real estate markets, should support this effort through workforce development grants and public-private partnerships.
If we wait until offshoring becomes untenable, it will be too late. Transactions will slow, costs will rise, and a new bottleneck will choke the real estate pipeline at the worst possible time. We have the tools, the technology, and the talent to build a domestic title research infrastructure that’s resilient and future-proof — but we need to act now.
The wave is coming. Let’s not get swept away.