By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
An important service has returned to the Moapa Valley. Fidelity National Title company has opened a new location in downtown Overton. The office will be holding a Grand Opening celebration at its new home at 196 N. Moapa Valley Blvd, Suite 4, right next to Farmers Insurance.
This special event will be held on Tuesday, December 6 beginning at 4:00 pm and continuing throughout the evening. The public is invited to come, enjoy food and other refreshments catered by The Inside Scoop, and tour the office.
“We are excited to be here!” said David Bennett of Fidelity National Title. “We wanted to welcome people in; to come and see our new office and know that we are here. We want people to know all of the services that we can offer and the convenience that we can bring to the community.”
This is not the first time that the company has opened a local office in Overton. Back in 2004, Fidelity National Title opened an office just across the street from their current location. They kept busy in that location for about two years. Of course, that was during the bustling days of the regional real estate boom. Just a few years later, the real estate market in the area collapsed and the business that had kept the office busy, completely dried up.
“There just wasn’t anything moving so we had to pull back,” Bennett said. “But we did continue to provide services and perform transactions for Moapa Valley residents; and we have done so all along.”
The Moapa Valley office, in both current and past instances, is a branch of the company’s office in Mesquite. That office has been open since 1993 and has always considered Moapa Valley as part of its service area, Bennett said.
Fidelity National Title is a subsidiary of the nation-wide company Fidelity National Financial, a New York Stock Exchange-traded company headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida. This company is the parent company to four major real estate title brands including Fidelity National Title.
“It is the largest title group in the United States,” Bennett said of the parent company. “All together it handles 55 percent of the U.S. market in terms of title insurance.”
The new Overton location will start as a part-time office. To get off the ground, it will be open two days a week: Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 am to 4 pm. If clients are in need of services outside of those hours, however, they will be accommodated by appointment through the Overton office, Bennett said.
“We can definitely make appointments as needed, to be here other days of the week if it helps our customers,” Bennett added.
The office will offer a variety of real estate title services. Of course they will provide a full title search at the time of purchase of a property. This ensures to the purchaser that there are no liens or other encumberances on the property.
The company also provides reliable title insurance. That means if any problems should pop up after the transaction is completed, the company is bound to make them right for the new owner.
“Being the largest title insurance company, we have, by far, the industry’s largest reserves,” Bennett said. “That means we have the strongest title insurance in the nation.”
Bennett says that a title company provides a neutral third party in any real estate transaction. “We can be the go-between for both the buyer and the seller to make sure that all the paperwork is in order and completed correctly.”
This is especially valuable in ‘for sale by owner’ situations; where there is no real estate broker involved, but rather just two parties negotiating a straight real estate deal.
The office staff can also help with other types of transfers of ownership such as transferring property into a family trust, or adding a family member to a title. “We anticipate we will see a lot of these kinds of things just because no one has been here in the community to do these things locally,” Bennett said. “We can help with them.”
Perhaps the best thing about a local title office is the individual relationships, the understanding of the local community and the friendly service, Bennett added.
“We (the office staff) are all area residents and understand the Moapa Valley and Virgin Valley communities,” Bennett said. “We live here and we care about this area. We care about what happens here.”
What’s more the local staff brings unique expertise and experience that is specifically suited to benefit local situations, Bennett said.
Bennett himself has been a resident of northeast Clark County since the mid 1980s when he was attending Virgin Valley High School. He has worked in the local banking and real estate title industries for most of his career. He has also been involved in city government positions in Mesquite over the years.
Bennett’s associate at the local office, Jamae Amen, has worked with Fidelity National Title for 25 years. She actually helped open the Mesquite office back in 1993. She will now be working with Bennett in the Overton office.
“Jamae is a very capable person,” Bennett said of Amen. “She has a tremendous amount of knowledge and expertise. She is our resident expert on mobile home titleing and in so many other things.”
Bennett said that he looks forward to meeting with members of the community at the Open House event next week on December 6. He is excited to develop new relationships with residents, business owners and local leaders of groups and organizations, he said.
“We hope to become an important and engaged part of this community,” Bennett said. “We would like to eventually go from being a part time office to being open full time here, hiring Moapa Valley residents and being a regular fixture in the local business sector.”
