Stewart Title

Not a very good experience here when transferring the title. Essentially, a transfer of a property from parent to child while doing a refinance was messed up in such a manner that they required a second trip to their offices and a follow up trip to City Hall to correct.
Stewart Title supposedly handles all the legal duties of changing the name on the deed, escrow, and all the paperwork. For that, their fees are significant (more than $ 1000), but tied into the fees for a mortgage. Shirley called us to try to get this dealt with as soon as possible, but we were still unclear as to what the reasoning was behind the rush. When we get in there, she did a horrible job of bumbling through the paperwork we needed to sign and was unable to give clear explanations for some of the documents. This is a property transfer — you would think that a company that does this every day would know all the details about the forms and what is required.
After spending the hour to fill out the documents and provide us with copies, we thought that we would be done. Well, wrong. Because it turns out they missed a couple of things. So we had to go back to their offices do deal with that issue.
Then, we find out a month later that City Hall doesn’t like the paperwork that they filed — turns out there were some errors in the paperwork that was sent to City Hall. So another trip downtown to deal with that issue.
I would like to think that for the amount of money paid, their alleged experience in this field and the time they spent to earn that money, that Stewart Title would get it done properly. Unfortunately, it turned out to not be true for us.
I understand that as a person taking out a mortgage that the lender has the say in who handles the title transfer, but if you have a choice, please avoid Stewart Title if you want the transfer to be done right the first time.