Annual Conference 2024: My Home’s in Alabama
LTAAL recently hosted its very first conference at the fabulous Grand Bohemian Hotel in Mountain Brook. Anna Batten, Executive Director and Spencer Huey, President, welcomed about 60 members from Florence to Mobile and everywhere in between who attended this inaugural event. The theme was “My Home’s in Alabama.”
Sometimes we can get caught up in our daily routine of phone calls, emails, closings, meetings, webinars, and in general, lots of paperwork, but at our conference, we were asked to be proud of how each of us contributes to our communities, our state and even our great nation.
Under all is the land. The American way of life depends in large part upon the foundation of real estate and the land title record systems developed over the years to both facilitate real estate transactions and provide reliable protection of all the data required to support those transactions.
We all know how important land is. Wars have been fought over who owns land. Land is where our farms produce food. It’s where our cities were built. It’s where factories operate, and commerce happens. But most importantly it’s where our homes are. And for most of us at the conference, our homes are in Alabama. As we listened to several songs about Alabama, there was a common theme. It was about the love of our state whether we have lived here all our lives, have moved here from other areas, or left Alabama and moved away. No matter what, the longing in these songs was to come back home.
Without our Probate Offices, our abstractors, our title searchers, our title examiners, our closers, our post closers, our attorneys and our underwriters, there would be no transfer of ownership in a secure and safe way. There would be no mortgages given to make housing affordable. The people at the conference and everyone reading this newsletter are responsible for each person or family in Alabama having a home. That is a worthy calling, and one for which you should be proud.
Land Title Association of Alabama started with an interest meeting in spring of 2022. The organizational documents were filed in the summer of 2022, and the first board meeting was held in December 2022. We now have 108 individual members: 70 individual agent members (who are attorneys or licensed title professionals), 16 underwriter members, 11 agent staff members, 7 abstractor members, and 4 associate members. In a little less than 2 ½ years, your association has a vibrant website, has produced monthly newsletters, hosted a 1-hour webinar, sponsored a table at the Alabama Association of Realtors “Realtor Day” at the Capitol, sponsored a luncheon for the Alabama Mortgage Professionals Association, and has presented its first annual conference. Your board has been hard at work!
Not only our board, but lots of other individuals have helped to form and maintain this association. Many thanks go to Marcel and Edgar Black who helped with our organizational documents. Special thanks go to Ken Farmer. Without Ken, we might not even have an association. He started the Land Title Association of Mississippi which was our blueprint for our Alabama association. With his IT background, he set up our website and keeps it updated, sends out our monthly newsletters and in general, is the “behind the scenes” engine for us all.
Tara Leiter and Lauren Marlbrough did a great job on the conference committee as well as many others who stepped up to help like Will Avant who was our in-house AV guy! We greatly appreciate our sponsors who supported our new association: Generes & Associates, SoftPro, Southern Loan Servicing, Security Title of Baltimore, Westcor, CATIC and Fidelity National Financial.
For those of you who missed the conference, here is a quick look back. On Sunday afternoon, August 25th, we heard Chesley Payne with Massey, Stotser & Nichols update us on the Corporate Transparency Act and FinCEN, Dan Sparks with Christian & Small detailed bankruptcy procedures, and the Honorable Sherri Friday, Jefferson County Probate Judge (Place 2) regaled us with stories about her daily life being a Judge in Jefferson County.
We had a wonderful reception for attendees in the Billard Room at the Grand Bohemian. It was a relaxed setting where we had live music, networking, great food and drink. Monday morning, August 26th, we reconvened with a nice breakfast buffet in anticipation of our keynote speaker, Congressman Gary Palmer representing the 6th District. Congressman Palmer updated us on his domestic and international initiatives. We were all impressed with his straightforward talk and how hard he works for all of us in Alabama. Stuart Norton with ACRE updated us on Alabama market trends, and Roman Shaul, General Counsel with the Alabama State Bar wrapped up the conference with his presentation about the ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence. Our attendees earned 6 hours CLE/CE including 1 hour of ethics.
Your board has voted to host a 3-hour conference in the Huntsville area in early 2025 so be looking for information to register for that! Our goal is to include all title insurance professionals in the state to join our association. If you’re not a member, please join! If you are a member, please reach out to your abstractors, underwriters and other agents in your area to encourage them to join. With all of you, we are better!
Congressman Gary Palmer,
and Anna Batten
