In its first year of operation, Presus, a real estate services company in Pewaukee, is conducting its title business like few others in the field, gaining much of its business via the Web.
Its title division, called Gatewood Title, offers clients and potential clients online ordering capabilities with a simple click of the mouse.
"No one else in the field is doing this," says Trey Dittmann, president of Gatewood Title. He says it has helped to greatly strengthen the company’s business in a highly competitive field.
"The orders go through our ISP directly through an active server page to the senior underwriter, who in turn reviews the information and processes it," says Mark Waldoch, senior vice president for sales and marketing for Presus, who was instrumental in creating the electronic approach for the company.
And in concert with the firm’s technological capabilities that streamline front-end order taking, the company took an equally strategic approach at building its employee base. Each of the nine employees were hand-picked from top title organizations.
"Title people do not go to college for a degree in title insurance," says Dittmann. "At least there’s no title school that I’m aware of where you can get a four-year degree. You basically have to go get these people – it’s a very limited labor pool. And you basically have to make a lot of phone calls; you’ve got to find out where people are."
And the company keeps its employees on board by offering them a professional, mature environment. "We give them an extraordinary amount of freedom, we let their professional juices flow," says Dittmann. "We know these people are good. We know they’re professionals – we don’t need to baby-sit them."
And the employees become very much a part of the business because they are given the option to be financially vested. "We award them stock; they’re owners," says Waldoch. "They get to see the financials when the other investors see the financials. And that really puts us on our toes because we have to answer to the stockholders."
Presus, which rhymes with Reeses and which is Romanian for "above," (the firm’s logo is a roof) was started by four partners in December 1999: Lawrence Snyder, Mark Waldoch, Trey Dittmann and Peter Maurer. Dittmann and Maurer came from real estate backgrounds, Snyder and Waldoch from management consulting backgrounds. The four met through a "well-connected local realtor."
"He brought us together about six months prior to the whole thing starting up," says Dittmann. "And we didn’t know exactly at that point what we were going to be – expand on the real estate service division or if we were going to be just a title company."
The company was approved by M&I prior to its opening last year, primarily because of the four partners’ reputations, according to Dittmann. "We did not want to be what a current title company is, and that’s basically one office in one county with a lot of bricks and mortar and a lot of people," he says. "We outsource some of our services, we have personnel that can do a multitude of tasks, we’ve embraced the latest software, all the while being competitive as far as price and just as competitive in our delivery."
For now, at least, Presus’ primary strength lies in its title division, with the bulk of its real estate services still in development. "Gatewood was out of the chute the fastest," says Dittmann. "What was vital as far as getting the title company started was, for one, to embrace the technology that is out there today and, second, to find the right employees."
Presus
N27 W23727 Paul Rd., Suite 100, Pewaukee, 53072,
www.presus.com.
The real estate services company, based in Pewaukee, owes its first year’s success to its title division, Gatewood Title Services. The title company has flourished through
the use of electronic application
processing and the strategic hiring of seasoned professionals in the industry.
