First American Title

Mark Adams did a great job for us! Friendly, helpful & knowledgeable. I used someone else on another deed and it took two weeks. He did the whole process in a half hour. I wouldn’t use anyone else again. I rarely write reviews, but he really deserves it!

They were very helpful, and I was happy for choosing this company. They knew their business well and gave an excellent service.

Mark Adams is superior — he manages many of my title/​escrows for my clients. Mark is bright, personable, thorough, honest and perhaps the finest escrow/​title officer in San Francisco. I also consider Mark a friend.
I highly recommend Mark.

I had a bad experience with the office in Bellevue, WA. I was the seller in this transaction. Both the buyer and seller agreed to not have a Realtor involved. Everything seemed fine up until the time to sign closing docs.
This is where American Title comes into the picture. They didn’t follow the clause in the Purchase And Sale Agreement regarding splitting the closing costs equally between the buyer and seller when they put together the Seller Settlement doc. This would cost us an extra $ 2500. When we brought this up they did modify the settlement doc, but the buyer decided they would prefer to just forfeit the earnest money rather than pay the extra amount.
Also, American Title neglected to put in the Escrow fee in the original settlement doc. That was another $ 1400!
Needless to say, we lost a good bit of profit because of the apparent incompetence of two agents, Merry Smith and Irene Ballew. And we nearly lost the sale because the buyer was threatening us with forfeiting the earnest money.

Mark Adams was the title officer on home that i just purchased and he did a terrific job. Everything was smooth. He was very responsive. We selected him as the title officer on the sale of our condo.

I have purchased a house, refinanced many times and then sold it as well. But, the Escrow officer remained in the shadow in all the transactions.
Not this time! I was buying a condo in Marina financed by a large bank. Even though the local loan officer was great, the team was awful and they were slipping schedule and not responding to requests on time. It was a nightmare!
Mark Adams stepped into the void along with my equally awesome realtor to manage the process thru and meet a tight escrow closure deadline. He alerted me in the nick of time that my own fund hadn’t come in as yet even though the same bank claimed that it had wired it. I was able to follow up with the bank and get the wire executed just minutes to spare. Mark even made himself available at odd hours early morning and late evening on his cellphone. The next time I buy again, Mark will be Escrow Officer.

This company bent over backwards to help us after we got screwed by the horrible process that is new home ownership. Nate Scharton was incredibly helpful and nice to us and helped us when we had to start over from scratch after a bad experience with one mortgage place. I would recommend these people.

I have worked with this office over the years and have always found everyone to be incredibly helpful, courteous and professional. The moment I step through the front door I am greeted with ‘how can I help you”. And for me that sums it up, anything I have needed help with they have assisted me with in a timely and professional manner. I highly recommend this office!

I have been in real estate for over 10 years. I have worked with 100’s of escrow agents and offices from Arizona to the Wine Country. Mark Adams is the BEST escrow officer I have ever worked with. He is so professional and knows escrows inside and out. He can get the most challenging situations done.
He works with Megan Sorensen and she helps make the team unmatched.

5 stars because of their new Escrow Officer. With rates across all Title companies eerily similar, and new laws that prohibit them from knocking off fees, I recommend that my clients pick the Escrow officer rather than the firm itself. Nate Scharton just moved from Fidelity National Title to First American — albeit temporarily at the 1900 Lombard office.
Nate seems to work ²⁴⁄₇ and is incredibly responsive. Then again, when everyone uses the same escrow officer they’re usually in non-​stop signings and you’ll often get the kind of complaints levied on others below. So my other advice is to enlist your agent to make sure you’re getting top notch service.

I am a real estate professional in business for 30+ years. For at least two decades I have primarily used First American title and recommend them to my clients. Why?- they are one of the oldest title insurance companies in the country. One must realize you are getting more that escrow services — you are actually buying insurance and you want that insurance company to be in business if you need them. On top of this — Kallie Castro (manager of the Lombard st branch) and her team are outstanding. They go above and beyond to make sure all the details of the transaction are taken care of and that all parties have a smooth transaction.

I am a loan officer in San Francisco and this particular First American office has closed over 250 loans of mine. We e-​mail the loan documents to this office and in almost every case within 2 hours they create a preliminary settlement statement, e-​mail or fax it to the borrower (s) and set up an appointment to have a notary come to the borrower’s house to notarize the documents.
Some of the complaints here are strange. It is not the job of the escrow officer to tell you the status of your refinance. That is my (the loan officer’s) job. If a loan officer or a Realtor told you that the escrow officer was the one who held up the deal I would be quite dubious.
I have sent over 250 people to this office and had zero complaints. I could not imagine that anyone could do a better job. This office is, in my experience, a well-​oiled machine.
— Dick Lepre
RPM Mortgage

I cannot believe I had to pay these people money for their «services.» I should have Unilocaled this place before engaging them for the refinancing to complete my condo conversion. Complete, utter lack of communication — NOBODY would call me to update me on the status of our refinancing. Is it too much to ask that somebody confirm receipt of our wire transfer? Or that the transaction closed? Nada — black hole. I would have to call or email several times in order to get somebody to tell me what was going on. In condo conversions, all TIC owners have to close their refinancing simultaneously, which in itself is a pain in the ass. We were ready a full month before our TIC partners were. When our TIC partners were finally ready to fund, NOBODY from the title company bothered to coordinate with my lender to get the funds in, until minutes before the wire cutoff deadline. Nobody bothered to update me on the status of my transaction — I had to call to get information, and my account was passed around like a cheap hooker from representative to representative. They couldn’t even keep track of my transaction details — I had numerous run arounds with people telling me one thing, and then telling my mortgage broker and real estate agent something entirely different. You need to do this first. No, you need to do this first. Actually, I never received your documents. Oh, my bad, I did receive them. It was a never ending cycle, and completely frustrated the end of an already frustrating condo conversion process.
You have options with title companies. This is definitely not one of them.

OK. Let me start by saying that I’m no fan of title companies. It kills me that every time I buy or refinance a home, I get hit for some outrageous bill on the Title Insurance — even if I’m just refinancing with the same lender who held my original note.
But I think that the other reviewers of this office have been unnecessarily harsh. I’ve now completed three transactions with this office and I have to say that they’ve been very pleasant, helpful, and responsive.
When I needed to have my wife come in at a different time from me due to her work schedule… no problem. When there were some errors on the documents… they called and got them fixed and got me back in to re-​sign. No muss, no fuss.
The branch manager, Kallie Castro, even helped me when a strange old tax bill for the previous owner of my home showed up. Working with title companies is a fact of real estate life in San Francisco. If you have to do it, I wouldn’t hesitate to send a friend here to First American on Lombard.

My husband and I are brand new first time home buyers… what a scary time! We had no idea what we were doing to ourselves. Our agent was a newbie and too many things went wrong, however we found Kelly Lilleth with the Lombard office to be totally right for us. She is extremely efficient, professional and personable. It was clear that she knew her job well, and seemed to be prepared for anything. She even handled the phones in between with my in-​laws! We had some ‘quirky’ last minute circumstances creep up on us, and I had her support to reassure me that we were going to close regardless. I would not have made it in those last 24hrs if it were not for Kelly, and my husband and I are most appreciative to have made her acquaintance.

Don’t use First American Title Company, or at least don’t deal with anyone at this branch. About a year and a half ago, I bought a condominium. It was my first place, and I didn’t know much about title companies, aside from the fact you needed to use one to buy a house. What I didn’t know was that I could choose the title company even if my realtor has a preferred title company.
Kallie Castro at First American Title Company was an impediment to buying my first house. She never wanted to answer a phone call or make any effort to work around my schedule or meet my needs. She acted like I was doing her a favor instead of acting like she wanted my business. If there was a «Worst of Unilocal,» I’d nominate her for it.
My realtor wanted to work with First American to prepare a title report so I could sell my condo. I let her know about the problems I had last time, but my realtor used Kelley Lillis and assured me there would be no problems. There were. It took forever to get estimated closing statements. She’d tell the realtor that everything was going well, then tell me that there were problems. Charges started appearing on the closing statements that had no business being there, and now that I’ve closed, I’ve found that they’ve not been removed, and that I’m going to have to deal with the problem myself. That’s typical of the poor customer service you can expect from these people.
I refuse to deal with First American based on my bad experiences with the Lombard Street location. I’ve reviewed over 400 businesses on Unilocal,and First American Title Company is the worst by far.