A week after announcing a pivot in its business strategy, publicly traded title insurance firm Doma announced the sale of its retail operations in Florida on Tuesday.
Doma’s Florida operation was purchased by Near North Title Group for an undisclosed sum. Near North Title Group purchased Doma’s Midwest locations in July. After this second deal, Near North has added a total of 130 employees and 39 offices to its roster.
“We are pleased to have the opportunity to acquire another set of Doma offices as they seek to refine their focus on their core business model of underwriting and technology,” Dan Fowler, CEO of Near North Title Group, said in a statement. “Doma Florida employees, like the Midwest group, seek to embrace technology and will mesh with our tech-forward approach to utilizing the best systems and technology to service our customers.”
In May, Doma sold its Central and Northern California offices to Williston Financial Group and in in July, the firm sold its Texas operations to Capital Title of Texas.
During Doma’s second quarter 2023 earnings call, the firm’s founder and CEO Max Simkoff told investors that the sales of Doma’s Midwest, Texas and California operations had netted his company $35 million.
“The majority of the proceeds received were used to pay down existing debt. These executed transactions resulted in the transfer of approximately 300 employees and 60 local branches and operations to new leadership and organizations,” Simkoff said on the call.
Simkoff noted that the sales of these offices were part of Doma’s business plan pivot as it looks to achieve adjusted EBITDA profitability this year. As part of the new strategy, Simkoff said Doma will be licensing its instant underwriting software to mortgage originators and secondary market purchasers, in addition to continuing to roll out the software to its independent title agents.
“Our goal in implementing our new strategy in this way is to not only drive some of the largest single reductions in mortgage-related fees to end-consumers that our industry has ever seen, but also to enable Doma to capture a much larger part of the overall market for mortgage transactions with a much better solution and at a much faster speed than our previous go-to market focus,” Simkoff said.
