Frequently Asked Questions

A: Yes! Sellers and Buyers have the final say in who they want to hire to handle their escrow.

A: It is your right to negotiate to use the services of your choice and, in many instances, Buyers are able to negotiate to use their preferred escrow company. However, customarily, the Seller chooses the escrow company.

A: Possibly. If the property you are selling or buying is in California, we would love to handle your escrow! If, however, the property is outside of California, we, unfortunately, cannot handle the escrow.

A: Yes! Sellers and Buyers have the final say in who they want to hire to handle their escrow. You will need to notify your real estate service of your desire to hire Lighthouse to handle your escrow.

A: Not at all. We’ve handled escrows on properties throughout California. Our paperless processing and network of mobile notaries mean that we can work with Sellers and Buyers no matter where they are - even if they’re in another country! Best of all, we don’t charge additional fees to accommodate our “out of area” clients.

A: Yes! We can handle your 1031 exchange escrow but you will need to hire an accommodator as well.

A: Yes! Probates are one of our specialties. These escrows present their own unique set of challenges. Our escrow team knows how to navigate these challenges and close escrow in a timely manner.

A: Fees vary based on the type of escrow you are doing and, sometimes, the price of the home. We believe transparency is the foundation of trust. Therefore, if you navigate to our homepage, we have provided a free, no-gimmicks closing cost calculator which will clearly show you our fee as well as estimating the fees you’ll likely have to pay to other companies in order to sell your home. If you are simply refinancing your home, we charge a flat fee of $550. Our escrow fees are charged at the close of escrow.

A: Title companies are insurance companies: they insure your rightful ownership of your property. Sometimes, title companies also provide escrow services. These services are sold as an add-on to their title services, are not the primary specialty of the company, and are therefore sold at discounted rates. When it comes to something as significant as coordinating the financial and legal aspects of your home purchase, we believe you deserve specialists.

A: We once had someone apply to work for our company as an escrow officer. It turns out, this individual failed our mandatory background check because they had a felony conviction for grand theft. The individual went on to work for a broker-owned escrow company because they have lower regulatory standards that allowed the individual to work for them. These companies operate as profit centers for the brokerage and, in our experience, are the most frequent victims of fraud.

A: We’re a consumer-focused escrow company with a stewardship mindset. Our growth-spending is directed toward consumer and stewardship initiatives. Other independent escrow companies are focused on winning business from real estate agents. Their growth-spending is directed toward enticing real estate agents to refer them business.

Our “consumer focus” means we speak in “plain English” about what we do, we are actively improving our service to make it more fun and accessible for home buyers and sellers, and we invest in tools and technology which ensure consumer protection.

Our “stewardship mindset” plays itself out in a variety of ways. We steward the environment by embracing paperless escrow processing and digital signatures (and we were among the first in Orange County to do it). We steward our community by donating to organizations providing homes to veterans and children. We steward our own employees by offering them the tools to create harmony between their professional and personal lives. Finally, we steward people like you by developing unique services, like our Escrow Coordinator program, designed to infuse joy into the home buying or selling process by eliminating the stress and friction of the escrow process. Our willingness to embrace technology and rapidly innovate ahead of change gives us the ability to future-proof our business and be the kinds of good-oriented stewards we desire to be.

A: We value creating an amazing escrow experience for home sellers and buyers just like you. Internally, we call this “consumer-focused escrow.” Everything else follows from that singular value.