Our Story
Today, we offer the nation's largest and most comprehensive repository of courthouse documents online with data in more than 1,800 counties nationwide: But that’s not how we began. Take a journey through “Our Story” beginning in 1982, when our president and founder, Paul Cones, had this “idea”.
“Working as Landman then the Market Crashes”
- In the early 1980’s, Paul Cones was working as a petroleum landman, obtaining oil and gas leases for exploration companies. Through this work, he gained an understanding of how to research real property records to determine a chain of title and current ownership. When the oil and gas business crashed in 1981, Cones had the knowledge of doing research in the courthouse and knew that surveyors needed information out of the courthouse. After already having plans to start a company when he moved back to his hometown of Houston, Cones decided to start inquiring with surveyors about providing abstract services.
“Muddy Boots to First Customer”
- What sparked the idea for Cones to inquire with surveyors was while he was a landman, working in the Cameron County Clerk’s office (South Texas), many surveyors would come stomping into the clerk’s office in their “muddy boots” – making a big mess, much to the chagrin of the clerk. The office was muddy, crowded, and busy: at this moment, the idea was sparked. That same year, the Texas Legislature mandated that a stake survey must be done on all conveyed property, which meant that surveyors would have an even greater need for records.
- In 1982, with the help of his father and a local model, Cones developed and sent brochures to all of the surveying companies in town. Carlos Cotton of Cotton Surveying called and hired Cones to do the research that otherwise, Cotton’s surveyors would have to spend valuable time doing. Cotton Surveying is essentially, the company’s first customer.
- In 1983, Cones bought Able Permits from an old high school friend and learned that quite often, a real estate transaction would get held up due to an encroachment into a utility easement because the property owner had built a structure over a gas or water line. Cones expanded the Able Permits business to obtain all the necessary permissions for the seller of the property so that the transaction could be completed.
- In the late 1980’s, Able Permits won a large contract to perform title curative work for utility encroachments with “Circle-K” who were selling all of their locations to “Stop-N-Go”. Interestingly, the project was done by Paul and Marian – solely - working out of their home in the extra bedroom. A true turning point, the clients started to come and the business began to grow significantly as a result of the project.
“Our First Office…. 806 Main Street…”
- In 1989, another turning point is when the company moved into the downtown office at 806 Main. We acquired the film library for all of the Harris County real property images on microfilm and needed a place to store them, make copies so moving into 806 Main was the next big step for us. It was a law office with a law library. We took the law library and turned it into operations center for shooting copies. Fax machines were coming out and we bought one to help with operations. The cost was $2,800. By buying the fax machine we were able to quickly shoot the copies and fax them to our customers.
“CourthouseDirect.com is Born”
- When compact discs came into use, we started publishing the Grantor/Grantee indexes on compact disc (CD’s). However, switching back and forth from one CD to another (the index took up 6 high-density CD’s) became cumbersome, so Cones started looking at another medium to deliver this information to his customers – the Internet. In October of 2000, after many fits and starts, the website CourthouseDirect.com was launched to provide an Internet portal to Grantor/Grantee indexes and document images nationwide. It became a great tool, not only for customers, but for the company’s own internal staff of abstracters and right-of-way agents.
“We Broke the Monopoly… Changing of the Guard”
- Up until 1989, all of the real property research work had to be done while standing in the courthouse and using the Grantor/Grantee index. Cones had applied for a password from the only geographic title plant in Harris County, Title Data, Inc., but had been denied access. Cones also needed a title plant—a copy of all of the documents filed in the Harris County Courthouse on microfilm.
- Cones decided that if he could somehow bring the Grantor/Grantee index in-house, he could compete in the marketplace. Thanks to expanded freedom of information legislation, he was able to buy the entire Grantor/Grantee index of Harris County and had it put on microfiche cards. Since there were others like him who didn’t want to stand at the courthouse all day, and who had also been denied access to the Title Data title plant, Cones began making duplicate sets of the Grantor/Grantee index and leased them out. Some of his customers were the very title agencies who had barred him access to the title plant. The word quickly spread throughout the title insurance industry that someone was about to break the title plant monopoly in Harris County. Indeed he did, in 2003, creating two new entities to get into the title insurance business: IntegrityTitleInformation.com, LLC (the title plant), and Integrity Title Company, LLC (a title insurance agency).
- Today, CourthouseDirect.com is the leader in online records and real property images. As the first company to put these records online, we influenced others to start similar businesses. We now have more than 200 employees, offices across Texas, and several companies under the CourthouseDirect.com umbrella including CourthouseSquare.com, Courthouse Specialists, and Integrity Title Company, LLC.