Is there a way to verify a title company or escrow holder before you wire, if you're working in a state you've never been to? I'm in Texas, the deal is in Ohio, and the number on the website just rings.
Most states license escrow and title companies through the department of insurance or the department of commerce. Ohio is through the Department of Insurance, you can look up any company at insurance.ohio.gov and confirm they're actually active. Takes two minutes and I wish I'd done it before I wired $5k on a Phoenix deal in 2021 that turned into a three-week nightmare.
Ohio title companies have to be licensed through the Department of Insurance, not a real estate board, which trips up a lot of people who go looking in the wrong place. You can search the company name at doi.ohio.gov and see if they're actually authorized to hold escrow funds. Takes about four minutes. If they're not in that database, that's your answer and you need to start the wire recall process with your bank today, not next week.
I lost $3,200 in earnest money on a property in Memphis in 2021 because I found the escrow company the exact same way you did, Google, and never checked anything beyond whether the website looked professional. They had a real address, a real-sounding name, and a voicemail that said all the right things. By day 11 nobody had returned a single message and the deal had obviously fallen apart. My bank said the wire was past the recall window by the time I escalated it. What I do now, before any wire goes anywhere, is call the title company listed on the actual county recorder's office website for that county, not whoever the wholesaler gave me, and confirm the closing is actually scheduled there. In Cuyahoga County that's pretty easy to do. Eight days with no answer is not a communication lag, that's a problem.
Lost $4,200 EMD in 2021 to a fake escrow in a state I'd never set foot in.
Ohio Secretary of State business search takes three minutes and would've caught a shell.
The thing I kept learning the hard way is that a website that looks real means almost nothing. Before I wired anything on my first out-of-state deal in Kentucky, I should have called the county recorder's office directly and asked them if they had an active working relationship with that company, specifically had they seen recent closings run through them. County recorder staff in smaller Ohio counties will actually talk to you. They see title companies constantly and they know which ones are active. That would have cost me a phone call. Instead I wired $2,500 EMD to an escrow "company" in 2022 that had a clean website, a real suite number, and a phone that rang exactly like yours is ringing now. Took 11 weeks and a demand letter from a real estate attorney, $800 in legal fees, to get it back. Got lucky.
The second check I should have run, and now always do before anything moves, is to pull the actual closing agent's name and look them up individually through the Ohio Department of Insurance, because licensed title agents have to carry errors and omissions coverage and that license is tied to a real person, not just an LLC that can disappear. The company entity check is one layer but agents are another. If no individual licensed agent is attached to that escrow company in the state database, the company is either a shell or operating illegally, and either way you already have your answer. Eight days with no one answering is not a communication problem. That is a problem.
The part I'd push back on is treating verification as something you do before you wire. If you're working a state you've never touched, you should have a local real estate attorney lined up before you even have a deal under contract, and that attorney tells you which escrow company to use, full stop. In Ohio that's going to run you maybe $300-400 to have counsel on a transaction and that fee is your verification step. How much was the EMD? Because if it's under $2,000 you might be looking at small claims in Franklin or Cuyahoga county depending on where the property is, and that's actually a realistic path if the company turns out to be sketchy. Eight days of no answer on a live wire is not a miscommunication, that's a problem. Pull your wire confirmation from your bank today and start a trace with their fraud department, not tomorrow.
How much was the wire, and did you get a written receipt from anyone?
