Developers call her an unsung hero. A pioneer. A champion of urban development.
Tall
words, but Cathy LaMont has carved a niche in the city’s business
landscape and found success in doing work that many call critical to
Detroit’s renewal.
LaMont is president of
LaMont Title Corp.
People in Detroit development circles say the Guardian Building-based
company is the “go-to” place for securing title insurance for projects
in the city limits.
Again, tall words, but considering LaMont
did work for the stadiums, the casinos, the RiverWalk, the new
riverfront projects and much of everything else in between, she’s got
the cred to back up the kudos.
LaMont’s tenacity, vision and
success make her a prime example of what doing business in the city can
be. Her work is by no means easy, and in many ways it’s more
challenging than what it would be if she focused on projects out in
double-digit Mile Road territory, but she’s made a name, made a mark,
and found a market hungry for what she does.
“She embraced that
challenge rather than running away from it. And that’s how she’s been
able to carve out a niche,” says Mike Dempsey, a project manager for
the
Detroit Economic Growth Corp.,
a public/private agency dedicated to fostering development in the city.
“She saw an opportunity that many people were fleeing from, and she was
able to capitalize on it and to do so tremendously.”
What’s in a title?Title
insurance ain’t the sexiest topic, at least on the surface. And try
asking LaMont about tax foreclosure properties, another of her
specialties: “You think it’s dull to talk about title insurance, you
don’t know nothing till you talk about tax reversion,” she says and
laughs.
LaMont laughs a lot, but she knows her work is serious
business: Securing titles is an extremely vital part of redeveloping
the city’s neighborhoods.
If you’ve ever bought a house, you
know one of those “closing costs” items is title insurance. It is,
frankly, one item on the average home buyer’s checklist that you tick
off without a flinch.
To get a title insured, however, an
insurer has to be certain records show the property will be transferred
to you free and clear, and no one else can lay claim to it, and if
someone does make a claim, they have to be prepared to back you up.
Without title insurance, the bank doesn’t give you a mortgage.
Imagine,
however, trying to redevelop a parcel that had, say, 100 different
owners. Some of the land is city-owned, reclaimed from property owners
who didn’t pay taxes. Some deeds go back a couple hundred years.
Property lines shift, structures encroach on one another’s land. The
land’s value right now is low, because it’s been abandoned for years,
so you expect to pay a low title insurance premium. But what company
would take on the risk and heaps of work to insure a title in such
messy, sloppy circumstances? If something goes wrong, you’d potentially
open the door for costly court time if the deed gets challenged.
That,
however, is what LaMont and her crew do. She and her team of 30 take on
complicated title searches, some going back a couple hundred years, for
urban development projects. It’s their specialty.
“It’s like having a guide through the jungle,” says Midtown developer Colin Hubbell. His development company,
Hubbell Group, works with LaMont title on all of its projects, including
55 W. Canfield and the
Art Center Town Homes.
“Cathy
LaMont is one of the unsung heroes in Detroit’'s redevelopment," he
says. "Very few people understand the legal complexity of turning
challenged, encumbered, blighted, and often-foreclosed urban property
back into productive use like Cathy does. Her problem-solving approach
to title issues has played a critical role in almost every significant
redevelopment project under way in the city.”
Historically speakingLaMont,
a real estate attorney, worked for years for a big company, First American
Title. The idea to hang up her own title-company shingle came to her
when Detroit was granted empowerment zones under the Archer
administration. There sat acres of land, much vacant, and the
40,000-odd lots the city owned, waiting for redevelopment. People could
make big plans for those properties, she says, but she realized none of
it was going to move unless a company was willing to do the title work.
And, at that point, hardly any title company wanted to touch those
properties.
“It became clear to me that if we’re not prepared to
understand (the complexities) of tax-reverted properties, the city’s
never going to get anything done,” she says.
So LaMont dug in and became an expert on handling titles for foreclosed properties.
“And
so, on the basis of that, I got buckets of properties, buckets of
deals. I got the stadiums. I got casinos. I got all the big deals in
town, based on the company’s willingness to understand and to insure
tax-reverted parcels.”
LaMont says she so firmly believes in the
importance of doing title work in Detroit that she even tries to share
her expertise on tax-reverted properties with other title companies —
“I believe in competition,” she says — but she doesn’t get a lot of
bites.
“I’ve got a corner on the market, but it’s because nobody wants that corner,” she says, laughing again.
Challenges and rewardsDevelopment work in the city is not an easy game — no one would say it is — but there are rewards.
As
LaMont explains her work, it conjures up visions of Sherlock Holmes-ian
detectives sniffing out clues to who owns what, and clerks buried in
reams of old documents — messy, tedious stuff.
“It’s not
easy. Easy money is not to be had in the city. But there’s good money
and solid money to be had in the city,” LaMont says. “And there’s a lot
of opportunities. There’s a lot of viable projects that are available
in the city that might not be available in the burbs.”
Title
challenges for urban development, she says, include the age of a
property, shifting property lines, shifting uses of the land, all of
which may affect ownership rights. But sorting them out is … fun?
“In
Detroit, you have old titles, there’s history,” LaMont explains. “You
know, when we were doing the stadiums, you could see the old names —
the Beaubiens, the Randolphs. It’s just so cool. The riverfront, the
law is interesting about riparian rights [i.e. waterfront rights to us
lay folk]. The rail tunnel under the river, it’s fascinating, because
it’s two kinds of law — Canadian law and American law — and you’ve got
the best minds in the business working on that deal.
“It’s
intellectually challenging, historically fascinating and intriguing.
And we make a difference. Before the shovels go into the ground, we see
what’s going on. And there’s a ton going on.”
That sense of
being part of something greater, she says, has also been one of the
rewards helping redevelop Detroit. And it's been profitable.
“The
second year we moved in here, we had so many orders in the first
quarter, which is the deadest time of the season in this business. We
had like 1,800 orders for residential properties around Detroit. So I
knew all the stuff that was going up — and now it’s up. It’s really,
really exciting to be part of that.”
LaMont’s company has grown
from five employees in 2002, when she opened shop, to 30 now. She’s
even expanding into a Troy-based office. (“We can do the easy stuff,
too,” she jokes.) But Detroit has been the key to her success, and she,
very humbly, gives the credit to the city and the people developing it.
“I
found a niche. That’s all,” she says. “It’s not me. I found a niche.
And this city is growing. It is changing dramatically. Night and day.”
Photos:
Cathy Lamont
Comerica Park
River Walk
Tricentennial Park
Ford Field
Cathy Lamont
All Photographs Copyright Dave Krieger