SAN ANTONIO (Jan. 24, 2005) - Brazoria County (Texas) Clerk Joyce Hudman demonstrated to local title companies how the Landata e-Recording System (LERS) works in conjunction with the county's new Landata e-STAR Plus™ document records system to accept electronically-filed real estate documents.

Representatives from eight area title companies viewed the demonstration, which took place at the Clerk's office in Angleton, Texas, on Jan. 21. According to Hudman, 77,136 real property documents were filed during 2004 in Brazoria County, a growing county of nearly 250,000 residents located just south of Houston.

"LERS provides title companies and any other submitters the same recording functionality as that offered in person at the counter in the courthouse," said Alan Cellura, president and chief executive officer, Landata Technologies.

"With this desktop e-recording system, Landata Technologies provides the platform and the submitting title company acts as a remote recording facility," said Cellura. "Basically, any submitter can do electronic recording of mortgages, title transfers, liens and other closing documents here in Brazoria County through this open systems platform."

Hudman accepted the county's first electronically-filed real estate property records on Dec. 13, 2004. At that time, the package containing the deed and deed of trust was generated via LERS and submitted by Stewart Title of Brazoria County. Scanned images of the documents in addition to index information (grantor, grantee and property information) and cashiering information (document type and number of pages) were received by the Brazoria County Clerk.

The recording was accepted and the document package was electronically stamped, cashiered and loaded into the county's e-STAR database. Funds to pay for the recording were automatically transferred from the submitter's account to the Clerk's account through an ACH funds transfer. The electronically recorded and stamped documents were returned along with receipt information to the submitter within an hour of receipt.

"The electronic filing of real property record documents will be a more efficient and effective way of recording," said Hudman. "It will be a great benefit - a win-win situation both for the taxpayers of Brazoria County and the land title industry as well."

Brazoria County officials anticipate that 25 percent to 30 percent of real property records will now be filed electronically.

"LERS is a standalone application that any title company can use, regardless of its title production software," said Cellura. "It also is different from other e-recording applications because it can manage multiple document types using a rules-based architecture."

Cellura said Landata Technologies will be working with all interested title companies within Brazoria County to implement LERS. The system was implemented in Bexar County (San Antonio), Texas, in fall 2004, and is now processing approximately 3,000 documents per month.

About Landata Technologies Inc.
Landata Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of Stewart Information Services Corp. (NYSE-STC), offers electronic document conversion with indexing services, recordation systems, e-recording and data warehousing with e-commerce to government entities and title companies.

About Stewart
Stewart Information Services Corp. is a technology driven, strategically competitive, real estate information and transaction management company. Stewart provides title insurance and related information services through more than 7,800 issuing locations in the United States and several international markets. Stewart meets the needs of the real estate and mortgage industries through the delivery of information services required for settlement using e-commerce. These services include title reports, flood determinations, document preparation, property reports and background checks. Stewart also supplies post-closing services to lenders, automated county clerk land records, property ownership mapping and GIS for governmental entities. Stewart provides expertise in tax-deferred exchanges. More information about Stewart can be found at www.stewart.com.

###