By THOMAS HARTLEY
Business First

For many people, old books conjure thoughts of an unpleasant, musty smell.

But not for Pam Nestico and John Federowicz. To them, it is the satisfying scent of history - a record that spans two centuries in the life of Buffalo and Western New York.

Nestico and Federowicz, the co-regional managers of Monroe Title Insurance Corp., and their 30-member staff have tracked the ownership of property for years. Their searches have carried them as far back as 1809, a time when Buffalo was a village and before an invading army burned most buildings to the ground in the War of 1812.

In the following years and to the present, the good times and bad for Buffalo and Western New York were deciphered and documented by companies like Monroe.

"As an abstract and title company, we trace the history of a piece of land as defined by legal records dating back to the earliest deeds in any given county," Nestico says.

"From the abstract side, we don't care if anything is built on it or no. Whether it has a 20-story building or a little shack - it doesn't make any difference. It's the land and who holds the title to it that matters," Federowicz says.

Buying and selling a home is, for most people, the largest financial endeavor that they will ever undertake. In a business, it can spell the difference between success and failure. Therefore, verifying a property's ownership through history is vital.

In the Buffalo region, searching and authenticating ownership, or creating an abstract of title if none exists, is the job of title searchers and examiners at title and abstract companies. They also issue title insurance to protect against undiscovered title defects.

Monroe, which recently merged into New York City-based Stewart Title Insurance Co., and Ticor Title Insurance Co. are the dominant players in the Buffalo area.

The field also includes smaller companies such as Capital Abstract Co. of Western New York, Four Corners Abstract Corp., Network Title Agency of New York, Niagara Square Abstract Co., Trinity Title and Abstract Corp., and numerous agents for other companies.

In times of economic distress, like the present, companies dealing with real estate transactions are not immune to a slowdown in real estate sales.

"One would think that in a recession, business would be down, but that has not been the case with us," Federowicz says. "It's my guess that our business is up 15 percent from last year."

He attributes that rise in part to changes in the local abstract and title business that occurred last year and more recently, such as some companies merging out of existence, local offices closing, or other shifts occurring in the market.

Though Monroe and similar companies perform title searches and title examinations, searchers comprise the majority of employees in that end of the business.

The search determines whether any liens exist on the property and if the seller has legal title to it.

Until the mid-1980s, the recorded information that is so important in real estate transactions was entered by hand onto pages of three-to-four-inch-thick hardcover books measuring 30 inches by 2 feet.

In the first 185 years of the business, little changed. But during the 1990s, technology altered things radically.

"They computerized the recording process," Federowicz said. "We still deal with the big books, though they are now printed in type, instead of handwritten. And we can run reports off them in a different way." Technology also has expanded the scope of what businesses like Monroe do. With the Internet, requests are coming from out-of-state.

"We have expanded our customer base to include states where we never did abstract work in the past," Federowicz said. "That varies in nature depending on needs. It might involve only a 2-year search, or a 60-year search."

County clerk's offices, including Erie County's, have computerized their systems, which allows Monroe to go to computerized indexes instead of having to leaf through the big, heavy books, which was the set-up in every clerk's office until the 1990s.

"Initially, they computerized the recording process, though we still deal with the books for anything prior to 1986," Federowicz said.

Records used in the search process today, however, are stored on a computerized system. The Erie County clerk's office has a Web site, and computers available to the public at the office can also be used for accessing documents.

"With the computer index, it only takes minutes to find what might have taken hours in the past," Federowicz said.

Even with the technological changes, though, Nestico finds one aspect of the work is as it always was.

"The setting is historic," she says of Erie County Hall. "It makes you feel like we're walking into history when we walk into the building."