From Texas Startup to National Coverage: How APG Scaled Property Tax Certificates to All 50 States

By Scott Struby, First Vice President of APG & Delinquency Services. Scott joined APG as a tax specialist in 2016. Since then, he has overseen tax production, operations and quality control through the company’s nationwide expansion. 

For most title companies, “we’ve always done it this way” is not a compliment. It is a warning sign. Bulk tax roll purchases that update weekly, biweekly, or monthly. Orders that require a phone call or an email. Data that is accurate on the day it was pulled and stale by the time it reaches a closing table. This is the model American Property Guard (APG) was built to challenge, and it is the model we have now scaled from the Lone Star State to the United States.

Where We Started

APG began with a simple, stubborn idea: property tax certificates should reflect what a taxing agency knows right now, not what it knew last week. We built that idea in Texas, working directly with local title companies who needed faster, more accurate answers than the traditional bulk-purchase model could offer.

Staying close to our first clients taught us what mattered most in this business. It is not just speed. It is trust. Escrow officers and closing coordinators do not have room in their day to double-check a vendor’s numbers, so accuracy has to be built into the process from the start, not bolted on after the fact.

Why Local Expertise Does Not Have to Mean Limited Coverage

Scaling a Texas-built process to a national footprint raised an obvious question. How do you preserve the local knowledge that made the model work? And how do you extend it to counties and agencies our team had never touched?

The answer was proprietary technology, not shortcuts. Our system identifies taxing entity records and pulls up-to-the-minute data as our tax experts compile each certificate, regardless of which state or county it comes from. Every order is still verified by a trained quality assurance specialist before it reaches the client, the same standard we held ourselves to on day one.

That combination, real-time data sourced directly from tax agencies plus human quality review, is what let us grow coverage without watering down the accuracy our earliest clients relied on. It’s the same rigor LERETA brings across its broader tax servicing business. LERETA’s 2024 review of 22,065 loans found a 15% error rate, exactly the kind of gap real-time verification is built to close.

Meeting Title Companies Where They Already Work

National coverage only helps if it fits into a closing team’s existing workflow. That is why APG integrates directly with the platforms title companies already use, including RamQuest, ResWare, Qualia and SoftPro. One-click ordering through your closing platform means results come back automatically, without an extra login or a separate request process.

Whether you are closing a residential transaction in a county we have served for years or a commercial deal in a market that is new to us, the experience on your end should look and feel the same: reliable, fast and free of manual follow-up.

Backed by 40 Years of Nothing but Tax and Flood

APG’s expansion has not happened in isolation. As part of LERETA, LLC, we bring 40 years of nothing but tax and flood to the financial services industry. That foundation gave us the operational discipline and industry relationships to move from a regional provider to a national one. We did it without losing the responsiveness title companies expect from a local partner.

What National Coverage Means for Your Team

For title companies and closing teams, our national property tax certificate coverage translates into a few concrete advantages:

• One vendor, every market. No need to manage multiple regional providers as your business expands into new states.
• Consistent turnaround, wherever you close. The same real-time verification standard applies whether the property is in Texas or somewhere entirely new to your pipeline.
• A partner that grows with you. As your footprint expands, your tax certificate provider should not be the thing holding you back.

How to Get Started

Getting set up with APG in a new market does not require a new process. Here’s how to get started:

• Check your platform. If your team already uses RamQuest, ResWare, Qualia or SoftPro, APG ordering is likely already built into your existing workflow.
• Place your first order like any other. Submit your order from inside your closing platform, and it routes to our team automatically.
• Reach out if the market is new to you. Send us a message and our team will confirm coverage and flag any local nuances before your closing date, not after.

Looking Ahead

We built APG in Texas because that is where we could prove the model worked. We have taken it national because title companies everywhere deserve the same standard: real-time data, verified accuracy and a team that treats your closing deadline like our own.

Ready to see the difference for yourself? Request a demo and let our team show you what modern tax certificate service looks like in your market.

 

Frequently Asked Questions