A Boerne title company has made it to the major leagues. 

By: Jay Ermisa

Texas Investors Title was selected to close the sale of the Houston Astros from Drayton McLane of Temple to a partnership headed by Jim Crane and Crane Capital of Houston.

The five-person title company closed the $250 million loan from Bank of America to the partnership and provided the title insurance securing the loan with the lease on Minute Maid Park where the Astros play.

Steve Vallone, president of Texas Investors Title, said the total sales price of the Astros was reported to be $680 million and included the move by the Astros to the American League in 2013. Vallone was involved in the Nov. 22 transaction along with assistants Becky Edmiston and Jackie Crouch.

"It was a great opportunity to put our little company on the map," Vallone said. "What this shows is that you can be a small company in a small town and compete against anybody who might be in a larger city with a large company. "Hopefully, this will be sort of a wake up call to a lot of small companies ... don't be afraid to compete with the big companies. If it boils down to the quality of your work on a level playing field, we can do anything they can do in Houston or Dallas.

"I think we have established some relationships that will lead into some other large deals."

Texas Investors Title's involvement with the Astros transaction goes back to 1979 in Houston. Vallone was in a title company partnership with former University of Texas All-America running back Chris Gilbert and UT defensive standout Corby Robertson.

"Those guys were able to put together a group of partners who were in the Who's Who of early '80s development in Houston." Vallone said. "We had a bunch of guys who did apartments, shopping centers and malls and downtown buildings. We were sort of a boutique operation that had a small number of large deals."

They sold the company to Stewart Title in 2006, but "part of the terms of the purchase required me to stay on and run one of their divisions for three years, which I did," Vallone said.

"When I got down to the last few months of my contract, I thought, 'I am ready to leave Houston'," he said. "I decided I wanted to move to the Hill Country. I looked at ranches around Kerrville and Bandera and Fredericksburg and then came to the conclusion that Boerne was the best located, the neatest town. It was a great atmosphere. I decided to move to Boerne."

After nine months of retirement, Vallone decided to form a title company, which started in January 2010 and is approaching the end of its second year of operation.

"The cost of getting into business as far as your capital expenditures were never cheaper than they are right now," Vallone said. "Nobody in their right mind would possibly start a title company in the midst of the worst recession with very good competition here in town, but I decided to do it anyway."

Vallone said his company's business model requires them to become involved in business transactions throughout the state.

"We fortunately have the ability to close ranch deals throughout South Texas and the Hill Country," he said. "We have done some large transactions for USAA."

"I still have my friends and former partners in Houston who have me do some of their deals from time to time."

Vallone said Bank of America approved the $250 million loan to the Crane group.

"It's interesting. I closed some pretty large deals and sometimes the bigger deals are actually easier than some of the houses or small ranches we have closed," Vallone said. "Not always is the dollar size indicative of how difficult the transaction will be."

Vallone said a lender's title policy was required because the purchaser was going to mortgage his lease-hold interest in Minute Maid Park.

"Bank of America wanted to make sure they also had control of the lease because the owner of the Astros will lease Minute Maid Park for the length of the baseball season," Vallone said. "It doesn't do you any good to have a baseball team without a lease to play."

"That required title insurance so we went down and did all the title work on the stadium, sent everything to two law firms in New York and North Carolina and worked out the title matters."

Vallone said they were concerned about the Bank of America deal involving a major law firm in New York City and a major law firm in North Carolina.

"You've got this five-person company from a town that nobody's ever heard of and if they have they can't pronounce the name," he said. "I am sure a few people are scratching their heads asking why did this group end up with it as opposed to one of the big national companies."

"Whenever they did the background on our Houston company, they saw that I closed a $1.2 billion transaction with the Shell-Deer Park refinery sale to a partnership composed of Shell and PEMEX and I closed the Houston Center transaction which was a $510 million deal on a group of downtown Houston buildings."

"What it boils down to is the team that is doing all of the work," Vallone said. "Whether you're part of a giant national company or your part of a small company in Boerne, it's still that closing team where all of the interaction takes place."

"Just because you're in a small town doesn't mean you can't perform at big levels. I was happy we had the chance to prove that."

This article was originally published in The Boerne Star on December 2, 2011