Six Weeks to Complete a Title Search in New York State?

[John Franczyk]

I'm in the midwest and am helping my sister and mother to manage the sale of my mom's house in western New York State. I understand that New York is a "lawyer closing state" and that the lawyers are intimately involved in every step of the process and that they generate an abstract of title before the closing, which apparently goes back to the time of the French-Indian Wars.

The lawyer we retained to handle the sale will charge $750 for the abstract search and claims it will take 6 weeks to complete. We can expedite that process if we can come up with the abstract from when my mom bought the house in 2004, but that abstract is in the hands of another attorney who helped my mom when she bought the house, and he isn't returning calls.

We'll pay the $750. I'm just curious as to why a title search takes 6 weeks. I can get a title turned around in 3 days in the midwest, and that's without a rush.  What kind of monopoly have the lawyers in New York State created here?