A stone’s throw from campus and just off of student-friendly Franklin Street, it’s easy to assume that Investor Title Co., on the corner of Columbia and Rosemary streets, is just another aging university building.

But the headquarters of Investors Title, although traditional, are no such relic. The lobby is inviting and warm, complete with a live and brightly decorated Christmas tree to signify the upcoming holidays. Flames crackle in the fireplace.

Around the corner is the office of CEO and founder J. Allen Fine, in his 46th year with the company. This room, dominated by a stately wooden desk, is where Fine has run Investors Title since 1990, when the headquarters moved here from two previous Chapel Hill locations that have since been lost to the area’s development — a -parking deck on Rosemary and what became Carolina Square apartments on Franklin.

“We’re very quiet here” Fine said, with traffic whirring past quietly through the window behind him. “We don’t make much noise.”

Fine, who grew up about 70 miles west of Chapel Hill, came to town as an undergraduate. After graduating from UNC-CH with his MBA, Fine founded Investors Title in 1972, anticipating the growth of the secondary mortgage market.

“I was convinced that deposits would not continue to support the growing demand for mortgage loans and that mortgage lenders would begin to sell loans in the secondary market,” Fine told Business North Carolina in 2008. Fine figured there’d be a demand for some kind of protection on those loans for sale.

The rest, as they say, is history, which Fine can reflect on from his corner office with a view of Columbia Street, nearly 50 years later.

“It’s sort of like a savings account.” Fine said. “You know it’s increasing, but, if you keep increasing year over year over year, it just keeps adding up. One day you step back and you’re a very, very significant company.”

“Significant” is a sufficient description — since Fine founded the company, Investors Title has expanded into over 25 states, including more than 20 branches within North Carolina, Fine said. Last year, the company ranked second in Triangle Business Journal’s list of best-run public companies in the state.

“About 12 years after we started the company, we became number one (title insurer) in North Carolina in terms of market share,” he said. “And we’ve been number one ever since.”

It wasn’t always easy, Fine said, especially in the first few years.

“When we started out, the competitors, because they were already in the market, tried to use regulatory (and) political influence to hamper our competition with them. That was something I didn’t anticipate, and it took us about 20 years to overcome that,” he said. “I think we had grown to the point after that 20 years where they sorta gave up on that.”

Based in an area known for its pharmaceutical firms and tech companies, Investors Title may not have the glitz or glamour of some other companies in the Research Triangle. It’s something the company has sometimes had to market around, Fine said.

“When you start to talk about title insurance, people’s eyes glaze over.” Fine said. “Title insurance is what we do, but we look at ourselves as a growth company. That’s what appeals to readers, who may not know anything about title insurance, or even care anything about it, because you might only buy it one time in your life. But everybody can relate to a growth company.”

Investors Title’s matters of business may not be flashy, but its earnings numbers are. The company reported a record-breaking increase in third-quarter earnings for 2018, up 79.7 percent from the year prior. Last month, Triangle Business Journal ranked the company as the 14th most valuable in the Triangle, on the same list as such giants Red Hat and First Citizens Bancshares.

What has helped the company stay so stable over so many years? Fine is able to point to a few keys of success.

“I’ve learned you have to have a good marketing plan and you have to reinforce that with your people and continue to reinforce it until it becomes a part of the culture, until it becomes natural.” Fine said, pointing to the company’s logo, the Canada goose, as a symbol of the innovative spirit that now permeates Investors Title’s company culture and marketing materials.

“We enter (a new) market and we figure out how we can do a better job than people already in the market are doing.” he said. “Once we figure that out, we may have to convince potential customers that we can do and will do better.”

Fine also emphasizes the quality of the service in providing what is essentially a very standard product.

‘The coverage is all the same, so the only thing you have to sell is the better service.” Fine smiled. “We’ve been very good at that.”

Aside from doing good business, Fine believes in the value of dedicated employees.

“Part of the reason we’re still very successful is getting good people and providing positions for them so they can advance within the company and stay with the company a long period of time,” Fine said. “We have a lot of people that have really grown with the company and love what they do.”

One employee retiring later this month was first hired by Fine in 1974, he said.

Fine could likely retire his CEO position if he so wished — last year he earned $1.22 million in total compensation — and hand over the reins to one of his two sons, Jim and Morris Fine, who each hold other executive positions within the company. But Fine brought up no such plans.

“I love the work.” he said of his role. “I love the people.”

Fine has done what many business majors at his alma mater can only dream of: build a company from scratch into something long-lasting and prosperous. When asked about his advice for young businessmen and women, Fine harkens back to his early days of running the company.

“I think, well, I know, that you’ve got to want to do it.” Fine said. “You’ve got to have a good marketing plan and you’ve got to stick with it, even when times are discouraging … (Some people) look at it and say, ‘This is too hard,’ and quit. But you just have to stick with it.”

And stick with it Fine has, for 46 years and what seems like could be another 46 more, on the busy street corner where his brick building sits.

There, college students stroll by on their way to class, past the headquarters of Fine’s quietly grown title insurance empire, where the flames will crackle in the fireplace for many years to come.