Last quarter, we announced our initiative to expand our title plants from 500 to 1500.
By building an additional 1000 plants our databases will cover approximately 80% of all real estate transactions.
We've made significant progress since our launch, we are currently up to 850 plants and are on track to achieve our goal of 1500 by the year end.
Plus we are now capturing virtually every data point on 7.5 million documents per month up than 5 million last quarter, data that can be leveraged to automate title underwriting decisions and geographic areas that were previously done manually.
To support our technology initiatives, we acquired a 130 product managers, designers and engineers so far this year.
Since 2019, we've invested $260 million in venture-backed companies in the proptech ecosystem.
We earned $2.72 per diluted share.
Included in this quarter's results were $0.59 of net realized investment gains.
Excluding these gains, we earned $2.13 per diluted share.
Revenue in our Title segment was $2.1 billion, up 44% compared with the same quarter of 2020 due to the strength of the purchase and commercial markets.
Purchase revenue was up 66% driven by a 43% increase in the number of closed orders coupled with a 16% increase in the average revenue per order.
Commercial revenue was $223 million, a 104% increase over last year.
Large transactions have resumed as we closed 54 transactions in the U.S. with premiums greater than $250,000, up from just 12 last year.
Refinance revenue declined 23% relative to last year as the rise in mortgage rates that occurred during the first quarter put pressure on second quarter closings.
On the agency side, revenue was a record $905 million, up 51% from last year.
Given the reporting lag in agent revenues of approximately 1 quarter, we are experiencing a surge in remittances related to Q1 economic activity.
Our information and other revenues were $298 million, up 31% relative to last year.
Investment income within the Title Insurance and services segment was $47 million, up 10%, primarily due to higher interest income from the company's warehouse lending business and higher average balances in the company's investment portfolio, partially offset by the impact of the decline in short-term interest rates on the company's tax deferred property exchange and escrow balances.
In our Title segment, pre-tax margin was a record 19.1% excluding the impact of net realized investment gains, pre-tax margin was 15.3%.
Pretax earnings totaled $20 million, up from $7 million in 2020.
Revenue in our home warranty business totaled $108 million, up 10% compared with last year.
Pretax income in our home warranty business was $14 million, a decline of 13% in part due to elevated claims expense.
Our property and casualty business generated a pre-tax income of $6 million this quarter.
Included in this quarter's results were the $12 million gain on the sale of our agency operations.
At the end of the second quarter our policies in force have declined by 22% at the beginning of the year and we expect a 70% decline by year-end.
The effective tax rate for the quarter was 24% in line with our normalized tax rate.
Cash flow from operations was $253 million in the second quarter, down from $344 million in the prior year, due primarily to the deferral of estimated tax payments allowed by taxing authorities during the height of pandemic in 2020.
With respect to this information security incident, as we previously disclosed, we reached a settlement with the SEC for $487,616.
As Dennis mentioned in his remarks, we've invested a total of $260 million in venture-backed companies.
This quarter we recorded a $44 million gain related to our investment side, a real estate SaaS company that serves real estate agents, teams and brokers.
Our largest investment has been in OfferPad an iBuyer that is now party to a merger with the SPAC, which recently announced that the value of the aggregate equity consideration to be paid to OfferPad stockholders and option holders will be equal to $2.25 billion.
At that valuation, we would expect to book a gain of approximately $237 million on our $85 million equity investment.

Summary:
We earned $2.72 per diluted share.