Opening Titles & Closing Remarks

Sorry short sellers, not GM, Ford and Chrysler. No, I'm talking about title insurance.  LandAmerica, the nation's 3rd largest title insurance group (Lawyers Title, Commonwealth Title and lesser titles) agreed last Friday to be acquired by Fidelity, the nation's 2nd largest title insurance group (...

At John Bethell Title Company, Inc., we pride ourselves on staying Ahead of the Curve.  Anticipating the unexpected. Keeping our clients well informed. Well guys, I blew it on this one. I should have got this message out much sooner. I failed. I am profoundly sorry.  Fortunately, as I post this, ...

Getting deals closed is increasingly frustrating. The current dynamic nature of loan programs and guidelines is making everything more difficult. The lightening rod for all of this is often the loan underwriter. I'll admit that more than once I've wondered why something is a problem on a deal whe...

Getting deals closed is increasingly frustrating. The current dynamic nature of loan programs and guidelines is making everything more difficult. The lightening rod for all of this is often the loan underwriter. I'll admit that more than once I've wondered why something is a problem on a deal whe...

We just finished compiling our monthly statistical package for September. A recent network upgrade put us behind the curve for a week or so, but we're caught up now. Our property records data base shows that through September, the sale market in Monroe County continues steady and is off about 20%...

There's a right way and a wrong way to buy on Land Contract, a popular form of seller financing in the Midwest. Here are four mistakes that I see all too frequently in Land Contract sales. Mistake No. 1: Not recording the Land Contract or a Memorandum of Land Contract in the public records. Recor...

For a city our size, Bloom® is a magazine of remarkable quality. Bloom® is the passion of editor and publisher Malcolm Abrams. Malcolm, a quintessential New Yorker with years of publishing experience, visited Bloomington a few years ago, fell in love with our city, relocated and decided to publis...

The reputations of many ethical, hard working Mortgage Brokers, Realtors®, Appraisers, Title Companies and others have been tarnished as a result of the actions of an unscrupulous few over the last 5 years. It's guilt by association. Are we about to experience deja vu all over again? The other ni...

This post deals with Insured Closings from the seller's side. Earlier this month I posted about Insured Closings from a buyer's perspective; what is and is not actually insured. To quickly recap, an Insured Closing is when the title insurance underwriter (not the local agent, but the actual insur...

We just completed a major upgrade to our network server. Completed as in your loan approval is completed except for these 43 stips; upgrade; as in 3 years this will work much better than what you're using now; network, as in that virtual binary ether of bits, bytes and bps that revolutionized the...