Opening Titles & Closing Remarks

When Realtors® and Lenders start asking me if I'm busy, I know what they really want to know. "Are you busy?" usually means "Am I the only one who is not busy? Please tell me so I know it's not just me." Tammy Walker, our Sales V.P., is getting this question a lot lately. We talked about how we s...

A client asked me yesterday "How much FDIC Insurance does your escrow account get?" Wow! Is this a sign of the Apocalypse or what? The quick answer to my client's question is that if the escrow account is set up and administered correctly, then the FDIC will treat each individual closing or escro...

In Indiana, we close and disburse at the closing table, not in Escrow. Most title companies in Indiana and many elsewhere advertise Insured Closings as well as title insurance and other services. But what is an insured closing? It is a broad term that is ripe for misunderstanding. An insured clos...

Intense is the only way to describe the debate in my office last Friday. Intense and full of conviction. And passion! Everyone is deeply passionate about their position on the matter. Intense, full of conviction and passion! It started mid-afternoon. We're all feeling a little on edge. I've been ...

You're going to hear this from me a number of times between now and year-end. If you purchased or are purchasing a new primary residence in Indiana this year, you need to go to the County Auditor's office (after closing) and file for or confirm your Homestead Tax exemption. You may also be eligib...

I want to get back to posting about title issues.  The idea for this post occurred to me several weeks ago and I shelved it. Who could possibly be interested in such a topic? Well, it must be the curse of the dark side or something, because since then we've encountered more mineral rights and oil...

My last post is about knowing what is being measured when reading or hearing media reports about surveys declaring utopia has arrived or Armageddon is upon us. Case in point, the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal contains a story that the foreclosure rate is increasing. I inferred from t...

Each month we are offered a smorgasbord of measures of just how good or bad the "market" is. The S&P® Case Shiller Housing Index, the NAR® reports of changes in the median price of housing sales and of sales of existing homes, and the RealtyTrac® Foreclosure index are widely published. More recen...

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight recently released 2nd Quarter 2008 survey supports my own suspicions that the Indiana housing market is doing much better than other parts of the nation. Here are the changes in year over year housing prices for the separate Indiana Metropolitan ...

Does the Fannie and Freddie bailout now mean that every loan they have or make is guaranteed by the U.S. Treasury? Does the bailout eliminate investor risk in mortgages? Dan Green thinks so. You can read about it here: http://www.themortgagereports.com/. Being a glass is half full kind of guy, I ...