The economy is improving every day:  just watch the nightly news and a plethora of politicos will feed you this fact.  They'll fastidiously tell you this, never waivering from the message and always avoiding the “d” word. After all, “it's only a recession and a minor one at that.” The media, in it's very next report will say that this recession is the worst since the Great Depression, as an expression of Orwellian double-speak.

The reality of the markets is, that everyone needs to stop listening to politicians and start looking out for themselves and their own homes. Charity begins at home, so stop volunteering your pocket-book to local, state and federal agencies who squander taxes left and right. Do not buy into the argument that taxes must be raised when people are out of jobs, businesses are closing and homes are being foreclosed upon in record numbers.

People seem overly-willing to allow government to take more of their hard-earned dollars, instead of less, during these harsh times.

The smart family needs to hunker down and reign in spending.

Here are a dozen suggestions for surviving the roller coaster ride of pseudo-recovery that the masses are buying into:

Property title claims, and the process of title abstracting are based on the mechanism of "notice." Ownership, mortgage interest, and claim of lien can only attach to a property when there is notice to a person. This notice can take the form of actual notice and constructive notice. Properly executed documents are the most common form of constructive notice, under the premise that a document recorded in the land records is available for any interested party to make them self aware of.

It has been a while since my last blog about our enhanced listing services.  I still get a lot of questions about how it works and what the benefits are, so I thought it would be a good idea to explain it again.  Over the course of the past year, our directory was searched an average of more than 14,000 times each month, proving that Source of Title is still the premier source for finding independent title professionals.  But, without an enhanced listing, many of them may not be finding your company.

I found this concise article earlier and think it makes some good points. This is written by acclaimed author and speaker: Grant Cordone.

Recessions cause the economy to contract and make it more difficult for people to do business. What we are experiencing at this time cause people to respond in a similar manner, reacting to economic contraction with more contraction. While it may be a normal reaction to contract at this time it only guarantees that you will be smaller when this is all over.

These are the biggest mistakes individuals and companies can make at this time:

AIG plans to pay another round of employee bonuses worth about $100 MILLION DOLLARS

When it comes to privacy in the digital age, the individual's right to privacy is constantly a matter of remaining proverbially silent in a shouting world. Our technology shouts out to the world as our watches auto-synch to the world standard beacons, our phones and pagers track our location like OJ in a bronco, car dealers listen in on our radios as we approach their lots, our home IP address allows websites to log our location and time of each visit, text and email are tracable through the net, our credit/debit place us at the scene of each transaction, and even our paper money is tracked on private websites.

As anyone can see, short of becoming Amish, silence is not an option in modern society. Silence just became harder with the annoucnement of new technology by Google which holds the potential for locating wwireless users geographically.

Maryland County tries to assess transfer taxes on the forgiven debt in  a short sale

The title errors from the housing bubble starting to become evident. In two cases this month, the issue of broken chains of mortgage assignments are creating questionable ownership rights. The routine practice of securitized loan instruments created a number of methods of transferring mortgagee interests, some without specific recording. Nominee trustees and mechanisms such as the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) were intended to streamline the process. Instead, these methods created confusion and ambiguity. It is becoming more common that a foreclosing lender realizes that their interests is not clear in the land records, and rushes to record an assignment to them self at the last minute. In some cases it comes too late.

Just this week, in Massachusetts, a judge invalidated a foreclosure because the assignment was recorded after the foreclosure was commenced. Any reasonably informed title abstractor would know this would be a problem, but some attorney went ahead with it anyway. "First in time, first in right" is one of the basic premises of records priority in searching.

There are certainly variations in custom from state to state, and even county to county.  In some locations, the seller is required to furnish an owner's policy to the buyer, in others the buyer pays for it if owner's coverage is desired.  I have always wondered about this difference and I thought it would be worth taking a closer look to see which makes more sense.  Add a comment and let us know what the custom is in your area and what you think about it.

I was recently given a copy of an affidavit that raised an interesting topic for discussion.  Where a deed is signed by an attorney-in-fact, but no power of attorney was ever recorded, can the matter be cleared up by an affidavit?  This post will focus on Ohio law, but other states most likely have similar laws in this regard.  I'd be interested in hearing thoughts from anyone on what they think and how your state laws may deal with the situation.