We know that buyers and lenders should have a title search done (most often through a title insurer) before entering transactions in order to assure themselves good title.  But it's not the ONLY thing they should do in terms of title.

Title professionals in Franklin County, Ohio have been caught off guard by the recently elected recorder's new practice of "unrecording" deeds that have what the recorders' office believes to be "fatal errors".

New York will soon join 47 other states requiring title agents to be licensed under a provision contained in the state’s 2014-15 budget, a move that has been endorsed by the New York State Land Title Association (NYSLTA).

Housing data provider RealtyTrac has released its U.S. Foreclosure Market Report for March and the first quarter of 2014, which shows foreclosure filings down 23 percent from a year ago in March.  Foreclosure filings in the first quarter were the fewest since the second quarter of 2007.

When a debtor conveys real estate with the intent to avoid their creditors' efforts to collect on their debts, oftentimes the creditor can enlist the courts to have the conveyance voided.  But intent is hard to directly prove, so the law helps out by providing a list of red flags that tend to show a fraudulent conveyance.  An innocent debtor can run into problems if their conveyance raises some of these red flags, as a recent Georgia case shows.

A title insurer was informed about a lawsuit in which the plaintiff was seeking to have a deed of trust it had insured invalidated as a forgery.  But the insured bank under the policy had not been named in the lawsuit.  Furthermore, the policy stated that the title insurer only had to take action upon written request of its insured, and its insured had not been the one to inform them of the lawsuit.  What was the insurer required to do, if anything?

A bank disingenuously sliced and diced Ohio's foreclosure statute to get a second chance at bidding at a foreclosure sale, which it had forgotten to attend the first time around, and the court fell for it, throwing the buyer at the foreclosure sale under the bus in the process.  Would an appeals court see through the bank's deception?