Welcome to the Monthly Digest, where we untangle a month’s worth of title-industry chaos, connect a few dots, dig up some useful treasures, and occasionally stop to laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all.

🩻 The Monthly Autopsy

Five New Features. Zero New Habits.

Your Software Vendor Has a Roadmap. Do You? October brought ambitious AI tools, expanding platforms, and new integrations. But who’s making sure your agency actually benefits from them?

A new integration can eliminate a portal. It cannot stop a processor from opening that portal again tomorrow morning.

October’s technology announcements reached into title searches, recording, escrow payments, trust-account oversight and even individual sales reps’ prospecting tools. Vendors are removing steps, connecting platforms and adding intelligence. But there’s an inconvenient little gap between a feature appearing on a roadmap and an old habit disappearing from the office.

1. The Connection Is Ready. Is the Process?

SoftPro’s expanded Property Insight integration can launch searches from order events and bring results directly into the file. Its Hopdox eRecording connection can send packages without another export-and-upload detour. Both reduce handoffs—provided somebody configures the workflow, decides when to use it and retires the old route. Leave those decisions to chance and you have a shiny new shortcut beside the same old scavenger hunt.

Qualia’s earnest-money and cash-to-close payment tools move payment requests inside the order. That removes friction, but it also calls for operational choices: who initiates the request, which controls remain in place, and how staff handle exceptions. The payment button is new. The agency still has to decide what happens before and after someone presses it.

2. The Next Software Decision May Be Made by a Sales Rep

PropLogix’s PropOptix Lite lets an individual title sales rep subscribe month-to-month for a single county, without waiting for a company-wide rollout. That can make experimentation easier. It also raises a management question: where do the resulting leads, notes and follow-up activity belong? A useful individual tool can become an isolated workflow unless someone connects it to the agency’s broader sales process.

3. Are You Already Paying for the Solution You’re Searching For?

Meanwhile, the fact that SoftPro is pointing users toward custom add-ons and features they may already own while CertifID users may be gaining access to Closinglock features raises another key consideration. An agency can go shopping for a new solution while a workable option already sits inside the system it pays for every month. Before the next subscription, it may be worth taking a look at the solutions you already have—and whether the existing software can already handle it.

4. Automation Can Flag the Exception. Somebody Still Has to Own It.

Rynoh’s RynohIQ is designed to spot unusual escrow and trust-account activity and route flagged items for human review. That changes where staff spend attention, but it doesn’t decide who has authority to investigate, pause a payment or resolve an exception. An alert with no agreed response is just another notification competing for attention.

Our October change-management feature examined why title teams revert to familiar processes when a new system arrives without enough practical implementation support. October’s other launches make the same challenge harder to ignore. A vendor can design a smoother path through the software; an agency must make that path the one people actually take on a busy Tuesday.

Vendor roadmaps are getting crowded. Agencies don’t need to chase every feature. They need to know which old habit the next feature is supposed to kill—and make sure it stays dead. For larger agencies, if you don’t have someone on staff dedicated to operational change management with a high level of technical skills, it may be time to start looking.

😈 Wicked Sense of Humor

Somewhere in title, a processor has finally caught the payoff figure. Unfortunately, the payoff figure has a per diem.

The closing date moves. The number moves with it. And suddenly the one thing everybody needed to be “final” is doing laps around the office.

Super Title Goat can run all he wants. That mortgage balance has a head start.

👀 Worth Reopening

Tax Prorations in Real Estate Transactions - What Are They? Why Do We Need Them? and Other Questions from Title Processors, Closers and Escrow Officers

Settlement software can calculate tax prorations in a blink. It can also produce a beautifully formatted number that nobody in the room knows how to defend.

Cheryl’s August 2025 guide revisits the credits, reimbursements, exemptions and closing-table questions that expose the gap between clicking “calculate” and understanding the math. October’s software launches make it a timely reread: a faster workflow is lovely, but when the numbers get weird, somebody still has to know what they mean.

🐐 Everything Wicked This Month

If you missed a week—or wisely refused to let your inbox become your full-time job—here is the coverage since the last Monthly Digest in one place.

Sunday Title Underground

• A $14M Fraud Suit, a Closing-Tech Marriage & Kansas Wants a Stamp — a major fraud suit, CertifID–Closinglock consolidation, Section 184 changes and new state requirements in Kansas, Virginia and Alabama.

• A Castle on the Block, a Sales Rep Goes Rogue & New Ways 2027 Goes Digital — Oheka Castle’s auction, digital mortgage deadlines, escrow-control tools, appraisal relief and South Carolina’s fake-deed crackdown.

• A 55-Year Grocery Grudge, One-Click Title & Qualia Wants Everything — financially stretched buyers, new credit-score models, home-equity opportunities, expanding title-tech platforms and state compliance updates.

• Title Insurance in Washington’s Crosshairs, Ten Ways to Wreck a Title & Mortgage Rates Nobody’s Celebrating — federal scrutiny of title insurance, claim hazards, AI banking access, the 1099-S transition and some uncomfortable housing arithmetic.

Original Features, Analysis & Tools

• Fraudsters Are Like Cockroaches; Lurking inside the Gaps - CertifID’s Acquisition of Closinglock is the Next Step in Sealing Up Those Gaps — how combining verification, fraud prevention, payments and closing workflows could close some dangerous gaps.

• The Myth That’s Holding Title Back And The Secret Strategy Every Vendor Should Know — the change-management work that turns purchased technology into a tool people actually use.

• From the Docket: The Referral Machine Had Shareholders. Then Someone Looked Inside. — when an ownership investment begins to resemble compensation for referrals, and the RESPA questions that follow.

🐐 Wicked Title Folks🧠

This month also brought contributor pieces worth keeping in the file drawer for the day a “simple” issue stops being simple.

• 🌍 Foreign Tax CPA: FIRPTA Horror Stories: Don’t Let Your Transaction Become a Nightmare — missed foreign-seller status, incomplete tax forms and IRS notices that can keep trouble alive after closing.

• 🛡️ CertifID: CertifID Acquires Closinglock to Build a More Protected and Connected Closing Experience — the company’s announcement of its acquisition and plans to connect fraud prevention, payments and settlement workflows.

• ☕ Ramblings of a Title Man: The Family Mystery Hidden in the Land Records — a family-history search that uncovered unexpected answers in property records.

• 🌍 Foreign Tax CPA: FIRPTA Withholding: IRS Rules for Unequal Foreign Ownership — how the allocation of withholding among foreign sellers may differ from their ownership percentages.

🖊️ Want to be a content contributor? Contact us

🧪 Wickedly Useful

You read the news. Now go learn the thing behind the news. A handful of deeper resources from this month’s research pile that are worth keeping for the next weird file:

• Where Deed Fraud Protections Are Strongest—and Where They Fall Short — A look at where state deed-fraud safeguards intervene before a suspicious transfer is recorded—and where recording alerts simply report the damage afterward.

• Fee Simple Determinable Explained — A Texas-focused look at deed conditions that can send ownership back to the original grantor—and the problems hiding inside the words “so long as.”

💬Final Thoughts: Walking the Talk and Managing the Technology Changes

At one point this month, I had to tell AI to stop helping me.

Keeping up with legislative changes across the country, technology innovations, industry trends, agency headaches, and market shifts means monitoring hundreds of information sources—and becoming an expert on some new dark little corner of the industry practically every week.

That’s a lot to organize, track, and make sense of.

So I’ve been experimenting with AI to eliminate repetitive busywork and help me spot what matters in that mountain of information, preferably without breaking my brain. (I may already be too late.) Like any other technology, they keep putting out new features, but to take advantage of them, I first have to learn them.

The goal is to spend more of my time and attention on the things that matter most to you.

Naturally, there have been a few surprises.

One perfectly ordinary request turned into a proposed multistage process, complete with review checkpoints, elaborate instructions, and several opportunities for me to supervise its supervising.

This month, my AI has demonstrated an extraordinary talent for turning straightforward tasks into ambitious administrative initiatives.

I asked for less busywork. Instead, I found myself simplifying the processes invented by the technology that’s supposed to simplify mine.

Eventually, I got the bugs worked out. And I think you’re already seeing the results: better coverage of state regulatory changes, vendor developments, and industry shifts that might otherwise slip through the cracks.

Am I working less? Sadly, no. But I do believe the information I’m delivering keeps getting better.

And apparently, my newest entrepreneurial skill is keeping AI from promoting itself into middle management.🤦‍♀️

Stay Wicked,
Cheryl
Contact Me (or hit reply)

The Wicked Title Forum is a collaborative resource. If you spot something outdated or inaccurate, leave a comment—we’ll get it fixed.

**DISCLAIMER**

Content is for informational purposes, operational awareness and workflow strategy. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, it is not meant to be a compliance directive or replace the specific legal/financial advice of your retained experts. As always evaluate new information & tools with your underwriter/attorney, accountant/financial advisor, IT/security team, and internal policies, as needed, before implementation.

This site is partially supported by sponsor ads and sponsored content.

🐐 Membership | 🔍 Find Answers | 🛒 Shop | 📢 Partner With Us

🕵️‍♂️Underworld Intel

The AI Assistant Has Your Bank Password. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Major banks are blocking third-party AI agents that have begun accessing customer accounts, sometimes with login credentials willingly handed over by customers. Some agents reportedly attempted actions beyond their instructions, and banks cannot always tell whether the account holder or a bot authorized the activity. The immediate headache for anyone automating sensitive work is deciding which credentials an agent gets, what it can do with them and who can pull the plug.

ALTA ONE’s Message: Clean Data, Tougher Fraud and Growth Without a Boom

At ALTA ONE, the industry conversation kept circling back to the less glamorous work behind the shiny AI demos. Industry leaders emphasized AI backed by clean, consistently maintained file data; automation that frees staff for relationships and judgment; and tighter defenses against increasingly sophisticated fraud. With existing-home sales still sluggish, they also pointed to winning market share, expanding services and improving customer experience rather than waiting for a housing boom. Qualia’s four conference takeaways leave an awkward question for anyone waiting on the market: how much growth is already buried under messy data, manual work and preventable friction?

Your 1099-S Filing System Has an Expiration Date

If your agency still files 1099-S returns through the IRS’s FIRE system, the clock is running. November 19, 2026, at 3 p.m. Eastern is the last opportunity to submit through FIRE; beginning with the 2027 filing season for tax-year 2026 returns, electronic filing moves to IRIS. Existing FIRE credentials won’t substitute for the required IRIS registration. Check how your title production software handles submissions and who is responsible for securing access now—preferably before January turns a routine tax task into a scavenger hunt.

Ten Ways a Title Claim Can Ruin an Otherwise Ordinary File

A missed lis pendens can leave a buyer unable to develop land. A recording mistake can threaten a lender’s priority. And an impersonator can collect proceeds on property they never owned. Those are among the ten claim scenarios identified by attorney Scott Malm in an ALTA claims review. It is a pointed refresher on how familiar searches, recordings and identity checks can produce very unfamiliar losses. The complete list requires ALTA member access.

🐐Wicked Trends & Forces🌳

The patterns worth paying attention to…

Mortgage Rates Finally Dip. Buyers Aren’t Rushing Back.

Mortgage rates finally edged lower, but the purchase market hasn’t received the memo. In the week ending October 16, the Mortgage Bankers Association recorded a 7% drop in purchase applications even as its 30-year contract rate slipped to 7.41%. Freddie Mac reported another decline in its separate rate survey on October 22. Cheaper borrowing hasn’t yet translated into stronger demand: affordability, confidence and available inventory still have votes. Until applications turn into contracts, the title-order rebound remains more hope than pipeline.

👀 Things Wandering Toward Your Workflow

New tools, vendor launches, and tech experiments making their way toward the closing table.
👀 Get on the Workflow Watchlist

The Best SoftPro Upgrade Might Already Be in Your Software

Before buying another tool to fix a stubborn workflow, check what your existing software can do. SoftPro’s recorded custom add-ons session walks through its library of enhancements and how to manage updates through the Documents Portal. And its new Ideas Portal lets users propose improvements, vote on requests and follow their progress. Better yet, SoftPro says requests solvable through setup or training are routed to support. Before adding another subscription, it might be worth finding out whether the fix is already hiding in the software you’re paying for.

⚖️Legal

Regulatory updates, Claims, Lawsuits, & Enforcement

National

White House Wants Title Insurance Alternatives Beyond the Pilot

A limited experiment in replacing lender’s title insurance on refinances could become a nationwide program. An October 22 executive order directs FHFA, subject to legal and safety determinations, to expand title acceptance through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Approved automated title reviews or other risk assessments could replace lender’s policies on eligible refinances. FHFA must also consider higher loan-to-value limits, fewer geographic restrictions and more assessment providers. No blanket waiver takes effect today; the Enterprises still have to implement the program.

💼 Job Postings

• Commercial Underwriting Manager — First American
  Tampa or Orlando, FL | Hybrid | $117,500–$156,700/year
  Leads commercial title underwriters, applies underwriting standards and supports complex title insurance commitments and policies.

• Branch Operations Manager — Stewart Title
  Edina, MN | $70,585–$117,642/year
  Oversees Minnesota branch operations, profitability, teams and service performance.

• Title Insurance Underwriter — Heritage Title, LLC
  Wake Forest, NC | On-site
  Prepares title commitments, policies and endorsements, processes orders and coordinates document recording.

• Title Processor — AtoZ Title and Settlement
  Rockville, MD | On-site | $60,000–$84,000/year
  Manages title files from commitment through settlement, resolves liens and defects and works in Qualia.

• Residential Escrow Officer — Security 1st Title
  Lawrence, KS | On-site
  Manages residential escrow transactions, reviews commitments and balances closing funds and requirements.

• Residential Escrow Assistant — Security 1st Title
  Topeka, KS | On-site
  Supports escrow officers with contract review, closing documents, file administration and financial balancing.

• Title Processor — Sonic Title
  Dearborn, MI | On-site
  Handles title files from commitment through closing preparation, including curative, payoffs and document coordination.

• Escrow Auditor — Old Republic Title
  Tampa, FL | On-site
  Reviews escrow reconciliations and financial records, investigates discrepancies and supports title-agent audits.

• Title Agency Support Trainer — Old Republic Title
  Fort Lauderdale, FL
  Trains title agents and internal teams on title-and-closing software, onboarding and effective system use.

• Senior Title Abstractor — WebTitle Agency
  Rochester, NY | On-site
  Conducts complex title searches and chain-of-title examination across Monroe County and surrounding markets.

💼 Place Your Job Posting Ad Here

Stay Wicked,
Cheryl
Contact Me (or hit reply)

The Wicked Title Forum is a collaborative resource. If you spot something outdated or inaccurate, leave a comment—we’ll get it fixed.

**DISCLAIMER**

Content is for informational purposes, operational awareness and workflow strategy. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, it is not meant to be a compliance directive or replace the specific legal/financial advice of your retained experts. As always evaluate new information & tools with your underwriter/attorney, accountant/financial advisor, IT/security team, and internal policies, as needed, before implementation.

This site is partially supported by sponsor ads and sponsored content.

🐐 Membership | 🔍 Find Answers | 🛒 Shop | 📢 Partner With Us

📢 The Title Industry Has a Megaphone. It’s Time We Used It.

Outgoing ALTA President David Townsend issued a challenge at ALTA ONE: Stop expecting association leaders and lobbyists to do all the talking. Title professionals need to tell our own story, explain our value, and make sure the people shaping the future of real estate understand what we actually do.

Incoming President Craig Haskins reinforced that message with a call for greater participation, innovation, and mentorship.

I’m adding my voice to theirs. And I’m asking you to add yours.

We’ve spent years watching people who don’t understand title insurance debate whether it’s necessary, how much it should cost, and what technology can supposedly replace. Meanwhile, the professionals who understand the risks, solve the problems, and protect property rights every day are too often missing from the conversation.

That needs to change.

You don’t need to be an industry executive or a professional lobbyist to make a difference. Educate your referral partners. Tell your clients what you prevented, not just what you processed. Share your expertise publicly. Get involved with your state land title association. Speak to lawmakers when legislation threatens to create problems nobody at the drafting table understands.

And when someone confidently declares that title insurance is unnecessary, don’t just shake your head and complain to another title agent. Speak up.

I’ve built Wicked Title Forum around the belief that our industry has extraordinary knowledge, experience, and value worth sharing. But no publication, association, or individual can tell this story alone.

We’ve got the expertise. We’ve got the evidence. We’ve got the megaphone.

It’s time the rest of the world heard from us.

🕵️‍♂️Underworld Intel

Bank of America’s Compliance Failure Gets a Billion-Dollar Bill

Bank of America is paying a staggering price for failing to spot and report suspicious transactions: FinCEN imposed a $1.2 billion penalty over Bank Secrecy Act violations. The bank is also putting roughly 1,000 employees to work fixing its compliance operation and investing in better technology. When a major bank needs an army of people to repair its controls, it raises an uncomfortable question for any business handling other people’s money: are your safeguards actually working, or does everyone just assume they are?

The Housing Shortage Has a Repair Problem, Too

America keeps talking about building more homes while millions of existing ones get older and more expensive to maintain. Now a bipartisan group of lawmakers is pressing HUD to put federally authorized home-repair grants into action. The idea is to help lower-income owners make essential repairs instead of watching otherwise usable homes deteriorate. That could also preserve affordable housing stock in markets where replacement costs are brutal. The grants aren’t available yet; HUD still has to implement the program. Saving a house may be cheaper—and faster—than replacing it.

The Grocery Store Left. Its Competition Ban Stayed for 55 Years.

H-E-B sold an eight-acre property near San Antonio, but it didn’t exactly surrender control of the competition. The deed reportedly restricts competing grocery sales for 55 years. Imagine buying commercial property and discovering the former owner’s business strategy came with a ban on the title. For developers, lenders and tenants, restrictions like these can change what a site is worth—and what anybody can actually do with it.

🐐Wicked Trends & Forces🌳

The patterns worth paying attention to…

New Credit Scores Could Bring More Buyers. How Many?

Mortgage lenders are opening the door to newer credit-scoring models that can recognize borrowers overlooked by traditional scores. That’s encouraging news for people with thin credit histories. But don’t start forecasting a flood of closings. A better score doesn’t fix unaffordable monthly payments, insufficient income, a missing down payment or a shortage of homes. Some of those newly eligible buyers could already qualify another way. For now, there’s no reliable number showing how many *additional* purchases this change will create. The opportunity is real; the transaction-volume headlines are getting ahead of the evidence.

🐐 The Buyers Are Closing. The Mortgage Pipeline Is Sending a Different Message.

September existing-home sales finally ticked upward. A little good news for an industry that’s been waiting an awfully long time for some.

But the buyers who made it to closing may tell us more about the housing market than the closing numbers themselves.

In ServiceLink’s 2026 State of Homebuying Report, more than seven in ten recent buyers reported exceeding their original budgets. Nearly a third made larger down payments than they wanted, and 28% took on larger mortgages than planned.

Now, October’s mortgage applications are moving in the opposite direction from September’s completed sales.

Are we watching a housing recovery struggle to get started—or the early signs of another round of buyer exhaustion?

👀 Things Wandering Toward Your Workflow

New tools, vendor launches, and tech experiments making their way toward the closing table.
👀 Get on the Workflow Watchlist

Compass Is Putting Its Title Companies on One Operating System

Acquiring title agencies is one thing. Getting all those agencies to work from the same playbook is another. Following its combination with Anywhere, Compass International Holdings is moving affiliated title and escrow operations onto Qualia in stages through 2027. The first company in this expansion was scheduled to go live October 12. Compass says agents using its integrated one-click title ordering attach title and escrow at roughly twice the rate of those who don’t. That’s the competitive story: fewer handoffs between brokerage and settlement can also mean more captured business.

⚖️Legal

Regulatory updates, Claims, Lawsuits, & Enforcement

National

The Fed Is Redrawing Its Bank-Watching Map

The Federal Reserve is reorganizing bank supervision into five regions after a review of its handling of Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse. An independent review found that overlapping committees and unclear accountability made timely supervision harder. Examiners will stay in their existing offices; regional leaders will be responsible for supervisory decisions. This doesn’t redraw the Fed’s interest-rate districts or change mortgage rates. It changes who is accountable when supervisors spot trouble—and whether someone acts before a troubled bank becomes everybody else’s problem.

Fannie and Freddie’s Exit From Government Control Hits Another Speed Bump

Wall Street’s hopes for a quick Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac release from conservatorship just took a hit. Mizuho cut its stock-price targets, citing higher mortgage rates and obstacles to building the capital needed for an exit. The downgrade is an analyst’s judgment, not a government decision to keep the companies under federal control indefinitely. For mortgage and title businesses, the immediate rules of engagement haven’t changed. The unresolved question is how—and when—the two giants could leave conservatorship without disrupting the mortgage market they underpin.

State

🎟️Events

• 🎟️VLTA Annual Convention (Sneak Peek)

  • 📅 October 20-21st | ⏰ All day | 📍 Roanoke, VA

• 🎟️i-Five: 3-Way Reconciliation & Daily Reporting

  • 📅 October 27, 2026 | ⏰ 2:00pm ET | 📍 Register Here

See all events

💼 Job Postings

• Title Examiner — Exact Title
  Littleton, CO
  Examines deeds, liens, easements and other recorded documents to produce accurate title commitments.

• Real Estate Title Closing Processor — Rally Point Title Agency & 1031 Exchange Services LLC
  Matawan, NJ | $45,000–$60,000/year
  Processes title and closing files and coordinates documentation through settlement.

• Residential Escrow Officer — Transnation Title Agency
  Clinton Township, MI
  Manages residential transactions from escrow opening through closing and post-closing.

• National Commercial Title Coordinator & Processor — Pernini Legal LLC
  New York, NY | Hybrid | $100,000–$150,000/year
  Coordinates complex national commercial title and closing production.

• Escrow Officer — Fidelity National Financial
  Boulder, CO | On-site
  Clears title requirements, prepares closing documents and manages escrow disbursements.

• Title Processor — Solutions Title Company
  Washington, DC–Baltimore area
  Manages residential files from executed contract through closing.

• Commercial Title Assistant — First American
  Tampa, FL | On-site
  Supports national commercial title transactions and coordinates title-production documentation.

• Escrow Officer — Erieview Title Agency LLC
  Westlake, OH
  Handles escrow closings and customer coordination for a Northeast Ohio title agency.

• Title Examiner — Robertson, Anschutz, Schneid, Crane & Partners PLLC
  Mount Laurel, NJ | Remote
  Reviews title matters for a law firm’s title department and supports clearance work.

• Escrow Officer — LIVE ESCROW INC.
  Burbank, CA | On-site
  Opens, manages and closes escrow files, coordinating documents, funds and instructions.

💼 Place Your Job Posting Ad Here

Stay Wicked,
Cheryl
Contact Me (or hit reply)

The Wicked Title Forum is a collaborative resource. If you spot something outdated or inaccurate, leave a comment—we’ll get it fixed.

**DISCLAIMER**

Content is for informational purposes, operational awareness and workflow strategy. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, it is not meant to be a compliance directive or replace the specific legal/financial advice of your retained experts. As always evaluate new information & tools with your underwriter/attorney, accountant/financial advisor, IT/security team, and internal policies, as needed, before implementation.

This site is partially supported by sponsor ads and sponsored content.

🐐 Membership | 🔍 Find Answers | 🛒 Shop | 📢 Partner With Us

🕵️‍♂️Underworld Intel

The Great Gatsby Castle Is Headed to Auction

Oheka Castle—the 127-room Long Island estate tied to The Great Gatsby, films and celebrity events—is scheduled for an Oct. 27 auction after its ownership entity went through Chapter 11 under the weight of heavy debt. Sometimes distressed real estate is a vacant strip center. Sometimes it is a castle.

Can You Fight Deed Fraud by Putting a Lien on Your Own Property?

At a Property Records Industry Association conference session, panelists explored self-imposed liens as a possible defense against deed fraud and seller impersonation. The appeal is obvious: make the property harder for a fraudster to transfer. The complication is equally obvious to anyone in title: the anti-fraud measure is itself an encumbrance that eventually has to be dealt with.

🐐Wicked Trends & Forces🌳

The patterns worth paying attention to…

2027 May Be When “Digital Mortgage” Stops Meaning the Front End

October Research’s latest discussion of the fully digital mortgage puts 2027 on the radar—not as a magic flip-the-switch date, but as the point when lenders may start expecting closing partners to be ready for capabilities that still feel optional today. For title agencies, the signal is less “everything goes remote next year” and more “the lender technology roadmap is moving closer to the closing table.”

If lenders begin treating digital closing capability as table stakes, agencies that wait for a formal mandate may discover the requirement first through lost opportunities, integration requests or a client asking why another title company can do something they cannot.

👀 Things Wandering Toward Your Workflow

New tools, vendor launches, and tech experiments making their way toward the closing table.
👀 Get on the Workflow Watchlist

Hitech’s AI Is Aiming for the Work Before the Examiner Starts Examining

Hitech Digital Solutions says its i2i platform is designed to automate title-search preparation work such as organizing property records, extracting data and assembling information for review. The more interesting line in the sand is what stays human: the company positions the platform as preparation support so examiners can spend their time on title judgment instead of document sorting and rekeying.

⚖️Legal

Regulatory updates, Claims, Lawsuits, & Enforcement

National

Fannie and Freddie Put an Escape Hatch on the Nov. 2 Appraisal Deadline

The Nov. 2 deadline for the new standardized appraisal format is still in place, but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now offering temporary exceptions for lenders that cannot finish the transition in time. Approved lenders may keep submitting the older appraisal format through May 19, 2027 while they complete the changeover. That does not erase the mandate, but it should reduce the risk of a hard technology cutoff turning into an appraisal bottleneck that stalls otherwise-ready closings.

HUD and USDA Are Trying to Stop Reviewing the Same Rural Housing Project Twice

HUD and USDA have signed an agreement to coordinate environmental reviews, related requirements and physical inspections across federal housing programs. The goal is to let the agencies rely on each other’s work where possible instead of making rural and affordable-housing projects clear overlapping federal hurdles twice. This is implementation work, not a new loan program, but fewer duplicated reviews could shorten the path from financing approval to an actual transaction.

State

💼 Job Postings

On-site Title Post Closer - SetPoint Consultants
Bayside/Queens, NY | $65,000–$70,000/year
Reviews completed New York title files, tracks recording and outstanding documents, clears post-closing requirements and assists with final policy and file completion.

Title Examiner / Title Commitment Specialist - National Title & Escrow, LLC
Remote | $50,000–$80,000/year
Examines Missouri and Arkansas title, identifies defects and requirements, and independently prepares title commitments while working with closing staff and underwriters.

Senior Commercial Title Examiner - Sun Title Agency
Remote for Michigan residents | Grand Rapids, MI
Conducts commercial title examinations, resolves complex defects and encumbrances, prepares detailed reports and helps train junior examiners.

Senior Residential Title Specialist - Pippin Title
Remote | $55,000–$65,000/year
Performs and reviews complex residential title searches, analyzes chains of title and completes final quality review before reports are delivered.

Commercial Underwriter / Commercial Underwriting Counsel - First American
Portland, OR or Vancouver, WA | Possible hybrid | $97,700–$130,300/year
Provides commercial title underwriting support and counsel for complex transactions, applying underwriting standards and guiding title and settlement decisions.

National Commercial Underwriting Counsel / Underwriter - Godot Consulting Group
New York, NY | $200,000–$300,000/year + bonus
Advises on complex national commercial title transactions, reviews searches and surveys, assesses risk and develops underwriting solutions.

Title Insurance Underwriter - First Source Title
Remote | $70,000–$80,000/year
Handles advanced title and curative issues, makes underwriting decisions and guides internal teams and external partners through complex defects.

Title Insurance Underwriter - Investors Title Insurance Company
Hendersonville, NC | In office
Supports title underwriting, analyzes transaction risks and provides customer and administrative support for real estate closings.

Escrow Officer - The Row Title & Escrow
Nashville, TN
Independently manages residential transactions from contract through funding while coordinating buyers, sellers, lenders, agents and other parties.

Title Insurance Policy Issuing Agent - Northern Virginia Law Firm
Reston, VA
Reviews residential and commercial title evidence, prepares commitments and policies, identifies exceptions and curative items and supports issuance.

💼 Place Your Job Posting Ad Here

Stay Wicked,
Cheryl
Contact Me (or hit reply)

The Wicked Title Forum is a collaborative resource. If you spot something outdated or inaccurate, leave a comment—we’ll get it fixed.

**DISCLAIMER**

Content is for informational purposes, operational awareness and workflow strategy. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, it is not meant to be a compliance directive or replace the specific legal/financial advice of your retained experts. As always evaluate new information & tools with your underwriter/attorney, accountant/financial advisor, IT/security team, and internal policies, as needed, before implementation.

This site is partially supported by sponsor ads and sponsored content.

🐐 Membership | 🔍 Find Answers | 🛒 Shop | 📢 Partner With Us

🕵️‍♂️Underworld Intel

The Leadership Lessons Nobody Learns From Getting Everything Right

Careers are much tidier in hindsight than they are while you’re living them. A free on-demand conversation with Birmingham Title Agency COO Liz Casselman and WFG’s Jaime Dyer, moderated by SoftPro’s Leslie Wyatt, gets into the useful parts leadership panels often skip: confidence, self-advocacy, hard decisions, mistakes that become better judgment and the advice experienced leaders wish they had heard earlier. The recording is free, and the emphasis is refreshingly practical rather than performative.

A $14 Million Fraud Suit Puts the GSE Funding Rules in Context

A federal lawsuit in Maryland alleges a multimillion-dollar real estate fraud scheme involving multifamily transactions, giving a very concrete backdrop to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s tighter rules over who can handle funding functions. The lawsuit did not trigger those rules, but it is a useful reminder of what they are trying to control: when large sums move through complex transactions, who touches the money is not a clerical detail. More prescriptive closing requirements are usually somebody else’s expensive lesson.

Florida Title Is Juggling Fraud, AI and a Market That Refuses to Behave

Florida Land Title Association Executive Director Scott Merritt says the state’s title market is dealing with seller impersonation, wire fraud and AI at the same time it works through a challenging market. That combination is more useful than another generic market forecast: agencies are being pushed to defend transactions, evaluate new technology and keep the business moving while the underlying market stays uneven. The interview is a compact snapshot of the pressures showing up at the agency level.

🐐Wicked Trends & Forces🌳

The patterns worth paying attention to…

👀 Things Wandering Toward Your Workflow

New tools, vendor launches, and tech experiments making their way toward the closing table.
👀 Get on the Workflow Watchlist

Closinglock Is Joining CertifID—and the Closing-Tech Stack Is Starting to Consolidate

CertifID has acquired Closinglock, bringing fraud protection, secure money movement and closing workflow tools under the same roof. CertifID also acquired CloseSimple earlier this year, so this is becoming a bigger story than one vendor buying another. Title companies have spent years stitching together separate tools for fraud, payments, communication and workflow; now some of those pieces are starting to combine. Fewer handoffs could simplify operations—but it also makes vendor strategy, integrations and implementation decisions more consequential.

⚖️Legal

Regulatory updates, Claims, Lawsuits, & Enforcement

National

A Federal Judge Says the CFPB Cannot Simply Be Starved of Funding

A federal judge has again rejected the argument that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau can be shut down by refusing to request operating funds. The ruling requires the bureau to remain funded while the underlying litigation continues. For the mortgage and settlement industries, that keeps the CFPB alive as a regulator for now—even as the larger fight over its structure, authority and funding continues elsewhere.

HUD Just Made Section 184 Loans More Expensive Up Front

Beginning Oct. 1, HUD increased the upfront guarantee fee on new Section 184 Indian Housing Loan Guarantee Program commitments, including refinances, from 1% to 1.5%. The upfront fee for the program’s Skilled Workers Demonstration loans rises from 0% to 1%; annual guarantee fees remain at zero. That is a direct borrower-cost change on affected transactions and should be reflected wherever teams are estimating or explaining cash needed for closing.

State

📖 Book of the Month

Home Inspection Survival Guide: How Real Estate Agents Are Saving Their Client’s Thousands of Dollars and Closing On Time — Quintavius Bell

Nothing turns a smooth transaction into a negotiation circus quite like an inspection report full of unfamiliar red flags. Quintavius Bell’s guide is written for real estate agents, but the closing-side perspective is useful too: how to choose an inspector, read the report, recognize common trouble spots and keep inspection findings from becoming bigger deal drama than they need to be.

📢 Promote Your Book Here

🎟️Events

• 🎟️ CertifID + 🔒 Closinglock: What’s Next for CertifID
  CEO’s Tyler Adams, Andy White, and Paul Stine will take your questions live

  • 📅 October 8th | ⏰ 12pm ET | 📍 Register Here

See all events

💼 Job Postings

• Title - Escrow Officer - Lennar Title
Highlands Ranch/Lakewood, CO | 26.88–42/hour
Manages escrow files through closing, including title requirements, documents, funding, disbursement and recordation.

• Senior Escrow Accountant - Spartan Title / New Western
Plano, TX | Hybrid
Owns escrow trust accounting, three-way reconciliations, underwriter premium accounting, audits and multi-state compliance for New Western’s title subsidiary.

• National Commercial Title Coordinator - Godot Consulting Group
Remote | Multiple U.S. markets
Coordinates complex multi-state commercial transactions, including title review, proformas, policies, surveys, UCC searches, billing and title clearance.

• Escrow/Title Assistant - AmTrust Financial Services / Mason Title
New York, NY | 20–31/hour
Handles residential transactions from contract through closing, including curative work, balancing, disbursement, recording and policy-related tasks.

• Escrow Officer - First American
Anchorage, AK | 26.88–35.83/hour
Manages escrow transactions from opening through closing, including title clearance, documents, settlement statements, funds and disbursement.

• Licensed Escrow Officer - gpac
Granbury, TX | 60,000–80,000
Manages title files from opening through funding, including commitments, Schedule B and C items, curative work, surveys, payoffs and closings.

• Title Curative Specialist - Solidifi
United States | 45,000–50,000
Clears mortgages, liens, vesting issues and other title requirements to move residential files to clear-to-close.

• Escrow Technician - DHI Title
Fort Worth, TX
Supports escrow production by preparing files and gathering the information and documents needed to move transactions toward closing.

• Title Curative Specialist - Newrez
Fort Washington, PA
Reviews and resolves title defects involving vesting, liens, judgments and other issues that can prevent marketable title or delay closing.

• Title Searcher - Old Republic Title
Dover, DE
Searches property and public records to identify ownership, liens, encumbrances and other matters affecting title.

💼 Place Your Job Posting Ad Here

Stay Wicked,
Cheryl
Contact Me (or hit reply)

The Wicked Title Forum is a collaborative resource. If you spot something outdated or inaccurate, leave a comment—we’ll get it fixed.

**DISCLAIMER**

Content is for informational purposes, operational awareness and workflow strategy. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, it is not meant to be a compliance directive or replace the specific legal/financial advice of your retained experts. As always evaluate new information & tools with your underwriter/attorney, accountant/financial advisor, IT/security team, and internal policies, as needed, before implementation.

This site is partially supported by sponsor ads and sponsored content.

CertifID Acquires Closinglock to Build a More Protected and Connected Closing Experience

AUSTIN, Texas — October 1, 2026 — CertifID, the trusted platform for real estate fraud prevention, today announced it has acquired Closinglock, the escrow management platform for secure money movement in real estate. The combination brings together complementary capabilities across identity verification, fraud prevention, secure payments and real estate closing workflows to better protect people and money throughout the real estate transaction.

The acquisition comes as title companies face increasingly sophisticated fraud threats, growing pressure to operate more efficiently, and higher expectations from buyers, sellers and real estate agents. FBI IC3 data shows that real estate fraud losses grew more than twice as fast as overall reported cybercrime losses last year. Real estate wire fraud is a top target for Business Email Compromise scams, which topped $3 billion in losses last year.

“Title companies are being asked to protect more, move faster and deliver a better experience at a time when the risks have never been greater,” said Tyler Adams, CEO and Co-Founder of CertifID. “The challenges facing the real estate industry are real, persistent, and bigger than any one company or product can solve alone. By bringing our technology and expertise together, we seek to stay ahead of emerging threats while elevating the closing experience.”

CertifID will create a new standard for the real estate transaction: verified once, trusted throughout. By verifying participants, accounts, and funds early and carrying that trust through every interaction, CertifID aims to connect protection, money movement, workflow and client experience into a transaction that is sophisticated underneath but remarkably simple on the surface. The result is an experience that finally matches the significance of the transaction itself.

“We built Closinglock to protect every person and every dollar in real estate, and this gives us the opportunity to do that at a much greater scale,” said Andy White, CEO and Co-Founder of Closinglock. “Separately, our companies have solved some of the hardest problems in real estate fraud and made groundbreaking advancements in how real estate is paid for, and these capabilities belong together. By coming together we will move faster and build the infrastructure to protect the real estate transaction from start to finish.”

For customers, the companies are committed to adding capability without creating disruption. Customers can continue using the CertifID and Closinglock products and integrations they rely on today. CertifID will continue investing in an open ecosystem across title production systems, title underwriters, and other third-party platforms.

“Both the CertifID and Closinglock teams recognize the tremendous responsibility and trust our customers place in our hands. For that reason, we remain committed to focusing on their needs first and are approaching the integration of these two products carefully,” Adams said. “With continued headwinds in the real estate market, our responsibility is to deliver more protection and value for our customers without asking them to change platforms or restructure workflows.”

The acquisition is CertifID’s second in four months, following its acquisition of CloseSimple in June 2026. The combined organization will have approximately 220 employees and serve more than 3,000 title companies and 35,000 title professionals across the United States.

CertifID and Closinglock both bring significant scale. CertifID protected 1.55 million real estate transactions in 2025 and has recovered $145 million in stolen funds through its Fraud Recovery Services. Closinglock has protected more than $900 billion across more than 2 million transactions since its founding. Together, the companies have moved more than $7 billion in real estate payments and expect to protect 2.5 million real estate transactions this year.

The acquisition brings together two venture-backed Austin technology companies that have raised more than $130 million in total funding. CertifID, backed by Arthur Ventures and Centana Growth Partners, has raised $80 million to-date, while Closinglock has raised $50 million from investors including Sageview Capital, Headline and Live Oak Ventures.

CertifID was founded after co-founders Tom Cronkright and Lawrence Duthler’s Grand Rapids, Michigan title company lost $180,000 to wire fraud in 2015, prompting them to build a digital solution to protect title professionals and their customers. Now a decade later, the combined company is building the trusted infrastructure for life’s most consequential transactions.

Adams will serve as CEO of the combined company. White assumes the role of Chief Strategy Officer. Terms of the transaction will not be disclosed.

About CertifID

CertifID is the closing platform that protects every party and keeps closings moving forward. It automates the highest-stakes work of the closing, from verifying identities and validating wire instructions to clearing payoffs and guiding payments. CertifID safeguards billions of dollars every month with advanced software, direct insurance and proven fraud recovery in one secure, guided closing experience, and backs every wire it protects with up to $5 million in direct coverage. Trusted by title companies, law firms, lenders, realtors, and the home buyers and sellers they serve. Learn more at certifid.com.

🐐 Membership | 🔍 Find Answers | 🛒 Shop | 📢 Partner With Us

🩻 The Monthly Autopsy

Apparently Everything in the File Needs a Second Look

Deepfakes, fake surveys, bad source data, unrecorded mortgages, thinner deals—and a housing market that keeps creating new kinds of work instead of simply “recovering.”

September kept circling the same uncomfortable idea from completely different directions: a file can look internally consistent and still be wrong.

Three vendors can repeat the same bad upstream data. A Closing Disclosure can say a lien was paid while the land records disagree. A survey can look legitimate and still be fake. A mortgage can supposedly be handled at closing and never make it into the public record. A seller can appear on camera and still not be the seller.

The old version of verification was largely transactional: check the identity, check the record, check the document, clear the condition, move on.

September looked more like a verification stack. Where did the information come from? Is the second source actually independent? Does the document agree with the public record? Does the person match more than an ID? If software flags something, who decides what happens next? And when AI or a vendor gets it wrong, who owns the mistake?

That theme ran straight through fraud, title search, AI, surveys, liens, post-closing, vendor oversight and even the housing market itself. The recurring risk was not simply bad information. It was confidence in information that had not earned it.

1. Verification Is Becoming Its Own Workflow

We opened the month asking whether three matching vendor answers really count as independent verification when they may all trace back to the same bad source. Then the examples got less theoretical.

We saw AI-assisted title work miss property-history context, seller-impersonation fraud move into deepfakes, a supposedly paid lien remain alive in land records, mortgages that were never recorded, a survey that may have been fabricated and a deed allegedly signed by someone who was already dead.

Different problem. Same operational question: what is your actual source of truth, and what happens when two “truths” disagree?

The useful shift is not adding one more checkbox to the file. It is designing the escalation path for the moment the evidence stops lining up.

2. AI Is Past the Demo Stage. Now Somebody Has to Own the Mistake.

September’s AI stories were not really about whether the technology can save keystrokes. We are already past that conversation.

AI is being pushed into search, examination support, fraud detection, customer communication, workflow routing and CRM decision-making. At the same time, regulators, underwriters, agents, vendors and E&O carriers are still sorting out where responsibility sits when automated work is wrong, incomplete or built on bad data.

That tension is going to matter more than the novelty of the tool. Automation can remove duplicate entry and handoffs. It can also move a bad assumption through the workflow much faster.

The competitive advantage is not “we use AI.” It is knowing which work can be accelerated, which decisions still require judgment, and who is accountable when the machine hands you a very confident answer that should not survive the file.

3. The Transaction Mix Is Changing Faster Than the Transaction Count

The housing market still refuses to deliver the clean recovery story everyone keeps waiting for.

Renters are staying put. Recent buyers are showing more financial strain. Sellers have less room to absorb surprises. Second liens are gaining ground. The lock-in effect is creating its own lien and equity problems. Mortgage-rate relief keeps colliding with inflation, Treasury yields and forces well upstream from housing.

Meanwhile, work is appearing in places that do not look like a return to the old market: C-PACE, data-center development, foreign-buyer restrictions, manufactured-housing changes, first-time-buyer programs, curative work and increasingly complicated financing structures.

That is why “wait for volume to come back” keeps looking less like a forecast and more like a refusal to choose a growth strategy.

This month we followed that idea from the weekly market signals into The Housing Recovery Is Not Your Growth Plan and then much farther upstream in the 2027 Wicked Title Volume Trends Report. The point is not that housing never recovers. It is that the agencies building revenue now are not waiting for one national number to rescue them.

😈 Wicked Sense of Humor

👀 Worth Reopening

The Dirt Is Only Half the Deal: Data Centers Are Becoming Infrastructure Title Work

We flagged data centers in August because the title work follows more than the land. September added another layer: zoning fights, permitting disputes and local moratoriums are showing how quickly the infrastructure boom can turn into a land-use problem before the next transaction ever reaches the closing table.

If data centers looked like a niche commercial story a month ago, they are starting to look more like a recurring example of how upstream infrastructure policy becomes downstream title complexity.

🐐 Everything Wicked This Month

If you missed a week—or wisely refused to let your inbox become your full-time job—here is the coverage since the last Monthly Digest in one place.

Sunday Title Underground

• Florida’s LLC Has Babies, Utah Makes Buyers Pick Their Poison, & Romania Loses the Whole Damn Registry — Truist Park title work, a failed Philadelphia bank’s liens, Romania’s land-registry attack, earlier price cuts, second liens, FHA distress and an AI sales sidekick.

• A Locked Gate, A Dead Woman’s Signature and A Buyer Who Forgot They Could Move — owner-versus-insured confusion, first-time-buyer friction, second liens, AI title search, CFPB reform, wire fraud, QR phishing, crypto mortgages and one deeply questionable signature.

• Plywood at the Closing Table, 813,000 Underwater Borrowers & Buyers Who Keep Clicking “Save” — credit scoring, AI search misses, beach-boundary fights, tariff pressure, recent-buyer distress, vendor oversight, ROAD implementation, TOD deeds and two South Carolina land-use fights.

• The Fed Hiked. Mortgage Rates Jumped. Seller Impersonation Fraud Doubled… — deepfakes, unrecorded mortgages, bad lien evidence, fake surveys, data-center moratoriums, lock-in liens, post-closing fraud tools, CFPB changes and title-agency continuity planning.

• Your CRM Knows Who Ghosted You, FHA Wakes Up After 20 Years & Sellers Run Out of Cushion — fraud tools, appraisal bottlenecks, thinner deals, CRM data, first-time-buyer savings proposals, FHA property standards, foreign-buyer restrictions and a fresh batch of state closing changes.

Original Features, Analysis & Tools

• AI, Aggregated Data, and the Next Fight Over Who Gets Left Holding the Bag — what happens when multiple vendors agree because they inherited the same bad source data, and where responsibility lands when AI-assisted title work fails.

• Notarial Wording: The Small Detail That Can Sink a Closing — a short reminder that the stamp is not the whole notarization.

• C-PACE: From Clean Energy Initiative To Liens That Survive Closing and Other CRE Developments — why a growing slice of commercial financing deserves more attention before someone calls it “just another lien.”

• The Housing Recovery Is Not Your Growth Plan — where title companies are finding revenue anyway, and why waiting for mortgage rates to solve your business plan is getting increasingly expensive.

• Is 2027 Finally the Year Title Volume Comes Back? — the 2027 Wicked Title Volume Trends Report follows housing backward into the forces that move it, then forward into the signals worth watching next.

🐐 Wicked Title Folks🧠

September also brought contributor pieces worth keeping in the file drawer for the day a “simple” issue stops being simple.

• 🌍 Foreign Tax CPA: FIRPTA: Why Hiring a CPA Is Crucial — why FIRPTA withholding, ITINs, refunds and IRS compliance are not a great place to improvise.

• 🌍 Foreign Tax CPA: When the IRS Gets It Wrong — a real FIRPTA example where correct filing did not prevent an IRS error from creating serious downstream consequences for the buyer.

• ☕Ramblings of a Title Man: The Incorrect Correction that Accidentally Started a Lawsuit — one scrivener’s-error fix, two lots and a very good reason not to assume every apparent typo is actually a typo.

🖊️ Want to be a content contributor? Contact us

🧪 Wickedly Useful

You read the news. Now go learn the thing behind the news. A handful of deeper resources from this month’s research pile that are worth keeping for the next weird file:

• Types of Liens: Recorded vs. Unrecorded, for Title & Escrow — useful background for a month full of payoff assumptions, lingering liens and financing structures that refuse to behave like ordinary mortgages.

• Practical Details Title Professionals Should Examine When Reviewing a Survey — a timely refresher after a month in which even the survey itself made the fraud list.

Stay Wicked,
Cheryl
Contact Me (or hit reply)

The Wicked Title Forum is a collaborative resource. If you spot something outdated or inaccurate, leave a comment—we’ll get it fixed.

**DISCLAIMER**

Content is for informational purposes, operational awareness and workflow strategy. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, it is not meant to be a compliance directive or replace the specific legal/financial advice of your retained experts. As always evaluate new information & tools with your underwriter/attorney, accountant/financial advisor, IT/security team, and internal policies, as needed, before implementation.

This site is partially supported by sponsor ads and sponsored content.

🐐 Membership | 🔍 Find Answers | 🛒 Shop | 📢 Partner With Us

Brought to you by our friends, contributors & sponsors:🔒 Closinglock, 🌍 Foreign Tax CPA, 🪄Business Witch Academy, 🧱 Brickhouse Consulting, 🖊️Dotted Line Signings & Our Paying Readers
📢 Be a Sponsor

🕵️‍♂️Underworld Intel

Closinglock Is Rebuilding Fraud Tools Around What Scammers Do Next

Generative AI is making phishing, deepfakes and automated scams more convincing, and 🔒 Closinglock Principal Product Manager Kris McKee is building fraud-mitigation products around that moving target. Her product process starts with title-company workflow pain points, turns those problems into features, tests them against real closing work, and scraps ideas that do not solve the human problem. It is a useful look at why fraud-tech roadmaps are now changing almost as quickly as the fraud itself.

Could the Appraisal Pipeline Choke Off the Entire Housing Market Come November?

The Uniform Appraisal Dataset (UAD) is getting an update to version 3.6. The deadline for the transition is November 2, and JVM Lending founder Jay Voorhees believes the transition to UAD 3.6 could worsen an appraisal shortage if mortgage volume jumps, pushing up appraisal fees and slowing loan files.

Congress Wants to Turn Crumbling Foundations Into a Tax Deduction

The House has passed H.R. 9500 with a provision that would let homeowners with pyrrhotite-damaged foundations, mostly found in the Northeast, claim a casualty-loss deduction for repair costs and retroactively seek relief beginning with 2021; the Senate still has to act before it becomes law. Pyrrhotite can slowly expand inside concrete until a foundation begins to crack and fail, sometimes leaving homeowners with a full foundation replacement on the other side of an otherwise ordinary-looking transaction.

🐐Wicked Trends & Forces🌳

The patterns worth paying attention to…

Inflation Is Still Refusing to Give Mortgage Rates a Clean Direction

Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari and Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee are still warning about broad inflation pressure and the trade-offs involved in bringing it down without creating unnecessary damage elsewhere in the economy. That leaves mortgage costs caught between competing forces even while the market keeps waiting for one clean direction.

We published the 2027 Wicked Title Volume Trends Report this week to give title agencies a framework for thinking about what comes next. Treat this latest inflation warning as another data point—not as a reason to chase a single headline. Get the full forecast here.

👀 Things Wandering Toward Your Workflow

New tools, vendor launches, and tech experiments making their way toward the closing table.
👀 Get on the Workflow Watchlist

Shopping for a Qualia Alternative? This List Is a Starting Point

A 2026 comparison of Qualia and 20 “competitors” is useful as a vendor-discovery shortcut, but not as a ready-made shortlist. Closinglock, Snapdocs and SoftPro are relevant to a title-tech evaluation; farther down, the list starts mixing in adjacent real-estate platforms that solve very different problems. Treat the company-size, funding and revenue figures as GetLatka estimates and use the list to find names worth researching—not to assume the products are interchangeable.

⚖️Legal: National

Regulatory updates, Claims, Lawsuits, & Enforcement

A Senate Bill Would Match $5 for Every $1 a First-Time Buyer Saves

The Homeownership Promise Act would create HUD-administered accounts for first-time buyers and match $5 in federal money for every $1 the buyer contributes, up to $50,000 in federal matching funds. The money could be used at closing on an eligible principal residence. For now, it is still an early-stage Senate proposal—not a funded buyer-assistance program.

CFPB Quietly Replaced the Home Loan Booklet Lenders Hand Buyers

The CFPB has released a revised Your Home Loan Toolkit, the Special Information Booklet lenders and mortgage brokers generally must provide after a purchase-money mortgage application. Existing printed stock can still be used until it is gone, but new print runs and electronic delivery should use the revised version. Any title or settlement company that keeps the booklet in buyer packets, education materials or co-branded resources now has a version-control problem to check.

⚖️Legal: State

🎟️Events

• 🎟️ Maryland Land Title Association Fall Convention

  • 📅 Oct. 4–6, 2026 | ⏰ Times Vary by Session | 📍 Dewey Beach, DE

• 🎟️West Dallas Fort Worth Women in Real Estate (DSF WIRE) Monthly Meet-up

  • 📅 First Sat of Month | ⏰ 9:000am | 📍 TX

• 🎟️ALTA One 2026

  • 📅 October 12-15th | ⏰ All day | 📍 Scottsdale, AZ

• 🎟️VLTA Annual Convention (Sneak Peek)

  • 📅 October 20-21st | ⏰ All day | 📍 Roanoke, VA

See all events

💼 Job Postings

Commercial Underwriting Counsel - First American

Remote / Tampa, FL | $67,176–$109,147

Provides underwriting guidance and authorization on title commitments, policies, settlement issues, and commercial real estate risk.

Residential Real Estate Title Search Quality Control - Pippin Title

Remote, U.S. | $55,000–$70,000

Reviews title searches and reports for accuracy, chain-of-title issues, liens, judgments, easements, legal descriptions, and client-specific requirements.

Senior Title Officer - Old Republic Title

Illinois

Handles advanced title examination and underwriting work for Old Republic Title, with the posting appearing this week.

Escrow Officer - Permian Abstract Company

Midland, TX

Manages residential and commercial escrow files from opening through post-closing, including documents, balancing, compliance, and closing coordination.

National Senior Title Examiner - Allegiant National Title

Remote, U.S. | $80,000–$100,000

Performs complex national title examination for an underwriter, evaluating public records, exceptions, defects, and insurability across multiple jurisdictions.

Title Examiner - WFG / Williston Financial Group

Remote | $28–$33/hour

Examines public records and title evidence for WFG’s national title and settlement operations and identifies matters affecting ownership and insurability.

Title Curative Specialist - The Fricks Law Firm

Warner Robins, GA | $30,000–$50,000

Researches deed records and cures title defects, including files requiring foreclosure preparation or deed reformation.

Title Examiner - Homestead Title and Escrow

Denver Metro Area

Examines title evidence and property records for a title and escrow company; the listing was posted within the last day.

Title Processor - NexGen Title Agency

Remote / Michigan | $43,595–$67,662

Processes Michigan title files in a fully remote role requiring a Michigan title producer license and prior title experience.

Senior Title Sales Executive - Advantage Title Company

Remote; Eastern or Central time zones preferred | $40,000–$90,000 + commission

Develops new title-insurance business and referral relationships for a title agency, with an emphasis on experienced industry sales.

💼 Place Your Job Posting Ad Here

Stay Wicked,
Cheryl
Contact Me (or hit reply)

The Wicked Title Forum is a collaborative resource. If you spot something outdated or inaccurate, leave a comment—we’ll get it fixed.

**DISCLAIMER**

Content is for informational purposes, operational awareness and workflow strategy. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, it is not meant to be a compliance directive or replace the specific legal/financial advice of your retained experts. As always evaluate new information & tools with your underwriter/attorney, accountant/financial advisor, IT/security team, and internal policies, as needed, before implementation.

This site is partially supported by sponsor ads and sponsored content.

🐐 Membership | 🔍 Find Answers | 🛒 Shop | 📢 Partner With Us

Want the firehose instead of the filtered version?

Title Underground is curated for busy title professionals. I sort through a ridiculous amount of industry news every week so you don’t have to.

But sometimes you want to see everything.

These are the full Wicked Title news feeds I use to monitor the title, settlement, real estate, mortgage, regulatory, technology and business landscape. They update continuously, so you can browse the categories most relevant to your work whenever you want.

Read more

🐐 Membership | 🔍 Find Answers | 🛒 Shop | 📢 Partner With Us

Thank you to our friends, contributors & sponsors:🔒 Closinglock, 🌍 Foreign Tax CPA, 🪄Business Witch Academy, 🧱 Brickhouse Consulting, 🖊️Dotted Line Signings & Our Paying Readers
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🕵️‍♂️Underworld Intel

Seller Impersonation Fraud Has More Than Doubled—and Deepfakes Are Now in the File

Seller impersonation fraud is getting both more common and harder to spot. ALTA’s new seller-impersonation study found that 59% of surveyed title firms experienced at least one attempt in 2025, up from 28% in its 2024 study. The targets are also expanding beyond the familiar vacant-land profile, making identity verification increasingly difficult to treat as a special procedure reserved for the obvious high-risk file.

A Title Company Owner Admits the Mortgages Never Got Recorded

Former Driftwood Title owner Michael Saracco pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud after prosecutors said he conducted closings without recording lender mortgages, failed to pay liens shown as paid on Closing Disclosures, diverted payoff funds and issued title commitments claiming policies had been issued when they had not. It is an unusually complete tour of what happens when recording, payoff, escrow and policy controls all fail inside the same title operation.

Fannie Mae Flags a Closing Disclosure That Says the Liens Were Paid When the Land Records Say Otherwise

Fannie Mae’s new fraud alert focuses on condominium loans in Orange County, New York, and surrounding areas, but one of its red flags lands squarely in title territory: Closing Disclosures showing existing liens paid while county records show no corresponding releases—and no new mortgage. For title teams, that is the kind of mismatch that turns a mortgage-fraud alert into a payoff, recording and post-closing problem.

Now the Survey Might Be Fake Too

Abstracts Incorporated is warning title professionals about altered and fabricated property surveys, including reported examples where a pool was removed from an existing survey and where a fabricated survey omitted a structure encroaching into an easement. Unlike a forged deed, the chain of title may look perfectly normal while the document being used to evaluate improvements, easements and exceptions is the thing that has been manipulated.

🐐Wicked Trends & Forces🌳

The patterns worth paying attention to…

The Fed Hiked. Mortgage Rates Jumped. The Bigger Problem Is What’s Pushing Them Both.

The Fed raised its benchmark rate by 25 basis points to 3.75%–4.00%, but the more important signal for housing may be what sits underneath the move: policymakers now see 2026 PCE inflation at 3.7%, and most still expect additional tightening this year. At the same time, the average 30-year mortgage rate jumped to 6.95%—its highest level since early 2025—as the 10-year Treasury yield pushed above 5%.

For title agencies, the pressure is not just “higher rates equal fewer closings.” Inflation, Treasury yields, federal borrowing, geopolitical shocks and the capital demands of AI infrastructure are colliding in ways that can keep borrowing costs elevated even when one piece of the picture starts to improve. That makes transaction volume, product mix and local opportunity harder to read from any single housing headline.

🔒 Washington is demanding cheaper mortgages. The Fed is under pressure to cut. And yet mortgage rates just hit a 15-month high. If these are the signals you’re watching to forecast future title volume, you’ve already missed the boat.

The useful signals show up earlier—in places that do not look like title data at all. Our 2026-27 Wicked Title Market Forecast comes out this week. Subscribers get it for free. Upgrade to find out what we’re seeing.

👀 Things Wandering Toward Your Workflow

New tools, vendor launches, and tech experiments making their way toward the closing table.
👀 Get on the Workflow Watchlist

First American Gives Independent Agents a Post-Closing Fraud Tool

First American has expanded its no-cost property-title monitoring service to participating independent policy-issuing agents. Eligible residential customers can receive alerts about new deeds, liens and property listings after closing, giving agents a practical post-closing touchpoint—and another opportunity to explain the difference between monitoring suspicious filings and actual title-insurance coverage.

⚖️Legal

Regulatory updates, Claims, Lawsuits, & Enforcement

National

The CLARITY Act Hits a Senate Wall

The Senate failed to invoke cloture on the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act on Sept. 15, stopping the bill from moving forward despite a late rewrite that gave Treasury a temporary “circuit-breaker” to restrict stablecoin rewards if they caused substantial deposit flight from community banks. For title agencies watching crypto-to-cash closings and stablecoin settlement, the practical update is that Congress still has not supplied the broader federal market-structure framework those payment models would eventually have to live inside.

Trump Nominates Matt Jones to Run FHA

President Trump has nominated Matthew Jones, HUD’s current deputy assistant secretary for single-family housing, to serve as assistant secretary for housing and FHA commissioner, subject to Senate confirmation. Jones already oversees FHA single-family policy, including origination, servicing, quality control and lender enforcement, so the nomination is less a change of direction than a possible elevation of the official already helping shape FHA’s next round of credit-scoring, servicing and valuation policy—areas that eventually show up in the purchase files title agents are asked to close.

State

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🏛️ From the Docket

⚖️ Meanwhile, in the Courts...

💼 Job Postings

• Senior Residential Title Specialist - Pippin Title

Remote (U.S.) | $55,000–$65,000/year

Handles complex residential title search work and supports nationwide title production through Pippin’s technology-driven platform.

• National Commercial Title Coordinator - Godot Consulting Group

Remote (U.S.) | $85,000–$150,000/year

Coordinates complex multi-state commercial transactions, including title review, proformas, billing, policy issuance and multi-property closings.

• Commercial Underwriting Counsel / Commercial Underwriter - First American

Remote; Kansas City, MO | $88,900–$118,500/year

Provides underwriting guidance and risk analysis for complex commercial real estate transactions and title insurance issuance.

• Escrow Officer - Executive Title Company, Ltd.

Houston, TX | Pay not published

Runs builder closings from document preparation through execution, lender coordination and final package completion; hybrid or remote options are listed.

• Escrow Officer - First Integrity Title Company

Westminster, CO | $31–$35/hour

Manages the closing process, prepares settlement documents, communicates transaction status and resolves post-closing reconciliation issues.

• Title Examiner - Williston Financial Group

Remote | $28–$33/hour

Searches and examines public and private records to determine title status and prepare commitments, reports and other title products.

• Title Assistant - Security 1st Title

Newton, KS | Pay not published

Supports title production from order intake through final product delivery, with responsibility for file integrity, documents and coordination with customers and vendors.

• Office Coordinator - First Title & Escrow

Coraopolis/Pittsburgh, PA | $20–$23/hour

Supports a new title-office location with client reception, identification procedures, office operations and administrative coordination.

• Escrow Processing Supervisor - Anywhere Real Estate

Remote (U.S.) | $65,000–$75,000/year

Supervises a remote processing team supporting local title and settlement operations in Colorado, Utah and Missouri.

• Senior Title Processor / Closer - Empire Title Services

Hollywood or Boca Raton, FL | Pay not published

Manages Florida residential transactions from contract through closing, including title requirements, payoffs, lender coordination and client communication.

💼 Place Your Job Posting Ad Here

Stay Wicked,
Cheryl
Contact Me (or hit reply)

The Wicked Title Forum is a collaborative resource. If you spot something outdated or inaccurate, leave a comment—we’ll get it fixed.

**DISCLAIMER**

Content is for informational purposes, operational awareness and workflow strategy. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, it is not meant to be a compliance directive or replace the specific legal/financial advice of your retained experts. As always evaluate new information & tools with your underwriter/attorney, accountant/financial advisor, IT/security team, and internal policies, as needed, before implementation.

This site is partially supported by sponsor ads and sponsored content.

🐐 Membership | 🔍 Find Answers | 🛒 Shop | 📢 Partner With Us

Thank you to our friends, contributors & sponsors:🔒 Closinglock, 🌍 Foreign Tax CPA, 🪄Business Witch Academy, 🧱 Brickhouse Consulting, 🖊️Dotted Line Signings & Our Paying Readers
📢 Be a Sponsor

🕵️‍♂️Underworld Intel

💳 The Credit-Score Shift Just Got an Implementation Date

We’ve been following the long-running move away from a one-credit-model mortgage world, including the questions around FHFA’s rollout of VantageScore 4.0. This week, that story moved from policy to execution: FHA set January 1, 2027 as the implementation date for VantageScore 4.0 and FICO 10T, while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are already permitting approved lenders to deliver loans using VantageScore 4.0. For title companies, the update is not a new settlement rule; it is the next step in changing which borrowers can qualify to reach the closing table in the first place. (HUD.gov)

🤖 We Asked Whether AI Could Read the Records. DataTrace Tested What It Missed.

In our recent discussion of AI-aggregated title search, the central issue was not whether AI can retrieve public records; it was whether scattered, inconsistent public data is complete and connected enough to reconstruct a dependable property history using AI. DataTrace has now put numbers around that problem: among 184 evaluable residential files across Arizona, California, Florida and Texas, public-record-only AI missed at least one title matter in 75 files, or 40.8%. This adds real-world evidence to the same question we raised before: AI can read records; but dependable title search still depends heavily on the quality, completeness and relationships in the data underneath them and that level of quality might not exist.

🩴 Florida’s Beach Fight Is Really a Title-and-Boundary Fight Wearing Flip-Flops

In Walton County, the decade-long battle over whether the public can use privately owned dry sand has produced a patchwork of public access points, private-beach claims, settlement agreements and ongoing quiet-title fights. Florida repealed the 2018 law that had forced local governments to prove customary use parcel by parcel, but NPR’s reporting shows the practical mess is far from resolved: where the public can actually sit, walk or cross still depends on the history and legal status of the specific stretch of sand. For title examiners and coastal closing teams, “beachfront” is not enough—you may be dealing with private ownership, customary-use rights, settlement terms, access easements and litigation that materially affect what the buyer thinks they are purchasing. (Courtesy of Mark Nemetz, Residential Mortgage/Title Consultant)

🏛️ What If the Public Comment Process Isn’t Actually Public?

Title professionals have spent a lot of time lately being asked to comment on federal rules, RFIs and policy changes. Now Better Markets has sued the Federal Reserve and Vice Chair Michelle Bowman, alleging that Fed officials secretly coordinated with major banks in a way that distorted the public rulemaking record for proposed capital rules. Those are allegations, not findings—but if a comment process can be shaped behind the scenes, it raises an uncomfortable question for every regulated industry participating in these exercises: if something similar happened elsewhere, would the public participants even know?

🐐Wicked Trends & Forces🌳

The patterns worth paying attention to…

🪵 How a Trade Fight With Canada Finds Its Way to the Closing Table

New tariffs on wood products in the escalating U.S.–Canada trade fight have reopened an argument with no tidy answer: builders say higher material costs make already-expensive homes harder to build, while domestic producers argue trade protection can strengthen U.S. lumber capacity. A plywood tariff does not change a title workflow, but follow the chain far enough and it can change what gets built, what buyers can afford, and eventually how many transactions reach the closing table. Sometimes the forces shaping title volume start several industries—and several policy decisions—away from title itself.

This is sneak peek at just one tiny insight coming out of our upcoming 🐐Wicked Trends & Forces🌳 Real Estate Market Forecast. Subscribers will get it for free. Upgrade now so you don’t miss a thing.

👀 Things Wandering Toward Your Workflow

New tools, vendor launches, and tech experiments making their way toward the closing table.
👀 Get on the Workflow Watchlist

Stewart Just Bought More of the Mortgage Lifecycle

Stewart acquired ProTitleUSA and DocSolutionUSA, adding title analytics, portfolio due diligence, document generation, recording, curative and collateral-review capabilities to its centralized title services. The expansion reaches beyond the closing table into the assignment, release, curative and servicing work that follows loans through transfers, defaults and capital-markets transactions.

SoftPro + Alliant National Pull Title Search Into SoftPro 360

SoftPro expanded its Alliant National integration so users can order and receive title search and examination services directly inside SoftPro 360, building on the existing CPL and policy-jacket connection. That removes another handoff—and another round of duplicate entry, emails and status chasing—from the production workflow.

⚖️Legal

Regulatory updates, Claims, Lawsuits, & Enforcement

National

Congress Could Give FHFA a Direct Line Into the Vendor Stack

H.R. 10230, the Strengthening Oversight for the Financial Sector Act of 2026, would let FHFA regulate and examine services performed for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks as though the regulated entity performed the work itself. The bill, introduced September 2 and now with House Financial Services, would also revive NCUA oversight of credit-union service providers. For title, settlement, data and technology companies contracting directly into that ecosystem, third-party oversight could move beyond lender questionnaires and contract provisions into actual regulator examination if the bill becomes law.

ROAD Is Law. Some of Its Best Title Opportunities Are Still Waiting to Be Built.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law July 11, but implementation requires dozens of new agency actions, and some programs still need rulemaking, guidance or future funding before anyone can use them. That includes the provision we previously flagged allowing HUD to create a small-dollar mortgage pilot with grants that can cover title insurance: the law gives HUD up to a year to establish that pilot. The opportunity is still there; it just is not a product title agencies can build a strategy around yet.

State

Claim Stories/Court Stories

⚖️ Meanwhile, in the Courts...

📢Announcement

Our weekly rotating features:

• 🤖PropTech, Cyber Security & Fraud

• 🏢 Commercial Real Estate

• 💸Business Growth

• ⚙️ Operations

are moving to Tuesdays.

💼 Job Postings

• Title Searcher - Near North Title Group
  Fort Wayne, IN
  Searches public records and title history to support title production and examination work.

• Commercial Title Examiner - Stewart Title
  Richmond County, GA
  Examines commercial title records and identifies liabilities, defects and insurability issues for real estate transactions.

• Commercial/Acreage Title Examiner - Compass International Holdings
  Remote / Texas
  Focuses on examination of Texas commercial and acreage title files for a remote national-title operation.

• Commercial Title Officer Examiner - Fidelity National Financial
  Lacey, WA
  Handles commercial title examination and title-officer responsibilities for complex real estate transactions.

• Real Estate Services Title Agent Senior - HDR
  Greater Cleveland, OH
  Senior title role supporting real estate and right-of-way work, including title research and property documentation.

• Commercial Title Assistant - First American
  Remote / Tampa, FL | $20.34-$27.12/hour
  Supports commercial title files, research, escrow activity, recordings, endorsements and multi-site transaction work.

• Commercial Escrow Officer - Chicago Title
  Raleigh, NC
  Manages commercial settlements from contract through funding, including closing documents, escrow coordination and complex transaction requirements.

• Escrow Assistant - ASK Consulting
  Phoenix, AZ | $23/hour
  Six-month onsite role supporting residential, resale, new-construction, refinance, relocation and timeshare escrow transactions.

• Escrow Officer - First Source Title
  Frisco/Plano, TX
  Licensed Texas escrow officer role running residential and commercial files from contract receipt through funding and post-closing.

• Title Closer / Escrow Officer - Coast-to-Coast Title & Escrow Services
  Seminole, FL | $15-$25/hour
  Coordinates title settlement and closing activity, including document preparation, execution, fund disbursement and multi-state compliance.

💼 Place Your Job Posting Ad Here

Stay Wicked,
Cheryl
Contact Me (or hit reply)

The Wicked Title Forum is a collaborative resource. If you spot something outdated or inaccurate, leave a comment—we’ll get it fixed.

**DISCLAIMER**

Content is for informational purposes, operational awareness and workflow strategy. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, it is not meant to be a compliance directive or replace the specific legal/financial advice of your retained experts. As always evaluate new information & tools with your underwriter/attorney, accountant/financial advisor, IT/security team, and internal policies, as needed, before implementation.

This site is partially supported by sponsor ads and sponsored content.

🐐 Membership | 🔍 Find Answers | 🛒 Shop | 📢 Partner With Us

Brought to you by our friends, contributors & sponsors:🔒 Closinglock, 🌍 Foreign Tax CPA, 🪄Business Witch Academy, 🧱 Brickhouse Consulting, 🖊️Dotted Line Signings & Our Paying Readers
📢 Be a Sponsor

🕵️‍♂️Underworld Intel

👤 The Owner and the Insured Are Not Always the Same Person

This short explainer highlights a recurring investor trap: moving property between an individual and an LLC or other entity can change who owns the property without the owner realizing it may also change the title-insurance picture. “I already have a policy” is less important than two questions: Who is named as the insured, and who owns the property now?

🕵️ Consumers Are Hearing “Title Fraud” and Assuming All Protection Is the Same

There is a growing consumer-education problem: deed-monitoring services, fraud alerts and title insurance are increasingly discussed as if they do the same job. They do not. That confusion creates an opening for title agents to explain, clearly and without fearmongering, what an owner’s policy covers, what monitoring products actually do, and where neither one replaces good fraud prevention.

Follow Hallmark Abstract Service on Substack:

🐐Wicked Trends & Forces🌳

The patterns worth paying attention to…

Find our newsletter helpful? Share it with someone you know, or to your social media.

Share Wicked Title Forum

👀 Things Wandering Toward Your Workflow

New tools, vendor launches, and tech experiments making their way toward the closing table.
👀 Get on the Workflow Watchlist

⚖️Legal

National

State

From the Docket…

⚖️ Meanwhile, in the Courts...

🤖PropTech, Cyber Security & Fraud

Bitcoin-Backed Mortgages Are No Longer Just a Crypto Press Release

The first reported Fannie Mae-backed mortgage using bitcoin as collateral closed in June, but the structure is more interesting than the headline. The borrower does not give Fannie Mae bitcoin instead of a down payment. The transaction combines a normal conforming first mortgage with a separate crypto-backed loan that supplies the down-payment funds, allowing the borrower to pledge bitcoin rather than sell it.

Someone Sold the Church Land—and Apparently Got a Dead Woman to Sign

Land intended for a North Carolina church was fraudulently sold for $110,000 using forged signatures—including the name of an owner who died in 2021. The buyer was also reportedly deceived, and the property has since been deeded back to the rightful owner. It is an especially ugly example of vacant-land fraud—and of why seller verification must test more than whether the person on the phone can recite information found in the public record.

📖 Book of the Month

📢 Promote Your Book Here

🎟️Events

• 🎟️ Evaluating Emerging Real Estate Business Concepts

  • 📅 September 9, 2026 | ⏰ 12:00–2:00 p.m. ET | 📍 Register Here (Thesis Driven)

• 🎟️ Missouri LTA Annual Convention

  • 📅 September 9th–11th | ⏰ Times Vary by Session | 📍 Kansas City, MO

• 🎟️ LTAC Conference

  • 📅 September 9th–11th | ⏰ Times Vary by Session | 📍 Vail, CO

• 🎟️ Missouri LTA Annual Convention

  • 📅 September 9th–11th | ⏰ Times Vary by Session | 📍 Kansas City, MO

See all events

💼 Job Postings

• Title Officer — Zillow
  Remote | $28.60–$45.20/hr depending on location
  Works across search, examination and curative matters for Zillow Closing, coordinating with attorneys, underwriters, search vendors and transaction parties.

• Title Insurance Underwriter — Heritage Title
  Wake Forest, NC | Pay not listed
  Supports title underwriting, customer service and administrative work for Heritage Title, part of the Investors Title family.

• Title Insurance Examiner — Knight Barry Title
  Burnsville, MN / Remote | $65,000–$80,000
  Examines deeds, mortgages, easements, judgments, taxes, liens and other recorded matters; remote work is available but applicants must live near Burnsville for training.

• National Title Curative Processor – Refinance — CLOSED Title
  Remote | $65,000–$80,000
  Handles title clearing and curative work on high-volume and legally complex refinance files across multiple states.

• Title Commitment Specialist — Flowers Title Companies
  Remote — Texas residents | $19.75–$24/hr
  Prepares and reviews Texas title commitments, requiring prior title experience and familiarity with state-specific title requirements.

• Title Assistant — First Integrity Title Company
  Glendale, CO | $50,000–$75,000
  Searches and evaluates title records and prepares title files, with prior title-industry experience required and a producer license considered a plus.

• Experienced Title Insurance Closer — Summit Settlement Services
  Remote | $23–$27/hr
  Manages closing files in a fast-paced remote environment, coordinating the details needed to move transactions through closing.

• Licensed Title Insurance Producer — Rally Point Title Agency
  Old Bridge, NJ | $1,000–$10,000/month
  New-business-development role for a licensed New Jersey title producer focused on building referral relationships and generating title orders.

• Title Examiner – Maryland — First American
  Columbia, MD / Remote | Pay not listed
  Examines Maryland title for First American’s national production operation, identifying ownership, liens, exceptions and other matters affecting insurability.

• Title Examiner – Part-Time — Title Now
  Remote | $18–$25/hr
  Flexible 15–20-hour-per-week position for an experienced examiner, offering an unusual part-time option for someone who wants to stay in title without a full-time production schedule.

💼 Place Your Job Posting Ad Here

Stay Wicked,
Cheryl
Contact Me (or hit reply)

The Wicked Title Forum is a collaborative resource. If you spot something outdated or inaccurate, leave a comment—we’ll get it fixed.

**DISCLAIMER**

Content is for informational purposes, operational awareness and workflow strategy. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, it is not meant to be a compliance directive or replace the specific legal/financial advice of your retained experts. As always evaluate new information & tools with your underwriter/attorney, accountant/financial advisor, IT/security team, and internal policies, as needed, before implementation.

This site is partially supported by sponsor ads and sponsored content.

🐐 Membership | 🔍 Find Answers | 🛒 Shop | 📢 Partner With Us

Brought to you by our friends, contributors & sponsors:🔒 Closinglock, 🌍 Foreign Tax CPA, 🪄Business Witch Academy, 🧱 Brickhouse Consulting, 🖊️Dotted Line Signings & Our Paying Readers
📢 Be a Sponsor

🕵️‍♂️Underworld Intel

📄 The Title Work Behind Truist Park

Amanda shares the behind-the-scenes story of how Callaway Title became involved in the Atlanta Braves’ move to Cobb County and the development of what became Truist Park and The Battery Atlanta. The project required far more than ordinary acquisition work, including confidential land purchases and the relocation of a major Colonial Pipeline easement. It’s a rare look at the kind of complicated, high-stakes title work happening underneath a project most people only ever see as a stadium and entertainment district. Watch the story on YouTube.

🏦 A Philadelphia Bank Failed. The Liens Didn’t.

Pennsylvania regulators closed Tioga-Franklin Savings Bank on August 21, with another institution assuming its deposits and substantially all assets. For title teams, the wrinkle is simple: loans, liens and payoff obligations survive the bank. When ownership or servicing changes mid-transaction, confirming who can issue a payoff or release becomes part of the file—and a legitimate transition can also make fraudulent “updated instructions” more believable. - Curtesy of Mark Nemetz, Residential Mortgage/Title Consultant

💾 When Being Offline Is a Feature: Romania Land Registry Attack Shows the Value of Local Record Security

A cyberattack disrupted Romania’s centralized land-record system, and the Land Title Association of Mississippi noticed the awkward upside of less-centralized local records: one attack cannot take down everything at once. The larger lesson is business continuity. If your recorder, search system or e-recording platform disappears for days instead of hours, does your operation have an alternate path—or just a refresh button?

🐐Wicked Trends & Forces🌳

The patterns worth paying attention to…

👀 Things Wandering Toward Your Workflow

New tools, vendor launches, and tech experiments making their way toward the closing table.
👀 Get on the Workflow Watchlist

🤖 First American Gives 500 Sales Reps an AI Sidekick

First American has rolled out Salesforce Agentforce to an initial 500 sales reps, with five AI-assisted workflows built around the company’s own sales playbook and CRM data. The interesting part isn’t “AI does sales.” It’s what they chose to automate: pre-call research that previously meant checking four systems and could take 30+ minutes, account and relationship summaries, post-meeting notes, pipeline analysis, and proposed CRM updates that still require human approval. First American says it is targeting a 30–40% productivity gain. Salesforce’s case study offers a surprisingly specific look at what AI-assisted title sales actually looks like in production —and where First American is deliberately keeping a human in control.

🎧 A 1031 Podcast Your Commercial Team May Actually Want to Bookmark

First American Exchange Company launched The 1031 Brief, a monthly podcast aimed at investors and the professionals helping them navigate exchanges—including title and escrow teams. Early episodes cover 1031 basics, market conditions and exchange planning, with future episodes promising transaction scenarios and expert conversations. This is less “new workflow technology” than a useful client-conversation resource: something commercial teams can use to sharpen their own 1031 knowledge or share with investors who need to understand the process before everyone is staring down an identification deadline. Listen to The 1031 Brief here.

⚖️Legal

National

🧭 Federal Regulators Are Stepping Back. The Compliance Map Is Getting More Complicated.

The federal retreat from aggressive supervision does not mean mortgage compliance is getting simpler. Dodd Frank Update reports that state regulators are increasingly filling the space, leaving financial institutions to reconcile federal priorities with a growing patchwork of state expectations. Title agencies tied closely to lender compliance should expect more—not fewer—questions about state-specific procedures, documentation and vendor controls.

🧾 1099-S Filing Is Moving. January 1 Is Closer Than It Looks.

The IRS is retiring FIRE for 1099-S filing and moving submissions to IRIS beginning January 1, 2027. SoftPro’s transition notice says its Pro1099 users will stay in the existing workflow, with both CSV and electronic filing options planned. Even if your software vendor is handling the plumbing, this belongs on the year-end checklist now—January is a lousy time to discover that the process responsible for reporting every seller transaction has changed.

State

Claim Stories/Court Stories

Two cases this week hinge on a deceptively simple question: when something looks wrong in the title history, how much does that defect actually change?

One problem mattered less than you might expect. Another survived a transaction many buyers assume wipes the slate clean.

💬 Join the Conversation

A reader raised a deceptively simple question under our recent story about property-data brokers producing the same errors from the same underlying records: if three vendors all repeat the same bad source data, have you independently verified anything—or just confirmed the same mistake three times?

It was a great question, but then I stumbled across a YouTube video that raised more questions that, as best as I can tell, no one is asking yet, but I think they should be.

Join me on Wednesday for a special edition that will probably raise more questions than it answers, but I hope you’ll join me in the comments and share your thoughts and experiences with us.

💼 Job Postings

• National Residential Escrow Officer — First American
  Remote — New York | $29.30–$39.07/hour
  Handles national residential escrow files, including title clearance, settlement statements, closing packages, funds, recording, and final statements.

• Senior Title Examiner — Pippin Title
  Remote — U.S. | $50,000–$80,000/year
  Reviews nationwide title searches and works with examiners, underwriters, and abstractors to resolve complex title questions and ensure report quality.

• Title Examiner — Fidelity National Financial
  Maitland, FL | Hybrid
  Searches and examines Florida title records, validates documents and legal descriptions, and prepares title packages and clearance requirements.

• Title Coordinator — Old Republic Title
  Chicago, IL | $26–$30/hour
  Coordinates national commercial multi-site and multi-state transactions from order entry through title work, closing documentation, and policy issuance.

• Sales Representative I — Stewart Title
  Indianapolis, IN
  Develops title and real-estate-services business through sales, marketing, customer relationships, and local market development.

• Title Insurance | Commercial Escrow Talent — Godot Consulting Group
  Detroit, MI | Hybrid | $85,000–$150,000/year
  Manages national commercial escrow accounts and multi-state transactions while maintaining escrow records and relationships with customers and brokers.

• Title Examiner — AMT Title Services, Inc.
  Remote — U.S. | $45,000–$65,000/year
  Examines deeds, mortgages, liens, ownership histories, legal descriptions, and other public records to identify title issues affecting real estate transactions.

• Title Search Coordinator — Nobleserve LLC
  Pittsburgh, PA
  Conducts ownership and title research, coordinates search work, and helps identify liens, encumbrances, and other issues affecting property title.

• Title Search and Examiner — Legal Land Title, LLC
  Ozark, MO
  Searches and examines title, analyzes liens and encumbrances, reviews legal descriptions and surveys, and prepares title-search reports.

• Commercial Title Examiner — Chicago Title
  Independence, MO
  Examines complex commercial title records, interprets title evidence, and identifies issues affecting ownership, insurability, and closing requirements.

💼 Place Your Job Posting Ad Here

Stay Wicked,
Cheryl
Contact Me (or hit reply)

The Wicked Title Forum is a collaborative resource. If you spot something outdated or inaccurate, leave a comment—we’ll get it fixed.

**DISCLAIMER**

Content is for informational purposes, operational awareness and workflow strategy. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, it is not meant to be a compliance directive or replace the specific legal/financial advice of your retained experts. As always evaluate new information & tools with your underwriter/attorney, accountant/financial advisor, IT/security team, and internal policies, as needed, before implementation.

This site is partially supported by sponsor ads and sponsored content.

🐐 This Month at Wicked Title…

We shared over 40 new job openings, 12 different industry events, regulatory updates across 14 different states, and did deep dives into your payment processing systems, major federal regulatory shake-ups, the trends and patterns that may shape your next business growth opportunites…

💸 Payment Processing

We took some deep dives into payment processing with:

• Your Earnest Money Workflow Has Two Dead Zones from 🔒 Closinglock

• A panel discussion called 🐐 The Last Mile Problem: Why Money Movement Still Slows Closings from delu❌e

  • 🎙️Listen | 📽️ Watch | 📄Read

• How Title Companies Can Modernize Disbursements Without Disrupting Escrow Operations which was published to our Medium channel, so email readers, you might have missed this one.

• Is it Time to Bring Your Payment Processing into The Digital Age?

• Payload Wants the Closing Money to Stop Traveling by Anxiety

⚖️Regulatory News

CFPB Made a Lot of Waves with a Call for Comments on TRID Reforms

It actually started back in July when we ran:

as well as 🐐 TRID Data: Closing Costs, Consumer Confusion and Title Workflows

The final comment tally was 339, and I’m not talking 339 1-2 sentence comments either. Over 80 comments were full document attachments that had to be downloaded separately to review and generally spanned multiple pages. But, I went through it all for you, and summed up industry sentiment in:

For more deep dives into what the industry is asking the CFPB to do, I also published:

• Who Wants What From TRID? The CFPB Comments Reveal Some Very Strange Bedfellows

• TRID Reform: The 9 Things Title and Escrow Professionals Actually Want CFPB to Fix

Other regulatory news making waves this month included:

• Home Equity Investment with the Home Equity Integrity Act at the national level and multiple state actions as well.

• A few heavy weights filed briefs with court in favor of Fidelity’s fight with the FinCEN Real Estate Reporting Rule.

• Over a dozen states made our Sunday regulatory round ups including: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia

🚨 Wicked Title Group Memberships

We rolled out a group membership program so your whole office or organization can gain access to all of our content at a bundled rate. We’ll never leave our small agencies in the dust, discounts start as low at 5 person groups. Learn more →

🐐 Wicked Trends & Forces 🌳

The patterns worth paying attention to & opportunities for business growth…

We released our first full color, magazine style issue in both print and digital flipbook formats. This issue focused on The Risks, Market Signals, and Emerging Opportunities Hidden Beneath the Title Industry Headlines. This is just a summary of potential business opportunities and niche markets, it’s a primer on how I read the headlines, spot the patterns, and figure out what’s coming next. If you want to see the emerging market shifts before everyone else, you don’t want to miss this peak inside my process and the trends I see forming now.

Other trends, patterns and growth opportunites we covered this month included:

• The Housing Market Is Still Stuck. Title Companies Are Making More Money Anyway.

• Turn 1031 Exchanges Into a Business Line, Not Just a Weird File

• Maybe Growth Isn’t More Closings. Maybe It’s Better Closings.

• Growing your income as a notary by building your business or becoming a teacher.

• Commercial

  • Thinking About Commercial? Start Smaller Than the Skyscraper

  • The Dirt Is Only Half the Deal: Data Centers Are Becoming Infrastructure Title Work

  • North Carolina Just Turned Foreign-Ownership Screening Into a Closing Document

  • Florida CDDs: The Tax Bill Is a Clue, Not the Whole File
    

🐐 Wicked Title Folks🧠

🖊️ Want to be a content contributor? Contact us

📜More Educational Resources

• 🎥 Standard Vs Enhanced Insurance Policies

• 🎥 Underwriting 101: The Conveyancer’s Guide to Massachusetts Underwriting

• 📄 NON-JUDICIAL TAX SALES PURSUANT TO VIRGINIA CODE § 58.1-3975

• 📄 Common Types of Illegal Real Estate Deeds and How to Identify Them

• 📄 Residential Property Appraisals: Process, Costs, and Requirements

• 📄 How to Remove a Fraudulent Deed — Explains the legal process for challenging and removing a forged or fraudulently recorded deed.

• 📄 Land Court’s New Process Expedites Deregistration in Massachusetts

• 📄 How to Request HOA Documents for Escrow Officers: 9 Steps for Closing

Stay Wicked,
Cheryl
Contact Me (or hit reply)

🐐 About Wicked Title | 🔍 Search the Knowledge Base | 📢 Be a Sponsor

The Wicked Title Forum is a collaborative resource. If you spot something outdated or inaccurate, leave a comment—we’ll get it fixed.

**DISCLAIMER**

Content is for informational purposes, operational awareness and workflow strategy. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, it is not meant to be a compliance directive or replace the specific legal/financial advice of your retained experts. As always evaluate new information & tools with your underwriter/attorney, accountant/financial advisor, IT/security team, and internal policies, as needed, before implementation.

This site is partially supported by sponsor ads and sponsored content.

🐐 Membership | 🔍 Find Answers | 🛒 Shop | 📢 Partner With Us

Thank you to our friends, contributors & sponsors:🔒 Closinglock, 🌍 Foreign Tax CPA, 🪄Business Witch Academy, 🧱 Brickhouse Consulting, 🖊️Dotted Line Signings & Our Paying Readers
📢 Be a Sponsor

📢Announcements

🐐 Today Only: You Decide What Wicked Title Is Worth

I’ve never done this before.

For Sunday, August 23 through midnight August 24, I’m turning off the normal $68/month price and letting you choose what you pay for Wicked Title Forum.

If Wicked Title saves you hours of digging, helps you catch something before it becomes a problem, gives you an idea that makes your agency money, keeps you entertained, or simply makes you better at your job, pick the number that feels fair to you.

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🕵️‍♂️Underworld Intel

Your Co-Owner Left. Their Ownership Interest Did Not.

A co-owner who moves out, stops paying and disappears does not automatically surrender their share of the property; their interest remains in the title until it is transferred or legally extinguished. Depending on the facts, resolution may require a voluntary deed, partition sale or quiet-title action—and even a signed quitclaim deed does not remove the departing owner from the mortgage. It is a useful explainer for the seller who arrives expecting years of solo mortgage payments to have magically converted shared ownership into sole title.

Zillow’s RESPA Lawsuit Refuses to Stay Dead

A federal judge dismissed the previous version in July, but the buyers suing Zillow filed a third amended complaint on August 17 with five plaintiffs and a narrower RESPA theory. They allege Zillow’s Premier Agent and Flex programs provided valuable buyer leads in exchange for referrals to Zillow Home Loans—essentially arguing that the alleged “thing of value” wasn’t a check, but access to business. Zillow disputes the allegations. For title companies living in an increasingly complicated world of lead platforms, preferred-provider networks and referral ecosystems, this is a RESPA case worth watching even though title agents aren’t the defendants.

Santa Barbara’s Fraud Report Reads Like a Title Examiner’s Nightmare File

Santa Barbara County’s new Real Estate Fraud Prosecution Program annual report includes alleged false instruments, forged documents, mortgage fraud and a quitclaim deed used to transfer an elderly woman’s $1.2 million condominium out of her trust. In that pending case, prosecutors say title to both affected properties has since been transferred back to the victim, while another open case involves an allegedly fraudulent UCC financing statement submitted for recording. The county says referrals rose from 20 to 27 this year, and its fraud unit continues working directly with the Clerk-Recorder-Assessor’s Office to identify suspicious filings—an unusually concrete look at what happens after fraudulent documents make it into the public record.

🐐Wicked Trends & Forces🌳

The patterns worth paying attention to…

The Housing Market Is Still Stuck. Title Companies Are Making More Money Anyway.

👀 Things Wandering Toward Your Workflow

New tools, vendor launches, and tech experiments making their way toward the closing table.
👀 Get on the Workflow Watchlist

ATTOM Is Making Property Records Callable by AI

ATTOM just added three specialized AI agents and an expanded MCP server, allowing AI systems to retrieve and work with its property data through natural-language requests instead of relying entirely on traditional API integrations. That gets much more interesting for title when you look at what sits underneath it: ATTOM’s datasets include recorded deeds, ownership and vesting information, mortgages, liens, releases, assignments, document numbers and even title-company data. ATTOM specifically markets its transaction history to mortgage and title companies for ownership validation.

ATTOM has not launched an AI title search or examination product. But it has made a large collection of title-relevant public-record data easier for AI agents and automated workflows to call, analyze and combine with other tasks. That opens a much more interesting door than another chatbot: title technology developers—and potentially sophisticated agencies and underwriters—can build AI-assisted research, triage and due-diligence workflows on top of structured recorded-property data without starting every integration from scratch.

⚖️Legal

National

State

Claim Stories

Connecticut Court Says Fidelity Doesn’t Have to Defend Beach-Easement Fight

A Connecticut judge has reaffirmed that Fidelity National Title Insurance Co. does not have to defend homeowner Maria Genedina Gottlieb in litigation over a beach-access easement affecting her Fairfield property. The underlying dispute, Ringel v. Gottlieb, centers on ambiguous deed language granting access to the “Beach and Waters of Long Island Sound”; Connecticut’s Appellate Court previously reversed the trial court’s interpretation and sent that easement question back for a new trial. In the separate coverage case, the court granted Gottlieb’s request to reargue but ultimately left summary judgment for Fidelity intact, finding no duty to defend under the title policy.

⚙️ Operations

🔒 Closinglock’s Nicole Krouse Named a 2026 Rising Star

At 37, Nicole Krouse, VP of Marketing, has been recognized by HousingWire for her role in repositioning the company from a secure-wire-instructions provider into a broader secure-payments platform. Krouse is credited with helping drive five major product launches, more than 70% year-over-year growth in marketing-sourced pipeline, a 30% increase in SecurePay adoption, and a sharp expansion of Closinglock’s media presence. Her advice to her younger self is wonderfully practical: “keep laying track.” Borrowing from a Shonda Rhimes quote, Krouse says the train of production is always coming—markets move, customers change, and growth does not wait for the perfect plan—so leadership means building ahead of the moment rather than scrambling when it arrives.

📣 The Hidden Communication Work Slowing Down Closings

SoftPro identifies five familiar communication drains: constant status requests, scattered documents, duplicate data entry, customers expecting real-time updates, and the pressure to make the closing experience feel different from everyone else’s. The company naturally positions ClosingsLIVE as the answer, but the more useful exercise is to look at the five bottlenecks and ask how many highly paid humans in your office are still spending their day manually moving information that could move itself.

💰 When Talking Shop With Competitors Becomes Talking Prices

Comparing notes with other title agents can be useful. Comparing what everybody plans to charge can become something else entirely. This plain-English primer on price fixing explains horizontal price coordination, market allocation, bid rigging, wage fixing and the important difference between competitors independently arriving at similar prices and actually agreeing to them. Useful reading before the next conversation at an industry event wanders farther into pricing strategy than it probably should.

You Might also like:

🐐 How to Avoid Accidentally Violating Anti-Trust Laws: A True Story About What Not To Say on the Internet

💼 Job Postings

• Commercial Escrow Assistant — First American Title
  Denver, CO | $20.31–$27.09/hour
  Supports commercial closings with document preparation, settlement-statement data, disbursements, customer communication and closing follow-up.

• Commercial Escrow Officer — First American Title
  Remote — New York
  Manages commercial escrow transactions and coordinates closing requirements, funds, documents and communications among transaction parties.

• Escrow Operations Coordinator — First American Title
  Remote — U.S.
  Provides centralized title and escrow production support across First American’s mortgage, commercial, direct and agency operations.

• Title Insurance Underwriter — Investors Title Insurance Company
  Fayetteville, NC
  Reviews title orders, commitments, policies and endorsements while supporting underwriting decisions, recording and customer service.

• Senior Title Examiner — Old Republic Title
  Remote — U.S. | $28–$36/hour
  Examines public records and legal documents, verifies property and tax information and identifies title issues affecting insurability.

• Senior Title Examiner — Stewart Title
  Remote — U.S.; Florida experience required
  Examines public and tax records, prepares title commitments and handles more complex title issues while serving as a resource to less-experienced team members.

• Escrow Coordinator — Stewart Title
  Richmond, TX
  Supports residential and commercial escrow files with balancing, settlement statements, checks, wires and post-closing disbursement.

• Escrow Officer — Stewart Title
  Fairhope, AL / Morristown, TN
  Manages residential and commercial escrow transactions from account opening through settlement while coordinating funds, documents and transaction parties.

• Escrow Closer — HomeServices of America
  Birmingham, AL
  Prepares and conducts closings, reviews title evidence, resolves title defects and handles recording and final closing packages.

• Title Insurance Closing Assistant — Knight Barry Title Group
  Minocqua, WI
  Assists with escrow files, closing documents, ledgers, checks, wires, e-recordings and customer questions about title and escrow services.

💼 Place Your Job Posting Ad Here

Stay Wicked,
Cheryl
Contact Me (or hit reply)

The Wicked Title Forum is a collaborative resource. If you spot something outdated or inaccurate, leave a comment—we’ll get it fixed.

**DISCLAIMER**

Content is for informational purposes, operational awareness and workflow strategy. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, it is not meant to be a compliance directive or replace the specific legal/financial advice of your retained experts. As always evaluate new information & tools with your underwriter/attorney, accountant/financial advisor, IT/security team, and internal policies, as needed, before implementation.

This site is partially supported by sponsor ads and sponsored content.

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The most interesting thing about the CFPB docket is not that people think TRID has problems.

It is how many completely different problems they think it has.

Lenders are worried about timing, liability and tolerances. Title and escrow are worried about bad numbers, late coordination and rules that do not match the closing. Consumers are worried that “flexibility” will erase protections. Appraisers, credit-data companies and tech vendors found entirely different pieces of the disclosure they want CFPB to reconsider.

Here is the complaint file…

1. TRID Has a Redisclosure Addiction

Lenders, title companies and escrow agents all complained about the number of redisclosures generated by ordinary transaction changes.

The joint mortgage-trade filing calls the tolerance system one of the most operationally burdensome parts of TRID and argues that it can punish immaterial variances instead of focusing on meaningful consumer cost information.

ALTA says consumers can receive multiple Loan Estimates and Closing Disclosures and arrive at closing unable to tell which one is actually accurate.

This is where the regulation starts eating its own purpose.

If the goal is clarity, giving the borrower Version 1, Version 2, Version 3, Version 4 and FINAL_v7_ACTUALFINAL.pdf may not be the triumph we think it is.

Stop Treating Every Government or Third-Party Fee Change Like Somebody Screwed Up

Transfer taxes change when the purchase price changes.

Recording fees are generally calculated based on number of pages in a document not delivered to title until the settlement day.

Notary costs are based on the number of documents being notarized, in a loan package not delivered to title until the day of closing.

Final taxes come from individual tax collectors with their own set of rules about how and when to disclose that information.

Payoff figures are finetuned through a daily interest calculation based on the day the lender received the payoff funds - change the settlement date, you change the payoff amount.

The parties renegotiate - everything.

Yet tolerance rules and “changed circumstance” determinations can treat those changes as though somebody failed to price the loan correctly. That’s unfair to the lender and burdensome on lenders and settlement professionals.

AEA specifically asks CFPB to reconsider the treatment of transfer taxes, recording fees and notary fees because they are externally determined, government regulated, charges the creditor and settlement agent do not control.

AEA also says creditors still interpret changed-circumstance rules differently, particularly when buyers and sellers renegotiate who pays a closing cost.

California Escrow Association asks CFPB to explicitly address HOA demands, payoff revisions, corrected tax bills, continuing buyer-seller negotiations and other common settlement events.

That does not mean consumers should eat unexplained surprises.

It means the compliance system should be able to tell the difference between:
the lender changed the price
the lender was lazy about communicating with title and providing final closing docs
and
the buyer and seller renegotiated

The tolerance fight is really about control.

If the creditor controls the charge or controls the information necessary to calculate the charge, holding the creditor accountable for the estimate makes sense.

If the creditor does not control the charge, the argument gets harder.

The comments repeatedly ask CFPB to draw that line more intelligently because the current system can encourage conservative estimates, cures and redisclosures instead of producing better information.

Sometimes TRID is protecting the consumer from a bad estimate.
Sometimes it is punishing somebody for failing to predict the future.

Those are different problems.

Brought to you by our friends, contributors & sponsors:🔒 Closinglock, 🌍 Foreign Tax CPA, 🪄Business Witch Academy, 🧱 Brickhouse Consulting, 🖊️Dotted Line Signings & Our Paying Readers
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2. The Fake Three-Day Closing Disclosure

All of that redisclosure, tolerance, and change circumstances stuff leads us to Title and Escrow professionals telling CFPB that TRID’s three-day Closing Disclosure rule is not the real source of closing chaos. Their bigger complaint: the “final” CD can go out while balancing, underwriting and document preparation are still moving.

California’s Escrow Institute says its members are regularly asked to produce final numbers within 24 to 48 hours of closing on files that have been open for weeks. It argues that many corrected CDs are not caused by some dramatic late-breaking event. They happen because meaningful lender-settlement reconciliation starts too late.

Another title-company commenter described what the process has effectively created:

an “estimated final” Closing Disclosure.

Which may be the most perfectly absurd description of modern mortgage closing ever committed to a federal docket.

Estimated.
Final.
Pick one.

So the borrower gets three days with a disclosure that claims it’s final, but isn’t while settlement gets a mere hours with the version everybody is actually expected to sign and fund from.

The problem is not the consumer review period itself. It is pretending that “disclosed three days ago” and “financially finalized three days ago” are the same thing.

They are not.

Even the Lenders Admit the “Final” CD Isn’t Always Final

This is where the comments get really useful.

ICBA told CFPB that the current framework encourages lenders to issue Closing Disclosures before final settlement figures are available simply to satisfy the mandatory waiting period.

Community banks said lenders frequently provide CDs before all costs have been finalized because the timing rule requires the document to go out.

That works brilliantly if your compliance goal is:

CD DELIVERED ON TIME.

It works considerably less brilliantly if your consumer-protection goal is:

THE CONSUMER REVIEWED THE FINAL TRANSACTION FOR THREE DAYS.

Those are different achievements.

A closing attorney in the docket suggested title should receive at least one full business day to review the loan documents. I’d say it should be 6. The full loan package should arrive 6 days before settlement, allow title 3 days to review, balance the CD with the lender, and produce an actual, final CD in time to give the borrower 3 days to review it.

3. The Federal Government Made a Form So Clear Florida Had to Invent Another Form to Explain It

TRID was supposed to make mortgage costs easier to understand. Sometimes complying with it requires showing consumers numbers that aren’t the prices they actually pay.

Nothing explains TRID’s title-premium problem better than Florida.

Florida’s title association walked CFPB through the math in its public comment.
Take a $300,000 purchase with a $240,000 mortgage.
Under Florida’s filed title rates, the owner’s policy premium is $1,575.
The simultaneous-issue lender’s policy is $25.
Pretty straightforward.
Then TRID arrives.

The federally required Closing Disclosure shows:
Lender’s title policy: $1,275.
Owner’s title policy: $325.
Total: $1,600.

The total is correct.
Almost everything underneath it is nonsense.

The federal formula forces the lender’s policy to appear at its full standalone premium, then backs the simultaneous-issue discount into the owner’s-policy line. The consumer therefore sees $1,275 beside a policy that actually costs $25 under Florida’s filed rates.

And because Florida apparently believed consumers deserved to know what they were actually paying, the state created another mandatory form explaining why the federal form and the real title premiums do not match.

Yes. We created a disclosure to explain the disclosure.
A+ work, everyone.

Florida’s not alone in this dilemma. Texas has its own supplemental disclosure addressing the same basic problem.

ALTA made fixing this its first and most important recommendation to CFPB.

Hard to argue with that one.

A consumer disclosure should probably not require a second disclosure explaining why the first disclosure is wrong.

4. Fix the Fake Fees Already

Title is not alone.

One of the strangest patterns in the docket is how many industries are telling CFPB:

That fee line looks much simpler than the thing it is supposedly explaining.

Approximately Every Appraiser in America Found the Comment Button

The appraisal contingent is one of the strangest and most organized subplots in this docket. Their campaign centers on the combined Appraisal Fee.

The Appraisal Regulation Compliance Council asks CFPB to require separate disclosure of:

Appraiser professional fee

and

Appraisal management company fee.

Its argument is that a consumer can see one appraisal charge without knowing how much was actually paid to the licensed appraiser and how much was retained for appraisal-management services.

Equifax Showed Up to Ask What a “Credit Report Fee” Actually Is

This one I did not have on my bingo card.

Equifax spends much of its filing defending the continued value of tri-merge credit reporting and discussing credit-data costs.

Commercial interest noted.

But then it gets to an unexpectedly good disclosure question.

Equifax says mortgage lenders can calculate credit-report charges using different methodologies, including:

• the actual products used for that borrower;

• an averaged methodology; or

• a closed-loan/funded-loan methodology where the consumers who successfully close may absorb costs associated with applications that did not.

Equifax wants CFPB to require greater clarity about which methodology produced the charge.

And again we arrive at the same uncomfortable question:

If the Closing Disclosure says:

Credit Report Fee: $X

but $X is not necessarily the actual cost of that consumer’s credit report—

what exactly is the line telling them?

Three very different industries have arrived at essentially the same complaint:

A short label and a precise dollar amount do not automatically create transparency.

Sometimes simplification just hides where the money went.

Both ALTA and American Escrow Association (AEA) also want another old irritant addressed: the mandatory “(Optional)” label on owner’s title insurance, which they argue can be misleading where the purchase contract effectively requires the policy even though the lender does not. Not to mention, most people equate “optional” with “unnecessary” which could be leading homeowners to make poor risk management decisions based on a single word, and inaccurate number.

Ten years into TRID, perhaps the form could stop requiring title agents to explain why the official disclosure does not mean what it appears to mean.

Brought to you by 🔒 Closinglock: Protecting the people behind every home closing, get a Demo Today!

5. Should We Keep the 3 Day Right of Recission if we have a 3-Day Disclosure?

For certain transactions involving a consumer’s principal dwelling—most notably many refinances—federal law gives the borrower a period after consummation in which they can cancel the transaction.

On July 20th in “TRID Is Back on the Operating Table—and Someone Brought a Chainsaw: What Title Agents Need to Know“ I said, “I’d love to see some statistical data from the lenders on how often buyers are rescinding both pre and post TRID, but I was unable to find any.”

Ask and ye shall receive, sometimes.

United Wholesale Mortgage brought some valuable numbers to the CFPB.

UWM’s conclusion is straightforward. Consumers already receive a Closing Disclosure three business days before consummation. They have time to review the loan before they sign it. Very few borrowers subsequently cancel. UWM argues that TRID has made that protection largely redundant.

But low use does not necessarily mean low value, and the National Consumer Law Center and other consumer groups strongly disagree.

It will be interesting to see where the CFPB lands.

6. The Seller Closing Disclosure Has Been Nominated for Retirement

Settlement already has to account for the seller’s proceeds, charges, credits, payoffs and disbursements. And title companies routinely prepare settlement statements that do exactly that.

ALTA told CFPB that settlement companies continue to use the ALTA Settlement Statement because the Closing Disclosure does not fully explain the economics of the actual transaction. Yet again, we’ve had to make a form to explain the form. Why?

So both ALTA and the American Escrow Association ask an obvious question:

Why are we also preparing a separate seller Closing Disclosure?

Both the American Land Title Association and settlement-industry commenters asked CFPB to reconsider the requirement for a separate seller Closing Disclosure. Their proposed answer is not particularly radical:

Let the settlement statement we are already preparing do the job.

This is probably one of the easiest, least expensive, least controversial, yet truly valuable changes that could be made.

7. “Materiality” Sounds Great Until Somebody Has to Fund

CFPB commenters agree trivial mortgage changes should not derail closings. The fight is over whether replacing bright-line TRID rules with judgment calls would fix the problem—or create a new one.

A lot of lender-side commenters like materiality.
And why wouldn’t they?

If a change does not meaningfully affect the borrower, maybe it should not trigger another compliance event. Then escrow asks the question everybody eventually has to answer:
What exactly is material?

California Escrow Association points out that the settlement agent holding trust funds may not have access to the lender’s underwriting file or compliance analysis. It still has to know whether the waiting period has been satisfied and whether the money can legally move.

Consumer advocates also object to vague materiality standards, warning that they can replace clear protections with interpretation and litigation.

Materiality could absolutely fix stupid delays. So could better bright-line rules.

8. The Law Is Still Catching Up With the Closing Technology

Electronic signatures are not new.
RON is not new.
eNotes are not new.
Digital closings are not new.

What remains remarkably durable is inconsistency.

American Escrow Association wants clearer federal guidance on electronic delivery, consent, signatures and proof of receipt because lender practices still vary. ALTA raises the same problem.

Snapdocs goes considerably farther. It asks CFPB to consider requiring covered lenders to offer a digital closing option when the transaction and documents are legally and operationally eligible, while preserving the borrower’s ability to choose paper or hybrid execution.

That is not just:
Please clarify eSign.

That is:
Maybe digital closing should become something the consumer can expect to be offered.

For lenders and title, that would mean another round of figuring out whether the state, county, investor, warehouse, custodian, insurer, guarantor, eNote system, notary law and actual document package have all decided to join us in the twenty-first century. But honestly, we’re already doing that now. Maybe the CFPB could give them a nudge?

The technology problem is increasingly not whether the tools exist.

It is whether everybody in the transaction agrees they exist at the same time.

9. The Emergency Waiver Is Almost Too Scary to Use

There is a strange little emergency exit built into TRID.

If a borrower has a bona fide personal financial emergency, certain waiting periods can be waived. Sounds useful. Then you look at the regulatory example.

The famous example is essentially:

Your house is about to be sold at foreclosure unless the loan funds arrive during the waiting period.

That is certainly an emergency. It is also a spectacularly narrow example to leave sitting there as the industry’s main guide to what qualifies.

Meanwhile, actual homeowners experience other situations that also have a rather urgent quality:

• The roof is leaking.

• The air conditioner dies during a heat wave.

• A purchase contract is about to expire.

• A rate lock is expiring.

• A time-sensitive refinance needs to fund.

And everybody involved starts asking the same question:
Does this count?

That is exactly the kind of question a regulatory waiver is supposed to answer.

Instead, the comments suggest the current framework has created a lovely compromise in which the waiver technically exists and many people are too scared to use it.

The mortgage trades want CFPB to recognize things like expiring rate locks, loss of earnest money, occupancy deadlines and contractual penalties.

PACE gives this issue an unusually intuitive fact pattern.

BRIDGE, which represents third-party administrators of state-authorized PACE financing programs, spends a surprising amount of its CFPB comment on this. BRIDGE asks CFPB to imagine a homeowner who needs:

• a new air-conditioning system during a summer heat wave;

• major roof repairs during rainy season;

• or another urgent improvement affecting health, safety or habitability.

Its argument is that stacking the various TRID timing requirements with rescission can produce a delay of at least thirteen business days in the scenarios it describes.

Consumer advocates, meanwhile, have a very reasonable fear: Make the waiver too easy and it becomes another preprinted document in the signing package. NCLC specifically warns that preprinted or model forms could be slipped into electronic or paper closing packages and become routine rather than exceptional. It argues the current requirement—that the consumer provide a written statement describing the emergency—helps ensure the waiver remains consumer-driven instead of becoming another document an originator can normalize.

That concern deserves more than an eye roll.

ALTA wants CFPB to broaden the examples and supports the idea of a model form. California’s independent escrow companies explain why this is not just another lender-compliance question. Escrow holders are frequently pulled into waiver situations because somebody has to know whether the transaction may legally proceed and whether funds may be disbursed. Any change needs to include clear direction on who is responsible for making the determination, preferably the lender, and clear instruction that title and escrow can rely on that determination to fund. Otherwise title will inherit another federal judgment call somebody else asked for.

Three years later:
“Everybody signs that.”

CFPB should probably find that waiver middle ground because not every deadline is an emergency just because everybody is upset.

10. TRID Was Built for a Standard Mortgage. Unfortunately, Housing Finance Has Met Real Estate.

CFPB’s TRID comments expose a structural problem: manufactured housing, construction-to-permanent loans, reverse mortgages, PACE and digital closings do not fit one standard mortgage disclosure system. How much specialization can TRID absorb before “integrated” stops meaning integrated?

Reverse mortgages walk in backwards. Construction loans do not have all their costs neatly known at application. PACE says we aren’t even a mortgage, yet here we are. It can involve property-improvement financing where urgency and transaction structure look nothing like a conventional purchase loan. Manufactured housing can involve a house seller, land seller, site work, affixation, titling issues involving the department of motor vehicles and assorted other ways to make a standard Closing Disclosure question its career choices.

Commenter after commenter asks CFPB for some version of tailored treatment.

And many of them have a point.

The danger is what happens next because diversity is a feature and compliance hates features.

Every specialized rule means new forms, new programming, new training, new lender overlays and another decision tree for settlement.

ALTA supports tailored approaches in areas such as construction and reverse mortgages but also reminds CFPB that the title industry spent more than $300 million implementing TRID in 2015.

That is worth remembering before anybody enthusiastically invents:
TRID Classic.
TRID Construction.
TRID Reverse.
TRID Manufactured.
TRID Small Lender.
TRID Digital Deluxe.
TRID PACE Emergency Roof Edition.

Because the lender may only need to implement the rules that apply to its product.

The title agency gets everybody.

Everybody Hates TRID Until You Ask What They’d Replace It With

There is something almost beautiful about 339 public comments on TRID.

Everybody arrives furious.

Lenders are tired of paying cures on fees they don’t control. Credit unions are drowning in technical compliance. Escrow companies want numbers before the day of closing. Consumer advocates think “flexibility” is a lovely word for “future loophole.” Title professionals would simply like the federal disclosure to stop requiring them to explain why the federal disclosure is wrong.

Then CFPB asks the dangerous question:

Fine. What should we do instead?

And suddenly the consensus gets wobbly.

The public-comment fight is much more interesting than “industry wants deregulation.” The real fight is over how do we support a diverse housing marketing with diverse financial solutions while limiting regulatory uncertainty and assumed financial risk?

None of these financial solutions becomes easier to understand because we force them to dress alike. The consensus is that TRID’s currently too rigid.

Title’s job in that debate is exactly what it has always been: look past the policy slogan and ask what happens when this rule hits an actual transaction, with actual money, actual documents and a consumer sitting across the table expecting somebody to know what the hell is going on.

There are absolutely parts of TRID that deserve surgery.

But before CFPB starts handing out “flexibility,” somebody needs to ask where the risk goes when the rules stop giving a definite answer.

Because eventually the file lands somewhere.

Usually on our desk.

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Stay Wicked,
Cheryl
Founder, Wicked Title Forum
From Chaos to Clarity—in Plain English
Contact Me (or hit reply)

🐐 Membership | 🔍 Find Answers | 🛒 Shop | 📢 Partner With Us

The Wicked Title Forum is a collaborative resource. If you spot something outdated or inaccurate, leave a comment—we’ll get it fixed.

**DISCLAIMER**

Content is for informational purposes, operational awareness and workflow strategy. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, it is not meant to be a compliance directive or replace the specific legal/financial advice of your retained experts. As always evaluate new information & tools with your underwriter/attorney, accountant/financial advisor, IT/security team, and internal policies, as needed, before implementation.

This site is partially supported by sponsor ads and sponsored content.

🐐 Membership | 🔍 Find Answers | 🛒 Shop | 📢 Partner With Us

The weirdest thing in the TRID docket is not how much everyone disagrees.

It is who keeps agreeing with whom.

Title and consumer advocates both get nervous when lenders start talking about replacing bright-line rules with “materiality.”

Appraisers and title professionals are making eerily similar arguments that TRID’s clean-looking fee lines can actually hide the real economics of the transaction.

Equifax wandered into a mortgage-disclosure fight to ask whether the “Credit Report Fee” on the Closing Disclosure is even the cost of that borrower’s credit report.

Snapdocs took a question about electronic signatures and proposed something much bigger: when a transaction is eligible, perhaps lenders should actually have to offer a digital closing option.

PACE administrators showed up with leaking roofs and dead air conditioners to argue that the federal government’s favorite example of an “emergency” is absurdly narrow.

And the reverse-mortgage industry and consumer advocates—who do not spend a great deal of time holding hands—both basically told CFPB:

That is what makes these comments worth reading as a group.

This is not one fight over whether TRID should be stricter or looser.

It is a pile of smaller fights over what the disclosure is supposed to accomplish, who absorbs the cost when it fails, and which part of the transaction CFPB has been looking at from the wrong end.

Once you sort the commenters by what they actually want, the coalitions get very strange very quickly.

And title is sitting in the middle of more of them than you might expect.

Brought to you by our friends, contributors & sponsors:🔒 Closinglock, 🌍 Foreign Tax CPA, 🪄Business Witch Academy, 🧱 Brickhouse Consulting, 🖊️Dotted Line Signings & Our Paying Readers
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The Big Mortgage Trades: Keep TRID, Loosen the Machinery

The broad mortgage coalition is considerably less revolutionary than some of the rhetoric surrounding TRID reform might suggest.

On August 7, the American Bankers Association, American Financial Services Association, America’s Credit Unions, Consumer Bankers Association, Housing Policy Council, Manufactured Housing Institute and Mortgage Bankers Association submitted a joint letter built around just three consensus recommendations:

1. rework TRID tolerances;

2. change the six-item definition of an application so lenders can obtain additional information before the Loan Estimate clock starts; and

3. make the bona fide personal financial emergency waiver more usable.

That is worth noticing.

Their joint position was not:
Burn the Loan Estimate.
Kill the Closing Disclosure.
Consumers have had it too good for too long.

It was much closer to:

TRID’s compliance machinery has become excessively technical, and we want more room to operate around it.

The tolerance complaint is especially broad. The trades argue that the current structure punishes immaterial differences instead of asking whether the consumer actually received meaningful cost information.

Individual lender filings then push farther in different directions—materiality standards, fewer redisclosures, broader third-party tolerances, shorter waiting periods, rescission flexibility, digital modernization and special treatment for particular products.

So yes, the lender-side center of gravity is roughly:

Three days bad. Redisclosures bad. Fewer technical rules good. Please make mortgage go faster.

Rude?
A little.

Wrong?
Not particularly.

But it is still more accurate to say lenders largely want to keep the disclosure architecture and reduce the procedural consequences surrounding it than to say the mortgage industry wants TRID dismantled.

Title and Escrow: Please Make the Disclosure Match the Transaction

This is where the title comments become much more interesting than generic “TRID is burdensome” coverage.

ALTA’s first and explicitly most important recommendation is fixing the simultaneous-issue title premium formula.

Its complaint is beautifully simple:

TRID can require title insurance to be displayed in amounts that are not the actual policy-level premiums being charged under state-filed rates.

Florida demonstrates how absurd that can become: an actual $25 simultaneous-issue lender-policy premium can appear as $1,275 on the federal Closing Disclosure, while the owner’s premium moves in the opposite direction. The combined total remains correct, but the individual numbers no longer tell the consumer what each policy actually costs. Florida consequently requires another disclosure to explain the federal disclosure.

Title and escrow also want relief around recording fees, transfer taxes, notary charges and other costs controlled by governments or third parties rather than creditors.

But then their agenda begins separating from the lenders’.

California’s Escrow Institute says many last-minute revisions are caused not simply by TRID requirements but by late lender-settlement coordination. Its members report being asked for final figures within 24 to 48 hours of closing on escrows that have been open for weeks. It wants earlier standardized data exchange between creditor and settlement.

That is an entirely different diagnosis.

Both can be right.
But only one of those solutions changes the upstream workflow.

Title and escrow also want clearer changed-circumstance rules, elimination or replacement of the separate seller CD, more consistent electronic-delivery guidance and usable emergency-waiver rules.

And on materiality, settlement becomes surprisingly conservative. (Not politically conservative. Operationally conservative.)

An escrow company holding other people’s money wants a rule that says:

You may disburse now.

It does not particularly want:

The lender reviewed the totality of the circumstances and considers the change immaterial. Good luck.

California Escrow Association warns that settlement may not even have the lender’s compliance information necessary to make that judgment independently.

So title’s position is not:
Less regulation.

It is closer to:

Give us accurate numbers, predictable rules and enough information to actually close the transaction.

That is a much stronger argument.

Consumer Advocates: The Annoying Friction Is Sometimes the Protection

The National Consumer Law Center coalition is the clearest counterweight to the deregulatory side of the docket. It strongly defends the existing pre-consummation review period and post-consummation rescission rights. It opposes making emergency waivers easier to normalize. And it is deeply skeptical of replacing bright-line requirements with a broad materiality standard.

Their basic argument is uncomfortable but important:

Some of the friction industry participants experience as delay is deliberately there to prevent consumers from being rushed.

A borrower who reaches the end of a stressful purchase transaction is highly motivated to sign whatever keeps the moving truck moving.

That is precisely when a mandatory period can have value.

The NCLC coalition therefore hears:

Let the consumer waive the waiting period.

and thinks:

Eventually somebody is going to put the waiver in DocuSign between the privacy notice and the flood form.

That is why it specifically objects to making preprinted/model emergency waivers routine.

Unsurprising was how often consumer advocates and settlement professionals land near one another. Not because they share the same philosophy. Consumer groups want bright lines because they protect borrowers. Escrow wants bright lines because somebody holding $487,000 in trust would really enjoy knowing whether the transaction can legally fund. Different roads. Same stop.

Then Approximately Every Appraiser in America Found the Comment Button

The appraisal contingent is one of the strangest and most organized subplots in this docket. Their campaign centers on the combined Appraisal Fee.

The Appraisal Regulation Compliance Council asks CFPB to require separate disclosure of:
Appraiser professional fee
and
Appraisal management company fee.

Its argument is that a consumer can see one appraisal charge without knowing how much was actually paid to the licensed appraiser and how much was retained for appraisal-management services.

That creates a fascinating parallel with title.

Title says:

The federal title lines do not show the actual policy-level economics.

Appraisers say:

The federal appraisal line does not show the actual service-level economics.

Both are challenging one of TRID’s foundational design instincts:

Fewer lines = simpler disclosure.

Sometimes fewer lines mean the consumer sees less.

ARCC goes much farther, alleging substantial AMC markups, workforce effects and anticompetitive practices, and it relies partly on its own collected exhibits and calculations. Several related lawsuits it cites remain allegations rather than adjudicated facts.

Those broader claims need to stay in the claimed/alleged bucket.

But the disclosure-design question stands on its own:

If the borrower pays for two distinct services, should the form show one price or two?

That is absolutely a TRID question.

Equifax Showed Up to Ask What a “Credit Report Fee” Actually Is

This one I did not have on my bingo card.

Equifax spends much of its filing defending the continued value of tri-merge credit reporting and discussing credit-data costs.

Commercial interest noted.

But then it gets to an unexpectedly good disclosure question.

Equifax says mortgage lenders can calculate credit-report charges using different methodologies, including:

• the actual products used for that borrower;

• an averaged methodology; or

• a closed-loan/funded-loan methodology where the consumers who successfully close may absorb costs associated with applications that did not.

Equifax wants CFPB to require greater clarity about which methodology produced the charge.

And again we arrive at the same uncomfortable question:

If the Closing Disclosure says:

Credit Report Fee: $X

but $X is not necessarily the actual cost of that consumer’s credit report—what exactly is the line telling them?

TRID keeps running into this problem.
Title premium.
Appraisal fee.
Credit report fee.

The form presents a beautifully specific dollar amount. The economic meaning underneath it may be considerably less specific.

Snapdocs Did Not Come Merely to Request Better E-Sign Guidance

Tech vendors absolutely got involved.

And Snapdocs brought one of the most aggressive proposals in the docket.

CFPB asked whether it should provide additional guidance around electronic forms and signatures.

Snapdocs said yes.

Then essentially added:

Also, once a transaction is legally and operationally eligible, maybe lenders should have to offer a digital-closing option.

Not require consumers to use it.

Require covered lenders to make the option available when the documents and transaction qualify, while preserving paper and hybrid choice.

That is a major escalation from:
Please clarify electronic delivery.

It turns eClosing from something the law permits into something that could potentially become a consumer availability right.

And title would be standing directly in the implementation path.

Because digital eligibility can depend on:
state law;
notarization;
county recording;
investor requirements;
insurer and guarantor requirements;
warehouse and custodian requirements;
eNote eligibility;
and title requirements.

Snapdocs acknowledges all of that.

It also has an obvious commercial interest in more digital closings.

Both things can be true.

The proposal deserves attention precisely because it is not generic vendor marketing. It is a genuine regulatory ask that could change closing workflow.

PACE Brought the Best Argument for Why “Consumer Protection” Can Become Consumer Friction

BRIDGE represents companies administering state-authorized PACE programs.

It also disagrees with CFPB’s underlying treatment of residential PACE as consumer credit subject to TILA.

So again: perspective noted.

But BRIDGE provided perhaps the most intuitive argument in the docket for making emergency waivers more usable.

A homeowner needs a roof.
Or the air conditioner dies during a heat wave.

BRIDGE calculates that the overlapping timing requirements applicable to the transactions it describes can total at least 13 business days from application through funding. It argues that consumers needing urgent repairs may instead seek faster and potentially more expensive credit.

Then the consumer coalition points out the opposite risk:

Make waivers too easy, and the consumer-protection period becomes routine opt-out paperwork.

There is your policy problem in one sentence:

Sometimes delay protects the consumer. Sometimes delay prevents the consumer from solving the emergency.

Welcome to regulation. Sorry about the paperwork.

Reverse-Mortgage Commenters Mostly Agreed the Current Disclosure Is Bad

Reverse mortgages produce one of the least combative parts of the docket. The National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association supports a tailored reverse-mortgage disclosure. Consumer advocates also support a carefully designed reverse-specific disclosure. The two groups differ in emphasis and desired safeguards, but the core diagnosis is remarkably similar:

Stop making consumers understand a reverse mortgage through disclosures built around a very different kind of loan.

NRMLA points to Federal Reserve testing showing some consumers misunderstood the TALC table so badly that declining percentages could be interpreted as a declining interest rate.

Its proposed alternative is much more visual and dollar-based: show the balance growing, the home value under assumptions and the equity relationship over time.

The consumer coalition also wants clearer loan-growth information, borrower-relevant scenarios, plain language, testing and counseling safeguards.

That is what healthy regulatory disagreement looks like.

Not:
Should this be understandable?

But:
What information actually produces understanding?

Manufactured Housing Came to Explain That “One Property + One Seller” Is Not Always a Thing

Manufactured housing also has an obvious institutional interest in specialized treatment. But its examples are extremely concrete.

A manufactured-home transaction can involve:
one seller for the home;
another for the land;
multiple deposits;
separate property components;
affixation or de-titling;
special recording charges;
and evolving construction or site-improvement costs.

The standard mortgage disclosure architecture is not terribly excited about any of this.

MHI’s filing essentially asks CFPB to acknowledge that a housing product serving an affordability role may have a transaction structure that simply does not fit the conceptual mortgage around which TRID was designed.

Construction lending makes the same argument from another direction.
Reverse mortgages make it backwards.
PACE comes in sideways.

Eventually CFPB has to decide how many special regimes a supposedly integrated disclosure system can contain before “integrated” becomes aspirational.

And the Small-Lender Fight Is Its Own Fight

Another fault line cuts across the main coalitions. Should smaller banks and credit unions have different TRID requirements?

Smaller depositories argue that fixed compliance costs hit them disproportionately because they cannot spread technology, legal, training and systems expenses across enormous loan volumes.

That is a real economic argument that falls apart when you take the next step. Because the next entity in line in the transaction is the title agency, and the title industry is disproportionately heavy on the side of small and micro businesses than giants. And a title company does not close only for one category of lender.

If CFPB creates:
Large Lender TRID
and
Small Bank TRID
and
Credit Union TRID
and perhaps different procedural options inside each—

the lender may receive relief while the settlement company gains three workflows.

That is why ALTA expressly cautions CFPB against creating separate lender-category requirements unless the consumer benefit clearly exceeds the additional settlement complexity.

This is one of the central recurring themes in the title comments:

A cost does not disappear merely because you moved it to somebody else.

The Coalitions Are Not Where You Expect Them

Once you lay the comments next to each other, the actual map looks something like this.

On reducing unnecessary redisclosures: lenders, title and escrow are broadly aligned.

On third-party fee tolerances: again, substantial lender/title/escrow overlap.

On keeping the three-day initial review period: title and escrow are more protective of it than the broad deregulatory narrative suggests, while some lenders want more flexibility and consumer groups strongly defend it.

On materiality: many lenders like the concept; consumer advocates dislike it; escrow worries about inheriting the uncertainty.

On emergency waivers: lenders, title, escrow and PACE want clearer usable pathways; consumer advocates fear normalization.

On form redesign: title wants very targeted fixes; appraisers want unbundling; Equifax wants more explanation; specialty products want tailored forms; ALTA simultaneously warns everybody that form changes cost a fortune.

On digital closing: nearly everyone can support clarification. Snapdocs goes significantly farther by proposing required lender-level availability where eligible.

On whether TRID should explain actual economic reality: this is where the strangest coalition appears.

Title professionals.
Appraisers.
Credit-data companies.
Reverse-mortgage commenters.
Manufactured housing.
Different industries.
Different financial interests.

Same basic complaint:

The standardized disclosure sometimes simplifies the transaction until it stops accurately explaining the transaction.

That may be the most important theme in the entire docket.

After more than a decade, most of the serious commenters are not debating whether mortgage consumers should receive standardized information. They are arguing about what happens when the standardized framework meets a transaction that is messier than the framework expected. Lenders experience that as compliance cost. Consumers experience it as protection against surprise and pressure. Title experiences it as the gap between the federal document and the closing sitting on the desk. Escrow experiences it as the need to know exactly when money can move. Appraisers experience it as a fee line that hides the economics underneath it. Credit-data companies see another fee line that may mean several different things. Tech vendors see rules that permit digital closing without consistently producing digital availability. Specialty finance sees conventional mortgage rules wrapped around unconventional products.

Nobody is completely neutral here. The biggest insights come when you look for the places where people with completely different incentives keep pointing at the same broken part.

Those are the places CFPB should probably inspect first.

Stay Wicked,
Cheryl
Founder, Wicked Title Forum
From Chaos to Clarity—in Plain English
Contact Me (or hit reply)

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The Wicked Title Forum is a collaborative resource. If you spot something outdated or inaccurate, leave a comment—we’ll get it fixed.

**DISCLAIMER**

Content is for informational purposes, operational awareness and workflow strategy. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, it is not meant to be a compliance directive or replace the specific legal/financial advice of your retained experts. As always evaluate new information & tools with your underwriter/attorney, accountant/financial advisor, IT/security team, and internal policies, as needed, before implementation.

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🕵️‍♂️Underworld Intel

Property Data Brokers Apparently Copy Each Other’s Homework

Two Property Databases Can Agree—and Still Both Be Wrong — Researchers auditing two major brokered property-record datasets found that for 1–2% of matched Cook County sales, reported sale prices differed from government records by more than 5%, while missing data and differences in how deed and property characteristics were reported produced coverage errors affecting 12–15% of transactions. More interesting: the errors were highly correlated—when brokers got a transaction wrong, they often got it wrong the same way. For title companies increasingly feeding aggregated property data into automation, search tools and AI, agreement between multiple commercial data sources may not be the independent verification it appears to be. Read the research

• This may be a trend, because in other news… In a New Test, AI Mortgage Assistants Got Nearly 1 in 4 Answers Wrong

The Fake Title Company May Be the Cartel

New federal charges describe an alleged cartel-controlled timeshare fraud operation that used call centers, stolen owner information, sham contracts, fictitious websites and impersonators to extract repeated advance fees from American victims. One 83-year-old reportedly encountered fake real-estate websites and title companies before being targeted again by impostor attorneys and government officials; federal authorities say the wider operation defrauded more than 6,000 Americans of approximately $400 million. It is a reminder that title-company impersonation is no longer confined to spoofed wiring instructions: criminals are building entire fake transaction ecosystems around the credibility of our industry.

TikTok Is Apparently a Property Manager Now

A Connecticut Realtor discovered that scammers had lifted every photo from her $599,000 for-sale listing and reposted the house on TikTok as a $1,400-a-month rental—including utilities. The fake listing actually sent prospective tenants to the property, and at least one of the fraudulent TikTok posts was reportedly still live after the scam was reported. For title people, the weird part isn’t rental fraud itself; it’s how easily the legitimate digital footprint surrounding a real property can now be cloned and repurposed into an entirely different fake transaction.

The Federal Government Is Having a Real-Estate Yard Sale

Treasury had IRS-CI seized homes hitting online auction this week, including properties in Kansas and Mississippi with $25,000 cashier’s-check deposits required just to bid.

👀 Things Wandering Toward Your Workflow

New tools, vendor launches, and tech experiments making their way toward the closing table.
👀 Get on the Workflow Watchlist

Ubitquity Wants Title Policies Talking Back

Ubitquity has launched NFTVault AI v3.0.1 Alpha, a blockchain-based title-policy storage platform that can now pull records from Qualia, ResWare and SoftPro through its new RWA-Scraper tool without requiring a traditional API integration. The update also adds encrypted decentralized document storage and an AI interface that lets users ask questions about stored title policies in natural language. It is still an alpha product—and very much at the blockchain end of the title-tech spectrum—but the attempt to turn static policy archives into searchable, interactive records is unusual enough to watch.

Titl Wants to Turn the Title Search Into a Five-Minute Product

Titl is building AI-powered title search and production tools that search land records, extract property data and produce title reports and abstracts, with blockchain used to store and protect land-record data. Its current products include automated title reports, title monitoring, abstract generation and pre-listing title review, and the company is also working directly with municipalities to digitize paper public records. The pitch is ambitious—title data in minutes instead of days—but the more interesting part may be how directly Titl is attacking the search-and-production layer rather than simply adding AI around the edges of an existing title workflow.

Payload Wants the Closing Money to Stop Traveling by Anxiety

Payload is a payments platform built for real estate businesses, including title companies, covering earnest money, closing disbursements, commissions, fees, vendor payments and reconciliation. It supports payment links, ACH, real-time payments and FedNow, along with automated reconciliation and integrations with real-estate software. In other words, another attempt to replace some portion of the industry’s longstanding email + wire instructions + collective anxiety payment strategy with structured, trackable workflows.

⚖️Legal

National

State

💸Business Growth

Turn 1031 Exchanges Into a Business Line, Not Just a Weird File

TLTA has an on-demand course called Work Smarter with 1031s: Turn Every Exchange into an Opportunity, aimed specifically at helping title professionals understand exchanges well enough to identify opportunities, coordinate the transaction correctly, and make 1031 work part of the agency’s service offering. It’s older than your 30-day preference, so I would not present it as new—but as an evergreen growth resource, it fills a useful gap in this section: growing revenue by becoming better at a transaction type you may already be seeing. TLTA Online Learning Center

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💼 Job Postings

• National Senior Title Examiner — Allegiant National Title
  Remote — U.S. | $80,000–$100,000
  Examines residential and commercial titles nationwide, identifying defects, exceptions and underwriting issues on complex files.

• Title Exam Reviewer — Innovative Title Solutions LLC
  Atlanta, GA — Remote | $55,000
  Performs advanced quality-control reviews of residential and commercial title examinations for accuracy, completeness and compliance with Georgia title standards.

• Escrow Closer — Primo Title Group LLC
  Orlando, FL — Remote/Hybrid/In Office | $60,000–$230,000
  Manages real estate closings from document preparation and title review through coordination of parties, funding and final settlement.

• Title Curative Specialist — First Integrity Title Company
  Irvine, CA — Remote | $21–$28/hour
  Works through title exceptions and curative issues including vesting, liens, releases, payoffs and other matters necessary to clear title.

• Closing Specialist (National) — First Title & Escrow
  Remote
  Guides borrowers and clients through settlement while reviewing title commitments and coordinating clearances, endorsements, lenders, processors, examiners and signing agents.

• Commercial Title Officer — First American
  New York, NY — Remote | $30.91–$41.20/hour
  Performs commercial title searches, analyzes public-record findings and helps resolve issues necessary to complete commercial title transactions.

• Title Processor — ClearEdge Title
  Clearwater, FL
  Reviews title commitments and supporting documents, works through title defects and coordinates with examiners, underwriters and closers to move files toward settlement.

• Commercial Escrow Officer — Fidelity National Financial
  Franklin, TN
  Handles commercial real estate escrow closings, including transaction documents, funds, underwriting requirements and coordination with customers and transaction parties.

• Escrow Operations Assistant — Stewart Title
  Greater Houston, TX
  Supports escrow officers and closing operations with file administration, customer service, document handling and other tasks needed to move transactions through closing.

• Escrow Officer (Texas) — Westcor Land Title Insurance Company
  Dallas, TX
  Reviews commitments, T-64 affidavits, deposits, disbursements and policies; initiates wires and checks; and helps maintain compliance with Texas title and escrow requirements.

💼 Place Your Job Posting Ad Here

Stay Wicked,
Cheryl
Contact Me (or hit reply)

The Wicked Title Forum is a collaborative resource. If you spot something outdated or inaccurate, leave a comment—we’ll get it fixed.

**DISCLAIMER**

Content is for informational purposes, operational awareness and workflow strategy. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, it is not meant to be a compliance directive or replace the specific legal/financial advice of your retained experts. As always evaluate new information & tools with your underwriter/attorney, accountant/financial advisor, IT/security team, and internal policies, as needed, before implementation.

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Title companies have modernized almost everything.

Orders arrive electronically. Documents move through digital workflows. Signatures happen remotely. Closers can manage transactions across counties, states, and time zones.

Then funding approval hits and someone starts printing checks.

Welcome to the last mile.

It is the part of the closing process where modern technology frequently gives way to paper, postage, bank portals, manual entry, overnight packages, reissues, and the occasional ritual of begging someone to cash the large check currently living in their glove compartment.

During a recent Wicked Title Forum panel, Scott Dizon of Deluxe Payment Exchange joined Alex Grundhoffer of Near North Title Group, Kristine Mediate of FIT Agency, Bryan Colbert of American Escrow Reconciliation, and Steve Hargraves of ShortTrack to talk about why money movement still creates so much friction—and why fixing it no longer requires ripping apart the systems title companies already trust.

The Hidden Bottleneck No One Owns

Most title teams treat disbursement as the finish line.

Funding is approved. Money goes out. File closed.

Except the file is not necessarily done.

“The finish line isn’t only just moving the money,” Colbert said. “It’s proving that the money landed.”

Until every payment has cleared, every outstanding item has been addressed, and the escrow account can be documented and defended, the agency is still carrying unfinished business.

That unfinished business may include:

• checks waiting to clear

• reissues and stop payments

• recording reimbursements

• stale outstanding items

• bank cutoff delays

• wire verification

• reconciliation exceptions

• escheatment exposure

The buyer may have the keys. The real estate agent may already be posting the closing photo. Meanwhile, the escrow team is still cleaning up the money trail.

That is the last mile problem.

The Quiet Cost of “We’ve Always Done It This Way”

Paper checks look inexpensive because the cost arrives in tiny pieces.

A little check stock. A little ink. An envelope. A stamp. Maybe an overnight fee because apparently we now routinely pay more than $20 to move a piece of paper across the country.

The bigger expense is labor.

Kristine Mediate looked around her agency and saw experienced employees printing, signing, stuffing, and mailing checks.

That is the real cost.

Your best people are not expensive because they know how to operate a printer. They are expensive because they know how to catch problems before those problems become claims, delayed closings, furious clients, or lost referral partners.

Steve Hargraves called the friction between disconnected systems the “swivel chair tax.”

Every time an employee leaves the title production system, opens another portal, rekeys data, compares screens, and carries information back again, the agency pays in time, attention, and preventable mistakes.

That is not a minor inefficiency.

It is a capacity ceiling.

The Risk Is Not Limited to Wires

Wire fraud gets most of the headlines, and for good reason. Sending escrow funds to the wrong account can be catastrophic.

But paper is not the safe little analog refuge we sometimes pretend it is.

Checks can be stolen, altered, washed, delayed, misplaced, duplicated, or left uncashed until they become a reconciliation and escheatment problem.

Several panelists had stories about chasing people who would not deposit checks worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Mediate pursued someone who failed to cash a $100,000 check—even after it was reissued.

Grundhoffer recalled a $50,000 check sitting in a safe for roughly two years.

I once spent months begging a builder to cash approximately $60,000 that was sitting in his vehicle.

As Mediate put it:

It is funny because it is absurd.

It is not funny when the item is still sitting on the escrow reconciliation months later.

Modern payment processing is not only about speed. It is about reducing the number of places where a payment can be intercepted, altered, forgotten, mishandled, or left unresolved.

The Real Reason Title Teams Resist Payment Innovation

Title companies are not afraid of technology.

They are afraid of broken technology.

They have survived enough failed rollouts, clumsy integrations, duplicated workflows, and expensive “solutions” that created three new problems for every one they solved.

Hargraves captured it perfectly:

That is especially true when escrow funds are involved.

Nobody wants to discover halfway through implementation that the new process disrupted accounting, created Positive Pay exceptions, forced staff to rekey data, or added yet another platform nobody wants to monitor.

The resistance is not ignorance.

It is scar tissue.

And that changes what a good solution must look like.

What Modernizing Actually Looks Like Without Ripping Everything Out

The good news is that payment modernization no longer requires a full operational demolition project.

Deluxe Payment Exchange integrates directly with SoftPro Select, ResWare, RamQuest, and AccuTitle. Title teams can issue eChecks or use Print+Mail from within the title production systems they already use.

Existing accounts-payable and Positive Pay processes stay in place. Payments continue to reconcile as checks.

This is not transformation.

It is augmentation.

An eCheck is still a check. It simply arrives electronically instead of traveling by truck, plane, sorting facility, mail carrier, and prayer.

Recipients can deposit it through familiar banking methods. When paper is still preferred, Deluxe can print the check on high-security stock, place it in an envelope, add postage, and mail it for the agency.

As Dizon described it, title teams can finally get out of the office “arts and crafts process.”

That means fewer:

• printers

• envelopes

• courier runs

• overnight packages

• rekeyed payment details

• physical checks sitting inside the office

• opportunities for human error

And because the solution works inside the title production system, it does not create another manual bridge between platforms.

That part is critical.

A digital payment process that requires staff to copy information into a separate portal is not modernization. It is manual work wearing a nicer outfit.

The Best Change Is Small Enough to Survive

Title companies do not need to convert every payment type overnight.

In fact, they probably should not.

Mediate started with real estate commissions and gradually expanded into payments to attorneys, surveyors, vendors, and other recipients. She also used eChecks as a practical bridge when payments had to be corrected during off-site closings.

Grundhoffer described adoption as an ongoing process. Some employees became immediate champions. Others kept using the familiar ten-minute workaround because they did not believe they had fifteen minutes to learn the permanent fix.

There it is: the operational trap.

Teams repeatedly spend ten minutes on a workaround because stopping long enough to eliminate it feels impossible.

The answer is not a massive technology initiative.

Start with the payments causing the most friction. Show the team what stays the same. Keep a paper option available. Prove the time savings on a real file. Expand from there.

The goal is not to shock the organization into the future.

It is to make the better process easier than the old one.

From Bottleneck to Competitive Advantage

The obvious benefit is speed.

Payees can receive eChecks within minutes of funding approval instead of waiting for the mail or an overnight package.

But the real payoff is bigger.

Mediate was clear about what she wanted to do with that recovered time:

That is the point where payment technology stops being a back-office utility and becomes a growth tool.

• Faster payments improve the experience for agents and vendors.

• Cleaner records reduce reconciliation headaches.

• Fewer outstanding checks reduce audit and escheatment exposure.

• Less manual handling narrows fraud opportunities.

• Less grunt work gives experienced staff more time to solve actual title problems.

• And a team that spends less time printing, mailing, rekeying, tracking, and recutting checks can handle more volume without automatically adding headcount.

Tech is not just operational anymore.

It is how title companies protect margin, create capacity, and compete.

Fix the Last Mile Without Rebuilding the Road

The title industry has earned its skepticism.

Escrow is not the place for flashy technology, half-built integrations, or vendors who disappear the moment implementation gets uncomfortable.

But caution should not become a permanent commitment to paper, postage, and preventable work.

The better question is not:
Do we need to replace our systems?

It is:
What can we add to the systems we already trust that removes friction without weakening control?

Deluxe gives title agencies a practical way to issue eChecks and Print+Mail payments directly through supported title production systems.

No grand demolition.
No accounting overhaul.
No forcing every payee into one method.

Just a better way to move money through the last mile—and finally bring the closing process closer to being truly done.

Explore Deluxe Payment Exchange

See how Deluxe Payment Exchange service integrates with SoftPro Select, ResWare, RamQuest, and AccuTitle to help title agencies reduce manual work, deliver payments faster, and modernize escrow disbursements without replacing their core workflows.

Visit the Deluxe TPS Integrations page for integration details, case studies, FAQs, and ROI tools.

Scott Dizon
Director of Business Development, Digital Payments for Title & Real Estate
Deluxe
scott.dizon@deluxe.com
470-550-6488

Meet the Panelists

Stay Wicked,
Cheryl
Contact Me (or hit reply)

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**DISCLAIMER**

Title agencies should evaluate payment processes, escrow controls, security procedures, and regulatory obligations with their financial institution, underwriter, compliance advisors, and other appropriate professionals before implementation.

Content is for informational purposes, operational awareness and workflow strategy. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, it is not meant to be a compliance directive or replace the specific legal/financial advice of your retained experts. As always evaluate new information & tools with your underwriter/attorney, accountant/financial advisor, IT/security team, and internal policies, as needed, before implementation.

This site is partially supported by sponsor ads and sponsored content.

Thank you to our friends, contributors & sponsors:🔒 Closinglock, 🌍 Foreign Tax CPA, 🪄Business Witch Academy, 🧱 Brickhouse Consulting, 🖊️Dotted Line Signings & Our Paying Readers
📢 Partner With Us

🐐 Your Whole Team Can Be Wicked, Too

If your internal knowledge-sharing system currently consists of forwarding Wicked Title articles to everyone who might need them, we have a better option. Wicked Title Forum offers group plans for title agencies, so more of your team can have direct access to the news, research, resources and weird title rabbit holes we cover every week.

Explore Group Membership →

🕵️‍♂️Underworld Intel

First American Opens a Crypto-to-Cash Path for Real Estate Closings

First American Title has partnered with CryptEscrow⁠ to support buyers who want to fund real estate purchases with cryptocurrency. CryptEscrow handles the digital-asset conversion and delivers U.S. dollars into the conventional closing process, allowing title and escrow teams to receive fiat currency without taking custody of crypto. The companies have already completed a $4.2 million purchase through the model, and First American agents can access discounted CryptEscrow pricing through AgentNet. For agents, this creates a practical way to accept business from crypto-wealthy buyers without turning the escrow account into a blockchain experiment.

🏘️ When the HOA Gets Weird, Check the Bylaws

Estoppels and resale certificates may get most of the closing attention, but Rexera’s guide to HOA bylaws, boards and directors explains where to look when the question becomes who actually has authority to do this? Bylaws can help untangle signing authority, delegated powers, transfer procedures, amendments and board changes—especially with self-managed associations, recent board turnover or conflicting governing documents. The useful red flags: missing amendments, competing versions, unclear officer authority and procedures that don’t match the rest of the HOA package.

When “The Bank Screwed Up” Becomes an Actual Legal Claim

A new guide to pursuing financial damages against a bank explains why negligence, breach-of-contract and statutory claims require more than proof that something went wrong. Mandatory arbitration clauses may block a lawsuit, ordinary deposit accounts generally do not create a fiduciary relationship, and the claimant must connect a specific duty or contractual promise to a documented loss. For title agencies moving large sums through escrow accounts, the practical lesson is less “sue your bank” and more “preserve the evidence”: account agreements, transaction logs, notices, correspondence and a precise timeline may determine whether a serious banking failure is recoverable—or merely infuriating.

Before Deeds, Closings Required Dirt, Literally

In medieval England, transferring land could involve standing on the property and publicly handing the new owner a clod of earth or a twig—a ceremony known as livery of seisin. Written deeds eventually replaced the dirt, but the ceremony’s essential functions survived: unmistakable intent, witnessed delivery and public proof of who controls the land. Even the covenant of seisin in a modern warranty deed carries the old concept forward by promising that the grantor owns the property and has the right to convey it.

🎥 Can a Tax Sale Happen Before Probate Is Finished and Can You Lose An Inherited House?

🐐Wicked Trends & Forces🌳

The patterns worth paying attention to…

👀 Things Wandering Toward Your Workflow

New tools, vendor launches, and tech experiments making their way toward the closing table.
👀 Get on the Workflow Watchlist

Rexera — Targets the closing tasks that are simple in theory and maddening in practice: HOA documents, municipal lien searches, mortgage payoffs and condo reviews. The value for title teams is not merely “automation”—it is fewer hours spent ordering documents, checking status, following up, re-entering information and waiting for somebody else to finish their part before the file can move. If a meaningful chunk of your staff’s day is currently devoted to getting the thing, checking on the thing and reminding someone about the thing, this is the category of workflow worth watching.

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👉 Read the full news Wicked Title CRE Newsfeed

🎟️Events

• 🎟️The 49 Advantage: Selling Fraud Protection

  • 📅 Aug 10th | ⏰ 10:00am EST/7:00am PST | 📍 Las Vegas Register Here

  • 📅 Aug 12th | ⏰ 10:00am EST/7:00am PST | 📍 Philadelphia Register Here

  • 📅 Aug 14th | ⏰ 10:00am EST/7:00am PST | 📍 Atlanta Register Here

• 🎟️Navigating Complexity Without Losing Yourself, or Your Team

  　• 📅 August 11th | ⏰ 1:00pm EST/10:00am PST | 📍 Register Here

• 🎟️2026 DCLTA Home Run Summer: Washington Nationals vs. Chicago Cubs

  • 📅 August 12th | ⏰ 6:45pm | 📍 DC: Learn More

• 🎟️ Minnesota LTA Annual Convention

  • 📅 August 13th–14th | ⏰ Times Vary by Session | 📍 Prior Lake, MN

• 🎟️ 2026 Alabama Title School in Mobile

  • 📅 August 18th | ⏰ 8am - 12pm DT | 📍 Mobile, AL

• 🎟️ Land Title Association of Arizona Annual Convention

  • 📅 Aug. 26–28, 2026 | ⏰ Times Vary by Session | 📍 Chandler, AZ

• 🎟️ NYSLTA Annual Convention

  • 📅 August 30th – September 2nd | ⏰ Times Vary by Session | 📍 Uncasville, CT

• 🎟️ OLTA Annual Convention

  • 📅 September 1st–3rd | ⏰ Times Vary by Session | 📍 Westerville, OH

• 🎟️ North Dakota Land Title Association Annual Convention

  • 📅 Sept. 2–3, 2026 | ⏰ Times Vary by Session | 📍 Dickinson, ND

See all events

💼 Job Postings

• Title Examiner / Senior Title Examiner — gpac
  Waxahachie, TX | $55,000–$85,000/year
  Handles residential, acreage and commercial title examinations, prepares commitments, identifies and clears defects, and works with underwriting counsel on complex title issues.

• Jr. Title Examiner — Title Closing Services LLC / Weichert, Realtors
  Cherry Hill, NJ | Remote | $55,000–$75,000/year
  Supports title examiners by reviewing proposed sale documents, preparing endorsements, updating commitments and invoices, and ordering additional county and state searches.

• Title Processor — Sonic Title Agency
  Dearborn, MI | $50,000–$55,000/year
  Processes title files by reviewing ownership records, deeds, leases, surveys and contracts, clearing discrepancies and coordinating underwriting and closing requirements.

• Title Agency Manager — Investors Title Company and Affiliates
  Brentwood, TN | On-site
  Runs day-to-day title agency operations, including staff and workflow management, commitments, policies, closings, settlement functions, financial controls and compliance.

• Title Abstractor — Galbreath Costner
  Charlotte, NC | On-site
  Searches deeds, mortgages, judgments, tax records and other public records, verifies legal descriptions and metes-and-bounds tracts, and identifies potential title problems affecting NC and SC transactions.

• Commercial Title Underwriter – Renewables Team — First American
  Remote — multiple U.S. states | $97,700–$130,300/year
  Underwrites commercial title for solar, wind, battery-storage, transmission and other energy projects involving complex leases, easements, access rights, mineral rights, surveys and multi-site portfolios.

• Escrow Officer — Old Republic Title
  Glendale, AZ | On-site
  Coordinates escrow transactions and closings, prepares instructions and documents, manages funds and disbursements, and confirms requirements for title insurance issuance are satisfied.

• Client Success Manager — Pippin Title
  Remote — U.S.
  Owns retention, account expansion and the client experience for Pippin’s nationwide title-search customers, including title agencies, lenders, underwriters and law firms.

• Business Development Manager – Texas — PropLogix
  Texas | Remote
  Develops relationships with title companies, escrow teams, attorneys and real estate professionals around tax certificates, HOA certificates, municipal lien searches and other closing due-diligence services.

• Title Closer — Workway
  Sanford, FL | $26–$28/hour
  Manages files from sales contract through closing, including title clearance, surveys and payoffs, lender balancing, Closing Disclosure/HUD preparation and closing scheduling.

💼 Place Your Job Posting Ad Here

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Cheryl
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**DISCLAIMER**

Content is for informational purposes, operational awareness and workflow strategy. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, it is not meant to be a compliance directive or replace the specific legal/financial advice of your retained experts. As always evaluate new information & tools with your underwriter/attorney, accountant/financial advisor, IT/security team, and internal policies, as needed, before implementation.

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