🐐Fraud Hits High, APOR Could Die, Phishing TOAD Will Make You Cry
This Week's Title Underground (07-Dec-2025): We don't call the markets, but did someone predict, 50% home price constrict? Watchdogs fact-finding, Are Email Agreements Binding?
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🎄 December Challenge Alert
We’re celebrating the launch of our new homepage with a little holiday chaos. Somewhere on www.WickedTitle.com, Super Title Goat is dressed up as Santa Claus… and finding him will bring presents to your doorstep.
In order to bring you unbiased content, tutorials, and helpful information curated from everyone (sponsors or not), we rely on readers like you to steup up and become paid members of the Wicked Title Forum. If you’ve done this, we are forever grateful for you. If you haven’t yet, then go find Santa Goat and collect an early present.
Spot the Santa Goat, click him, and you’ll get 25% off a full year of Wicked Title access at the 2025 rate — plus you’ll lock in that rate for life and unlock all of our content for entire year!
No gimmicks. Just a hidden goat in a Santa suit and a deal that won’t show up again.
Happy hunting — and may your search skills be as sharp as your title skills.
📜Educational Resources
🌍 Foreign Tax CPA: FIRPTA & Year-End Closings: Why Timing Your Sale Matters
🎓 All Things Assessed (MS) (CE) ($)
📅 Webinar: How to Outsmart Digital Signing Fraud (Dec 10th)
📅 Webinar Back to the basics: All things strategy, marketing, and lead generation (Dec 11th)
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🕵️♂️Underworld Intel
📄 New Study from Milliman Inc. Finds Fraud & Forgery Accounts for over 40% of All Title Insurer Loses!
📄 Palmetto Land Title Association unveils redesigned website
🎥 Let’s Talk About the Report of a 50% Drop in the Housing Market Next Year
📄 The Blurring of the Second Home: Millennials are buying “second” homes faster than primary homes. What do they want and how is the market evolving to serve them?
📄 The Politics of Housing: Rent Freezes and the 50-year Mortgage
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Real estate pros, this one’s for you! “Settlement Sells” is our Jingle Bells parody about bidding wars, slippery driveways, wild offers, and one determined client who buys the snow-kissed house anyway. If you’ve ever survived this market with humor (or caffeine), hit play and laugh with us. 🎄🏡🔥
Don’t just settle—rock your way to the finish line!
🎧 Listen now and share the holiday spirit with a twist!
⚖️Regulatory & Policy Updates
National
HUD
CFPB
📢 CFPB Seeks Comments on Proposed Modification of Equal Credit Opportunity Act (learn more) (Comment period closes Dec 12, 2025)
Benchmark Mortgage Rates - APOR isn’t abstract—it’s the guardrail that keeps mortgage lending predictable enough for the whole closing ecosystem to function. Remove it, and the housing market gets choppy fast. If CFPB stops publishing APOR—or replaces it with a DIY, “calculate-it-yourself” method—lenders lose the clear, government-issued benchmark they must use to originate Qualified Mortgages, which puts their liability shield at risk. The moment QM certainty wobbles, lenders pull back, rates jump for riskier borrowers, pipelines freeze, and title agents feel the impact first through stalled approvals, delayed clear-to-closes, and sudden credit tightening across their purchase and refi files.
FHA, FHFA, GSEs
📰 Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac limit public housing data releases
📰 FICO to release 10T historical data after reaching deal with FHFA - FICO Score 10T has taken another step toward potential adoption by government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with the credit scoring company reaching an agreement with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) for the release of historical data associated with single-family loan-level datasets.
📰 FHFA reveals Fannie and Freddie conforming loan limits for 2026 - In most areas of the U.S., the cap for one-unit properties will be $832,750 next year, an increase of $26,250 from 2025.
Understanding the Past to Peer into the Future: These articles take an in-depth look at the role of GSEs in the ‘08 housing crisis and this understanding helps to foresee potential future risks.
State Regulatory Changes
📰 Vermont Retaliatory Fee Update for Delaware Residents Effective January 1, 2026. Vermont will be updating the non-resident retaliatory fees for Delaware residents. These new fees range from an extra $5 to $25, depending on the license class. Initial licenses will be listed at $155.00. Renewal license will now be $125.00
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🤖PropTech, Cyber Security & Fraud
Cyber Security & Fraud
AI
PropTech
🐐 This Wednesday’s Deep Dive:
Why does it feel like half your job is translating government acronyms instead of clearing title? This week’s Deep Dive pulls back the curtain on the federal web behind every closing—CFPB, FinCEN, FHFA, IRS, HUD, FIO, the Fed, FDIC, and more—and shows how each one quietly reaches into your escrow account, your software, your CDs, and your liability.
You’ll get a plain-English walkthrough of which agencies truly matter for title, what they actually control (RESPA, TRID, FIRPTA, FinCEN’s real estate reporting rule, GSE selling guides, FDIC escrow rules, etc.), and how their decisions turn into the “new requirements” that land on your desk with zero warning. It’s not a law school lecture—it’s a field guide to who’s pulling the strings so you can stop reacting and start planning.
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Cheryl
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