🐐🎁 Season’s Compliance & New Year Fixes
This Week in the Title Underground (21-December-2025): Holiday compliance updates, FIRPTA refund fixes, & a look at how my title work evolved—from typewriters
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🎄 The Santa Goat Isn’t Hiding Forever…
We’re heading into the heart of December, which means two things: closings are getting chaotic, and Super Title Goat is still wandering around www.WickedTitle.com in full Santa regalia.
If you haven’t found him yet, now’s the time. Clicking the Santa Goat still unlocks 25% off a full year of Wicked Title access at the 2025 rate — and permanently locks in those rates for life.
A surprising number of readers have spotted him already… and an equally surprising number have told me, “I looked everywhere, I can’t find the goat.” HINT: Scroll down.
He’s there. He’s festive. And he’s guarding the best deal we’ve ever offered until the ball drops on New Year’s Eve. Go take another lap — he’s worth it.
📜Educational Resources
🐐🎙️It Started with a Typewriter and a WTF Moment: The Story Behind Wicked Title
🌍 Foreign Tax CPA: FIRPTA Refunds: Helping Sellers Recover Withholding in the New Year
🎓 AI and Ethics for Real Estate Lawyers [ETHICS] (MS) (CE) ($)
📄Abstracting for the Future: How Energy vs. Data Center Properties Differ in Title Research
📄Special Circumstance Signings: Signing by Mark and Signing by Proxy
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🕵️♂️Underworld Intel
📄Innovation, loss and legal battles: The year in title and escrow
📄Google enters portal wars with MLS listings in select cities
Closers don’t need horror movies—December provides all the jump scares. From dead sellers to missing lender packages and debt collectors chasing the file, this Christmas parody hits every chaotic twist title agents survive yearly. Laugh before you cry… then send it to the one coworker who’s also barely holding it together. 🖤
🎧 Listen now and share the jam!
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⚖️Regulatory & Policy Updates
National
📰Fed’s uncertain interest rate path highlights dilemma of data dependence
CFPB
FinCEN
HUD
📰Urban Institute: Assumable Mortgages Unlikely to Stimulate the Housing Market
📰Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Reportedly Bulking Up Their Balance Sheets
State Regulatory Changes
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🤖PropTech, Cyber Security & Fraud
🔐Cyber Security & Fraud
🤖AI
🏢💻PropTech
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🐐 This Wednesday’s Deep Dive:
We’re pressing pause between Christmas and New Year’s so title brains (mine and yours) can cool off for a minute. No new Deep Dive this week—just permission to log off, close a few tabs, and remember there’s more to life than AOSs, CDs, and “Can we move this up?” emails.
We’ll be back on Tuesday, January 7 with a special deep dive for our Mississippi members! (And yes, I still have to sing it to spell it, how about you?)
And before we wrap the year, a little holiday mischief: we’re running a special challenge on our newly launched homepage at www.WickedTitle.com. Find Super Title Goat dressed as Santa, click him, and you’ll unlock a year of full access for 25% off the 2025 rate—and you’ll lock in those 2025 rates for life.
Goat hunting has never paid off this well.
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Brought to you by: Brickhouse Consulting, Closinglock, Dotted Line Signings, Foreign Tax CPA, & Razi Exchange
Stay Wicked,
Cheryl
Contact Me (or hit reply)
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The Wicked Title Forum is a crowd-sourced resource. If you spot outdated or incorrect info, drop a comment and we’ll update the article.
All sample forms must be reviewed for federal, state, and underwriter compliance.
This content is for general guidance and educational purposes only. I am not an attorney and this is not legal, financial, or underwriting advice. Use at your own risk, and always consult your attorney and/or underwriter for advice specific to your situation.
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Excellent roundup of the holiday compliance landscape. The FinCEN AML rule updates buried in here are critical but easy to miss in the noise of year-end closings. I've seen title agents get blindsided by these changes mid-transaction, and the data collection burdens alone are gonna require serious workflow adjustments. The judge backing FinCEN in the FNF lawsuit basically solidifes the enforcement trajectory for 2026.