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🐐 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.
Maybe that’s $5. Maybe it’s $15, $25, $40, or the full $68.
I’m not going to tell you what the work is worth. You’ve been reading it. You know.
And if price has been the only thing keeping you on the free side, today there really isn’t a reason to stay there.
Your paid subscription opens up everything I keep behind the paywall: the deeper stories in Title Underground, Wednesday features, original research, practical analysis, downloadable tools and templates, digital magazines, and the growing archive built specifically for people who actually work in title and settlement.
For one day, you set the price and pay what you believe Wicked Title is worth to you.
Offer ends at midnight August 24.
🕵️♂️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.
🔒 Title companies have spent years being told to wait for the market to come back. The newest industry numbers suggest the smarter question is whether waiting is still the strategy at all.
Paid members get the deeper pattern—and what it may mean for how agencies grow next. Upgrade your membership now, or convince your boss to get a group membership.
👀 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.
Did your email cut off this newsletter? Be sure to read to the end.
⚖️Legal
National
🔒TRID tolerances may finally be headed toward a real rethink, especially for fees lenders and title companies don’t fully control. At the same time, MISMO is trying to standardize one of the agreements still slowing down eNote and digital-closing workflows.
Paid members get what each proposal could actually change—and where the friction may move next.
State
🔒Three state-level changes are creating the kind of closing-table problems that are easy to miss until somebody asks why the money, deed or tax bill suddenly works differently. Missouri is adding new rules around wholesaler and sale-leaseback transactions, while South Carolina is changing both how earnest-money delivery gets documented and how heirs’ property can be cleaned up without triggering an unwanted tax consequence. Upgrade here.
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.
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🔒 We’re also getting into the less-obvious owner and operations risks: why selling or shutting down a company may not end directors’ liability, how issuing S-corp stock can create problems you did not intend, and whether your E&O and cyber coverage actually protects against the threats title agencies are dealing with now. Read it all…
💼 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
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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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