🐐Title Underground: The HOA Gets Weird, The Bank Screws Up and Closings Require Literal Dirt📰
Plus: AI Oversight Could Be Coming for You, 3% Mortgages No One Can Pay, and California is Concerned About Your Office Bathroom (9-August-2026)
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⚠️ Last Call
Submit feedback on CFPB funding, rulemaking, supervision and enforcement emailed to fsc119@mail.house.gov by August 21, 2026 →
🐐 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.
🕵️♂️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?
✅ Correction
A reader brought a broken link to our attention from the July Monthly Digest. Here is the corrected link:
🐐Wicked Trends & Forces🌳
The patterns worth paying attention to…
🤖 AI Oversight Is Becoming a Vendor-Management Issue
Fannie Mae has quietly expanded its AI expectations in a direction that could reach well beyond lenders’ own internal systems—and put title agencies and technology vendors under a very different kind of scrutiny.
They Inherited the House—and a 3% Mortgage Nobody Would Let Them Pay
Families inheriting homes with ultra-low-rate mortgages are running into a bizarre problem: they own the house, they want to make the payments, and somehow that still isn’t enough to keep everything from going sideways. Plus a Wicked Title meme for members only.
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👀 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.
Did your email cut off this newsletter? Be sure to read to the end.
⚖️Legal
National
Bills to Watch
Two new housing bills are poking at very different pressure points in the mortgage system—one at the closing table, the other much farther upstream. Either could eventually change rules title teams have learned to work around.
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State
California would like you to check the bathroom sign and has something to say about the real price of business financing loans, Tennessee rewrites the rules for split closings, Virginia declares “TDB” is not an escrow agent, and two states scrutinize home-equity arrangements that may not be what their marketing says they are.
🔒Reserved for Members Upgrade here.
🏢 Commercial Real Estate
👉 Read the full news Wicked Title CRE Newsfeed
The Dirt Is Only Half the Deal
One of commercial real estate’s hottest sectors is becoming a very different kind of title file—where owning the land may be the easy part. Plus, North Carolina has added a new closing wrinkle for certain commercial buyers, and in Florida, one line on the tax bill may be pointing to a much bigger due-diligence question.
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🎟️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
📅 August 30th – September 2nd | ⏰ Times Vary by Session | 📍 Uncasville, CT
📅 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
💼 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
Stay Wicked,
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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