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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.
🔒Housing transactions are still getting done—but three numbers this week suggest some of those deals are standing on a much thinner financial floor than the national market statistics reveal.
👀 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.
🔒Two familiar pieces of title-office technology are doing more work than many agencies realize—and the missed opportunity is not really about software at all. It is about what happens when expensive systems sit underused, disconnected, or treated as tools instead of part of the agency’s growth engine.
Did your email cut off this newsletter? Be sure to read to the end.
⚖️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.
🔒Four Washington moves this week sit at very different distances from the closing table. One rewrites a set of FHA rules that has barely moved in decades. The others change the architecture around CFPB power and federal payment-scam policy—but the parts that matter to title are not the same parts making the headlines.
⚖️Legal: State
🔒One state just put a much shorter clock on money sitting in escrow. Another quietly changed something examiners see every day. And one definition change reaches farther into title work than it first appears.
Upgrade to find out which state changes could actually alter the way a file is handled.
🎟️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
📅 October 12-15th | ⏰ All day | 📍 Scottsdale, AZ
🎟️VLTA Annual Convention (Sneak Peek)
📅 October 20-21st | ⏰ All day | 📍 Roanoke, VA
💼 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
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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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