[Pat sez: I assumed that this was a special service performed by the company - identitifying nearby property ownerst who had tobe notified befoe a certain land use application could be approved.]

The best advice I ever got as a title attorney was, “keep your mouth shut, if title insurance is in the paper, it’s never good, even when it’s good.” DIRT conversations aside, I have found those words to ring true time after time. Many years ago, when I was at CTIC, another underwriter issued some policies for a residential subdivision in which the local municipality allowed a letter of credit guaranteeing developer’s installation of public improvements to lapse. When the developer went under (for other nefarious reasons), leaving the roads and other amenities unfinished and 60%+ of the lots unsold, the municipality hit the few homeowners with massive assessments (30K+ each) to finish the public improvements. All this despite, as the local paper put it, “the title company issuing a deed telling the homeowners that the property was “free from encumbrances”.” My neighbor at the time, whose sister-in-law had purchased such a home, asked me how “my” company could have screwed over so many innocent people. I kept my mouth shut.

I’m sure this one will make for a nice appeal. I can’t wait to hear the underlying story (which most claims people will tell you is always entertaining).

Cheers,

–Mike

FBI spokesman Jim Margolin said agents went with a search warrant as part of an “ongoing investigation.” The search started at 8 a.m. and continued into the early afternoon, ending with agents leaving with boxes of records, he said.

First,I laughed. Then after clicking on the attachment I found that it was one of my own searches.

It left me wondering how this person is considered an abstractor and is she one of many. And now that the Court House Abstractors are gone, Who is teaching THEM.

I have been reading your blog posts and it saddens me to hear they can’t find any experienced abstractors and are flying teams to various areas. I have a different take on some of that, and based on some of the messes I am seeing from the ramifications of the lack of filing assignments, and the whole mortgage debacle, etc. they want the experienced abstractors gone because we are the ones uncovering all of this and they are flying in to search themselves to cover what they probably shouldn’t have insured. Let’s face it often the Title company owned the lender or vice versa or were co-mingled in some fashion.