the wasserblawg

Title Insurance companies are licensed and regulated by each state the they are authorized to transact business in. In Illinois, that duty falls to the Department of Financial & Professional Regulation . On November 7, IDFPR announced the death of one of those companies, Guaranty Title & Trust Company . Inquiries regarding the GTT liquidation and requests for Proofs of Claim forms should be directed to: The Office of the Ohio Insurance Liquidator, Attn: GTT , 50 W. Town Street, Third Floor, Suite 350, Columbus, OH 43215. The telephone for that office is (614) 487-9200. SHOULD CONSUMERS TAKE ACTION? Well, that is going to depend on where you closed or who insures your title. If your title insurance comes from Chicago Title, Ticor Title, First American, Stewart or LandAmerica , or Old Republic (which collectively control roughly 93% of the title insurance markets) you probably don't have any worries . Guaranty was not one of the "big five." Same goes for tit...

Most Chicago area home closings take place at a title insurance company's office. Just setting foot into those offices these days tells you all you need to know about the current state of the Real Estate business: Still open, ready and willing to do business, but it's just not happening. Most are pretty lonely places right now. The numbers seem to bear this out. According to the American Land Title Association and Inman News, All five of the nation's five biggest title insurers lost money during the third quarter. Those grisly numbers: First American, the nation's largest, reported an $8.3 million third-quarter loss Fidelity, number two in 2007, lost $198 million and closed 115 title and escrow offices Stewart reported $30 million in losses, closed 40 branches, and canceled 1,750 independent agencies LandAmerica lost $599.6 million! which may explain its recent announcement that it was being acquired by Fidelity, and the urgent need for an immediate $30 million in sec...

Good News: It took two days of hearings to get there, but an Oregon Judge cleared a man of public indecency charges, following his arrest for riding his bicycle, ahem, unclothed. Riding your bicycle naked (in parts of Oregon, anyway) may well be a protected form of public expression (your right to free speech)! Read the whole Oregon News report here . Chicago's next World Naked Bike Ride will take place Saturday June 13, 2009

The body of federal law that governs most aspects of residential closings that involve a new mortgage loan is known as the Real Estate Settlement Practices Act (RESPA). Our US Department of Housing and Urban Development, among other things, issues and enforces the regulations that flesh out andimplement the law. HUD announced today that it amending its regulations to require mortgage loan brokers to actually give prospective buyers a standardized Good Faith Estimate of their closing cost. OK, the truth is that they already require GFEs, they are changing the format. What was once a fairly incomprehensible one page form is now a three page colorized incomprehensible form, that will come with a fourth page of "explanations" HUD estimates that the new regulation will save the average consumer $700 at the closing table. Cool right? Here's the catch: The reegulation does not go into effect until Janury 1, 2010!

There are five major title insurance "families" in the United States. Together, they account for roughly 93% of all title insurance here. Last week, two of the five announced a merger . Subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals, Fidelity National Financial and Land America will combine forces, becoming the nation's largest title insurance provider. If so, they will control nearly half of the overall market. This is not really so much of a merger as it is an acquisition: One of Fidelity's subsidiaries, Chicago Title, is going to bail out Land America with a $30 million in stand-by secured credit to provide liquidity and to help Land America's subsidiaries Commonwealth Title and Lawyers Title pay down other debts. Conventional wisdom, and historical indications suggest that the title insurance industry is usually a hugely profitable one. In 2003, according to ALTA, the industry paid out about $662 million in claims, about 4.3% percent of the $15.7 billion t...

The Sterling residences are just up the street, across the river from my office. I wrote about them some time ago and the high rate of foreclosures there, owing in large part to the developer's creative marketing efforts that fed the greed of many condo investor/speculators. Here's a pretty grim example of the train wreck that we are all witnessing. The owners of this unit are having trouble selling it at a 40% discount to what it sold for four years ago! Yikes.

Most Illinois sellers are required to give several different disclosures to prospective home buyers, so that those buyers are made aware of various types of possible (or known) defects. Such property disclosures are required in at least 32 states, some are pretty bare-boned, some are 10 or more pages long. Locally, we have (a) real property disclosures; (b) lead based paint disclosures; (c) radon disclosures; and in the City of Chicago, (d) heating cost disclosures. Our real property disclosure covers 21 specifically enumerated types of material defects ranging from unsafe drinking water, to defects in the roof or ceiling, to boundary and lot line disputes. I just learned of a new one that seems to be an emerging trend in some of our sister states. (Mississippi, Missouri, and South Dakota) now require a seller to disclose whether or not a given property has ever been used as a methamphetamine lab! This disclosure must be made regardless of whether the persons involved in the product...