New Foreclosure Decision by Appeals Court

The Massachusetts Appeals Court held today that a homeowner was precluded from litigating in a Superior Court action issues related to the legality of the foreclosure process and to the alleged negligence of his lender in processing the homeowner’s mortgage modification application where the homeowner failed to raise those same issues in an earlier eviction proceeding between the same parties in the District Court.

 
The case is Santos v US Bank, Massachusetts Appeals Court case 15-P-334. The full decision is available here. 

Midyear Revenue Collections

Besides recording documents, the registry of deeds also takes in revenue for the Commonwealth in the form of recording fees, excise taxes, surcharges for the Community Preservation Act matching fund, and a few others. Revenue for the first six months of calendar year 2016 is significantly higher than the same six months in 2015. Here are some particulars:

Overall revenue is up 19%, from $6,320,680 in the first half of CY15 to $7,520,323 of CY16;

Recording fees are up 5%, from $2,021,201 to $2,123,125;

The big increase is in deeds excise tax collections which increased 31%, from $3,450,603 to $4,518,864. Because the number of deeds recorded is only up slightly, this indicates that home prices are up considerably since the excise tax is calculated based on the sales price of property sold.

Middlesex North: 2016 Midyear Statistical Summary

The number and type of documents recorded at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds during the first half of 2016 remained stable compared to the same period in 2015 although foreclosure-related documents were up by about one-third. Here are the numbers for major document types:

Deeds were up 17%, rising from 3018 in the first half of 2015 to 3520 in the first half of 2016;

Mortgages were up just 1%, with 5434 recorded in 2015 and 5505 recorded in 2016;

Foreclosure deeds were up 26%, rising from 86 in 2015 to 108 in 2016;

Orders of Notice were up 33%, rising from 185 in 2015 to 246 in 2016;

Overall documents were up 5%, from 28,249 in the first half of 2015, to 29,674 in the first half of 2015.

Electronic recording continues to grow. Of the 29,674 documents recorded in the first half of 2016, 14,701 (50%) were recorded electronically. About half of all deeds (1703 of 3520) were recorded electronically, but 68% of all mortgages (3735 of 5505) came to the registry electronically.