Y2K plus ten

Ten years ago this fall we were in the midst of intense preparations for Y2K and all of the possible communications, computer and technology problems associated with it. In the future, those who didn’t live through it AND understand it will be tempted to belittle all the effort we expended on Y2K preparations, but the reality is that the work was necessary and beneficial. Back in 1999 this office was still using a Wang minicomputer that was running land management software that was not Y2K compatible. Written in the early 1980s when computer memory and storage were still scarce commodities, our LandTrac software only used six digits for dates, not eight. So a date such as October 13, 2009 would be entered in the system as 101209 making it indistinguishable from October 13, 1909 or 1809 or 1709. To fix this problem, we hired a half dozen contractors at great expense, but all was fixed and tested well in advance of New Years Day.

Y2K preparations had many ancillary benefits. In state government, at least, substantial funds were appropriated and spent on technological upgrades of all types. Having limped through the last few years of county government and transitioned to part of state government only in the summer of 1997, we were still using aged and obsolete computers and electronic equipment in 1999. Unlike the Wang software which we judged to be “repairable”, almost all of our other equipment was replaced. This action not only prepared us for the Y2K transition, it also gave us the information technology infrastructure we needed to make the paperless registry we have today a reality.

Motion to Reconsider on "Defective Foreclosure" case

Today’s Globe has a prominent story (“Foreclosure sales in limbo over title issue”) on the impact that a March 2009 Land Court ruling has had on property sales across the state. The ruling (here, in PDF form) addressed three similar cases brought by lenders to “remove a cloud from the title” of properties that had been foreclosed. In each case, the lender had conducted (or at least commenced) foreclosure proceedings before the document assigning the mortgage being foreclosed to the entity conducting the foreclosure was recorded at the registry of deeds. The Court ruled that such a situation left a defect in the title, reasoning that at a minimum, having such ambiguous documentation of the mortgage at the start of the foreclosure could suppress possible bidders to the detriment of the borrower/property owner who is indebted to the lender. (Our previous post on this case is here).

The Globe story reports that this case has stifled efforts by many municipalities, non-profits, and regular home buyers to purchase previously foreclosed homes. Because of this – and because the practice ruled improper by the case was so widespread – the plaintiffs in the case have asked the judge to reconsider his ruling. His decision on that motion may be released today.

Moon Shot

A picture is worth a thousand words!

Computers in 2020

This is a pretty interesting view of what computers might be like in the year 2020. Be sure to read the opening statements made a number of years ago by so called techie experts. You'll get a kick out of them.

Five years of foreclosures

After posting end of September statistics that showed a 100% increase in the number of orders of notice (the document that starts the foreclosure process)filed in September 2009 as compared to September 2008, someone asked that I provide a graph showing more long-term trends in foreclosures. Clicking here will open a PDF version of a line graph that tracks the number of orders of notice and of foreclosure deeds recorded here in Middlesex North on a quarterly basis from January 2004 up to the present. The largest number of orders of notice recorded during this period came in the 1st quarter of 2007 when 304 were recorded. Next came 1st quarter 2008 which had 268 (by way of comparison, September 2009 had 226). As for foreclosure deeds, the peak number was reached in the second quarter of 2008 (209 records) with 3rd quarter 2008 as the runner-up (155 recorded).

Bargains at foreclosure auctions?

More and more often people are asking me about foreclosure auctions as an opportunity to purchase a property for a home or as an investment. That folks are comfortable enough to begin thinking of investment opportunities is a good sign; that there are enough foreclosures to stimulate such thinking is not. After explaining that I’m no expert in real estate investment strategies, I do share my observation that the best deals can be had not at the foreclosure auction but by subsequently purchasing a property that has recently been foreclosed. Here’s how I see it:

In almost all foreclosures, the foreclosing lender is also the high bidder at the auction and so becomes the new owner of the property. Other possible buyers who show up at the auction tend to be looking for steep bargains and are unwilling to match what is bid by the bank. The foreclosing banks make relatively high bids for a number of reasons. The foreclosing lender has a fiduciary obligation to the borrower to obtain a fair value for the property and while there’s certainly no requirement that the auction obtain fair market value, the law requires something close to that absent extenuating circumstances. When the bank bids this higher amount, it is also trading one asset on its books (the debt owed by the homeowner) for another asset (the foreclosed home) of relatively equal value. This puts off the realization of the loss by the bank.

Although the foreclosing lender almost always becomes the new property owner, that is at best a temporary arrangement. Banks do not want to be in the business of owning real estate, so to move foreclosed properties off their roster of assets expeditiously, foreclosing lenders, as demonstrated by our statistics) tend to sell off these properties to third parties at significant discounts. So if you think you’re ready to move into the real estate market, track the Notice of Mortgagee’s Sales published regularly in the local newspaper. If you spot a property that interests you, attend the foreclosure auction and even bid if you think there’s a chance of success, but don’t be disappointed if you lose out to the foreclosing lender. Once the auction is over, just go up to the representative of the lender, identify yourself, and express your interest in this particular property. If the circumstances are right, you could end up the owner of the property at an extremely attractive price.

Leave the Gun, Take the iPhone

This is a quiz…which one of the three stories below do you think is a true story?

Story A
A man walks into an Apple Computer Store, takes out a gun and points it directly at his malfunctioning iPhone and says to the clerk… “I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow the touch screen right off this iPhone, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

or
Story B
A man walks into an Apple Computer Store and takes out a gun and points it directly at his malfunctioning iPhone. The Apple Store clerk says he can’t fix the phone and the man responds…
"We won’t let that happen.
Whose we?
Smith, Wesson and I.
Now fix it."

or
Story C
A man walks into an Apple Computer Store and brings his malfunctioning iPhone over to the Genius Bar and tells the clerk he is having a problem with his phone. He then says “I’m so mad, I could pop a 9mm into it”. He continues the threat “I’ll do it right now!”. He then lifts up his shirt revealing his concealed handgun.

So which of these do you think is true, Story A, Story B or Story C? If you guessed A or B you are wrong..Story C is actually the true story.

Busy end of November?

Over this past weekend I received the following email from a local real estate broker:

I'd like to make a suggestion that the last few full working days of November, the Registry of Deeds extend its hours to 8pm. There are going to be SCORES of 1st-time buyers trying to close on homes those last few days. My suggestion is to have the Registry open 'til 8pm on the following days: Monday (23rd), Tuesday (24th), Monday (30th). The 25th is a short day and the 26th and 27th are holidays. Thanks for your consideration.

Unfortunately, because the registry is only a tenant in the courthouse, we cannot control the hours that the building is open. That’s set by the Trial Court which provides access control and overall security. Because this is an active courthouse, the importance of security cannot be minimized.

The good news is that the registry of deeds is only closed on Thanksgiving Day which is November 26. We are opened all day on Wednesday, November 25 and all day on Friday, November 27 (although a significant portion of the staff will be off that day). Still, given the volume of documents we recorded several years ago (700 per day), we should have no trouble keeping up with whatever recordings come in at the end of November. I must mention, however, that there are only a few tables available for public use, so please consider doing closing at someone’s office or some place other than the registry to ensure an appropriate environment for such important transactions.

September stats - more foreclosures ahead?

While the overall recording statistics for September trended positive, one number of great concern leaps out at you and that’s a major increase in the number of orders of notice recorded in September 2009 when compared to the same month in 2008. You will recall that an order of notice is a document issued by the Land Court that marks the beginning of the foreclosure process. When an order of notice is recorded, there’s a very good chance that a foreclosure deed will follow in six to nine months. This just past month, we recorded 97 orders of notice while last September, we recorded only 49 - that’s a 98% increase. The numbers were spread evenly between Lowell and the towns with the Lowell number rising from 24 to 48 and the towns increasing from 25 to 49. I can’t offer any theories as to why there’s a sudden increase - the September number is up 56% from the preceding month - but it does signal that there could be an upsurge in foreclosures coming early in 2010.

Statistics for other document types do present a more positive picture. The number of foreclosure deeds were down 19% for Lowell and 37% for the towns; the number of deeds increased 14% for Lowell and 5% for the towns; but the number of mortgages was mixed, dropping 12% for Lowell but rising 36% for the towns.

Xerox acquires ACS

On Monday, national business pages were alive with the news that Xerox had acquired Affiliated Computer Systems of Dallas, Texas for $6.4 billion dollars. This news is significant for users of registries of deeds in Massachusetts because ACS provides the land records management software for this and many of the other registries in the Commonwealth.

Back in 2002, ACS was selected after a lengthy competition to be the primary computer system provided for registries of deeds in Massachusetts. Middlesex North was the first registry to install the system (activated on July 1, 2002). The ACS system is now used in twelve Massachusetts registries: Berkshire North, Berkshire Middle, Berkshire South, Franklin, Hampshire, Worcester, Middlesex North, Middlesex South and Suffolk (all state registries) plus Bristol Fall River, Nantucket and Dukes (county registries). I understand the Plymouth is also in the process of installing ACS. (For those wondering, the registries in Worcester North, Hampden, Essex North, Norfolk and Barnstable all use the Browntech system while Bristol New Bedford, Bristol Taunton and Essex South all use home-grown systems).

ACS is a huge company with 74,000 employees so registries of deeds are only a very small part of their business. Still, it will be interesting to see what impact the Xerox takeover will have on our relationship with ACS.

Kansas Court invalidates mortgages held by MERS

A story on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times business section, “The Mortgage Machine Backfires,” caught my attention. It chronicled a decision of the Kansas Supreme Court that called into question the validity of mortgages held by Mortgage Electronic Registration System, better known as MERS. MERS was established at least a decade ago to serve as the record holder of mortgages that were filed with the registry of deeds. The intent was to allow the promissory note to be freely transferred among different financial institutions without the need to record assignments of that mortgage at the registry of deeds. MERS would serve as a perpetual point of contact for anyone interested in the mortgage. If you did a search of our database for grantees of mortgages (i.e., the name of the lender), MERS would be the name that appears most often, by far.

In the Kansas case the homeowner already had a first mortgage that was held by Landmark National Bank. He then obtained a second mortgage from Millennia Mortgage Corp. The mortgage that was recorded identified MERS as the mortgagee. At some point, Millennia assigned its interest in the loan to Sovereign Bank but did not record an assignment of the mortgage at the applicable registry of deeds. When Landmark foreclosed the mortgage, it served notice on the homeowner and on Millennia. Because Millennia had no interest in the mortgage, it ignored the notice. The foreclosing lender did not serve notice on either MERS or Sovereign. The money obtained at the foreclosure auction exceeded the amount owed to Millennia, so the court paid the surplus to the homeowner. At some point well after the auction, Sovereign and MERS filed pleadings in the case to assert their rights. The trial court found that MERS had not standing since it was only an agent for Millennia and since Sovereign had failed to record an assignment at the registry of deeds, Sovereign was precluded from asserting any rights in the mortgage after the foreclosure had occurred. The court upheld the foreclosure and the distribution of the surplus.

The Kansas Supreme Court upheld the trial court’s decision, holding that when ownership of the mortgage and the note were separated, the mortgage became unenforceable. The court seemed to reason that while MERS may have legitimately served as the agent of the initial lender, once the note was assigned by that lender to another financial institution (Sovereign), any connection between the mortgage, held by MERS on behalf of the initial lender, was severed and the MERS/Millennia/Sovereign mortgage was rendered inoperable without an assignment having been recorded.

I have no idea whether this defense has been asserted in Massachusetts yet. If not, it undoubtedly will. If a court here was ever to follow the Kansas ruling, the validity of tens of thousands of mortgages would be suddenly thrown into question.

Baseball Swing Trick

Here is a little fun to start the week...This is AAA outfielder Josh Womack. Womack has the unique ability to spin the bat around 360 degrees and catch it again. It almost looks fake it is so amazing.

$100 mil, not a cent more

Hey you…I’ve got this real nice bridge I want to sell. Are you interested?…I’ll give you a great deal.

Twitter executives must be using the same line on industry investors…Here is a company that makes no money, I’m serious no money at all and it just raised another $100 million in capital (yes, I said "another").

This new infusion of money sets the value of Twitter at, are you ready, $1 billion. Can you believe it…the company doesn't make a dime, I mean not a nickel, I mean not a penny and its worth $1 billion.

How many people do you think work for this $1 billion company…1,000 people?. 5,000 people? 10,000 people? Wrong, how about 60! 60 employees running a $1 bllion company. Its incredible…

Twitter is in what experts call the “pre-revenue stage”…in order words, its broke.
Who would lend $100 million to a broke company? Insight Venture Partners, T.Rowe Price, Sparks Capital and Institutional Venture Partners that’s who.
Sure, everyone is talking about Twitter (I love it too), but isn’t it time for the digital superstar to “put up or shut up”. If it doesn't make money, isn’t Twitter just a big hobby for its owners and investors?

And, get ready, check out these quotes from the New York Times regarding the new $100million investment, “the company does not appear to need the capital (NYT)”. And this, “but close followers of Twitter do not sense that the company is in any great rush to prove itself as a profitable venture (NYT)”.

What the heck...first, Twitter raises money it doesn’t need, then is not in a rush to use it to create revenue…I've got to get in on this game.

Hey, anyone interested in buying these pictures of Bigfoot I took in my backyard?

City of Lowell Foreclosure Ordinance

It seems like everyday at least one person comes to our Customer Service counter expressing interest in some foreclosed (and vacant) property here in Lowell. The buyer on the foreclosure deed is almost always a big national lender with a mailing address in New York City or Orlando or Houston, nothing that would provide a practical contact for a potential purchaser. I assume these properties are assigned to a (relatively) local real estate agent who will handle the sales to third parties, but there doesn't seem to be an effective means of identifying and contacting that broker. Perhaps the city of Lowell's "Vacant and Foreclosed Building" ordinance, which requires the owner of a foreclosed or vacant building, to register it with the city's Inspectional Services Department, would make that department a logical point of contact for a potential buyer. Of course, that assumes that the buyers at foreclosure are complying with the ordinance and registering with the city - which is a big assumption. Still, it would be the best place to begin.

August Foreclosure Stats

An article in today’s Globe gives good news and bad news about foreclosure activity in Massachusetts during August. The good news is that statewide, the number of foreclosure deeds filed in August 2009 was 35% less than the number filed in August 2008. The bad news was that the number of Orders of Notice filed (that is, the document that signals the start of the foreclosure process) had risen 150% over the same period.

Our statistics here in the Middlesex North District tell a different – and more positive - story. The number of foreclosure deeds recorded in Middlesex North in August 2009 was 56% less than the number filed in August 2008. That percentage decrease is relatively constant whether you are looking just at Lowell or at the other towns in the district. For example, the number of foreclosure deeds recorded for Lowell in August 2009 was 53% less than filed in August 2008. The drop for the non-Lowell towns for the same period was 61%.

Unlike the state, which has seen a dramatic rise in the number of new foreclosures (i.e., Orders of Notice) the Middlesex North District saw a decline in the number of those documents filed. District-wide, August 2009 saw a 13% decline from August 2008, with a 16% decline in Lowell and a 9% decline for the towns.

I’m not sure why this region seems to have less foreclosure activity than in other parts of the state, but the numbers definitely show a unique trend here in Greater Lowell.

Encouraging Innovation in the Internet Age

Three years ago, the movie rental company Netflix announced a contest. Develop an improved version of the movie recommendation software on its website and win a prize of $1 million. Thousands of teams from more than 100 nations competed. The winning team submitted its entry just twenty minutes before another team submitted a proposal that received an identical score. The contest rules anticipated such an outcome and provided that the first to submit would prevail.

An article in today’s New York Times describes the contest and puts it in the broader context of the “prize model” of modern innovation. More and more often, companies are offering substantial prizes to volunteers who propose solutions to problems that are posted online. The companies that put up the money get hundreds of very smart people working on their issues and, even though the prize is substantial, the companies end up paying about $1 hour for all the research that is conducted on their behalf. The participants in the contest get more than the chance to win the prize. This type of collaborative problem-solving effort has numerous collateral benefits that often lead to new business opportunities.

This is just another example of how the world and the world of business is changing. The closely-held, proprietary information models that dominated the early age of the Internet (think Wang) are today’s ancient artifacts. Today, everything is about openness and collaboration.

Mass DPH Flu Pamphlet

There’s a marked increase in the amount of sniffling and coughing around the courthouse this morning. What would otherwise be quietly categorized as a few late summer colds or allergies now gains much greater attention because of the heightened concern about the possibility of a flu pandemic this year. While there’s certainly no need to panic, prudence suggests that everyone take some simple steps to prepare for the possibility of a serious flu season.

With that in mind, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health has published a pamphlet called “Flu: Caring for People at Home” which is available online in PDF format here. This pamphlet contains a list of the basic steps you can take to (1) prevent catching the flu in the first place and (2) treat yourself or others after being infected by the flu. (I won’t list all the items here but you should check out the full publication).

One thing that does deserve mention, however, is a breakdown of the type of illnesses that most commonly effect people:

Seasonal flu - is caused by influenza viruses that infect people every year. In New England, flu season usually begins in December and lasts until April. The most common flue symptoms are (1) sudden onset of fever; (2) tiredness or weakness; (3) body aches; and (4) dry cough.

Pandemic flu - can occur when a new influenza virus develops. Most people will not have any immunity, which means they will not be able to fight off this new virus. This may allow the virus to spread easily from person to person, and cause many people around the world to get the flu. There have been 3 pandemics in the last hundred years.

“Stomach bug” - is different from the flu. Its symptoms include diarrhea and vomiting. A “stomach bug” is caused by other germs, not influenza viruses.

Common Cold - is also different from the flu. The most common symptoms of a cold are a stuffy nose, sneezing, cough, and sore throat. Colds are usually milder than the flu and do not come on as suddenly.

Homestead Seminar Next Week

Next Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 10:15 a.m., we will conduct a Homestead Seminar at the Billerica Senior Center, 25 Concord Road in Billerica. The event is free and open to the public. I begin with a brief explanation of the Declaration of Homestead, its history and what it does and does not protect. Following the presentation is a quick question and answer session. Assistant Register Tony Accardi and I then provide a blank Homestead form to anyone who is interested in filing one. To do that, all you need is a driver’s license or other government issued ID (so we can notarize your signature) or $35 for the filing fee (in cash or check). We will bring the completed Homesteads back to the registry where they will be recorded and mailed back to you.

The Declaration of Homestead is an inexpensive but very effective way to protect your home from creditors. Many people have already filed them but far more have not. Outside of the office, when people learn what position I hold, more often than not they will mention something about Homesteads. Most often, it’s to say “I always intended to record one but never got around to it.” Of course, the problem with a Homestead is that, because it only protects against debts that come into existence after the Homestead has been recorded, when you do need it, it’s too late to get it.

Blank homestead forms with instructions for filing by mail are available on our website and we always have the forms (and free Notary Service) here at the Registry. But if you belong to an organization or group that includes homeowners and you’d like to hold a Homestead Seminar, just give me a call (Dick Howe at 978/322-9000) or send me an email and we can arrange something. The Seminar is always free to the organizers and the attendees, and you’d be providing your membership with a valuable service.

Saving the American Financial System

This time last year we were in the midst of the apparent meltdown of the global financial system. A lengthy article by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist James B. Stewart in this week’s “New Yorker” (abstract only online here), deconstructs the eight day period from September 12, 2008 to September 19, 2008 during which Treasury Secretary Paulson, Fed Chair Bernanke, and New York Fed President Geithner struggled to prevent the complete collapse of the American economy.

Stewart, who interviewed most of the principals for this article, give an almost hour-by-hour account of the decision to allow Lehman Brothers to fail, to use federal funds to rescue A.I.G., and the many other steps that were (or were not taken) during that historic week. In the article’s epilogue, Stewart suggests that last year’s crisis will “redefine the nature of capitalism.”

Understanding how a plague of imprudent subprime mortgages triggered a chain of events that brought the world economy to the brink of collapse is critical to ensuring that it does not happen again. Stewart’s article makes an important contribution to the body of work that seeks to explain what happened.

Google's Fast Flip

Its called Fast Flip and once again Google is the creator. Fast Flip is,well, a newsreader.
Why does Google think the world needs another newsreader you ask?…because the others are flawed.
Google believes most newsreaders today are difficult to use...and I agree.
Enter Google with its new Super-reader...
Fast Flip presents news headlines in a more comprehensive easier to use format.
Google's new reader displays front pages of major newspapers, seven across in three horizontal rows.
Hyperlinks allow the user to pick from several topics…Politics, Business, US, World, Sports, Sci/Tech, Entertainment/Health, Opinion and Travel just to name a few. Click one of the topics and bam (as Emerald would say) the headlines of the displayed newspapers change to the selected topic…pretty cool, huh?
I like Fast Flip and I don’t…
What I like is the easy way your eyes move across the page scanning various headlines.
What I don’t like is the size of the print. It is way too small for my old eyes…Try it out yourself

"Open Indicators" software

Yesterday I travelled to nearby University of Massachusetts at Lowell for a presentation on a new software tool that will become available to the public in the coming months. The software is called WEAVE, which stands for Web-based Analytic Visualization Environment. It’s a new tool for data visualization and analysis, sort of a Swiss Army knife for data. Development of WEAVE has been funded by a consortium of institutions, mostly governmental and educational, that wanted a single package for doing statistical analysis, data graphing, and GIS plotting. The Umass Lowell group, let by Professors William Mass of the UML Center for Industrial Competitiveness and Georges Grinstein of the UML Institute for Visualization and Perception Research, has developed this amazing piece of software. Best of all, WEAVE will be available as open source software to non-profits and public entities. As the professors said, this tool can utilize any data from any source.

Members of the consortium that has paid for the development of this package will get to try it out starting next month. The available-to-the-public version should come soon after. I couldn’t find a demo version on the web that I could link to, so you’ll have to trust my assessment for now. I’ll stay on top of the roll-out of this product and will continue to write about its progress. So if a free tool that allows you to crunch data and to plot it on maps and charts all on the same screen at the same time sounds like it might be of use to you, please look for more news about WEAVE in the coming weeks and months.

TV Legends Come to YouTube

If you love Television you are going to love the Academy of Television Arts & Science Foundation's new website. As stated in a New York Times article the television foundation launched a website contianing numerous interviews with legends of TV. Classic TV stars such as Bob Hope, Walter Cronkite and Milton Berle, Michael J Fox and Alan Alda speak in depth about their careers and influences. The project actually started over a decade ago. The TV Academy began interviewing “stars, producers, writers and executives to create a digital encyclopedia of TV history” (NYT). As of today the Archive of American Television has posted only half of the recorded interviews on YouTube. The website is very simple to use and the quality and content of the interviews are excellent.
There are four main categories you can search: Topics, Shows, Professions and People.
And these main categories are broken into searchable subcategories. As an example the Topic category is broken down to Bloopers, Creative Influences, Emmy Awards, Historic Events, Memorable Moments, Pop Culture, Technological Innovation, Television and the Presidency, Television Industry and TV’s Golden Age.
You'll find the site at EmmyTVLegends.org.
Here is a sample of an interview with comedian Sid Caesar star of Your Show of Shows.

Electronic Recording Glitch

Electronic recording customers who submit documents through eRX (the electronic recording division of ACS) have recently experienced problems submitting deeds and mortgages through the electronic recording system. ACS has informed us that they have identified a problem with the way that the system calculates the recording fees and excise tax for deeds. (ACS claims that this bug has existed all along, but we never saw it in the five years that we’ve used the system and have only experienced it since the Middlesex South registry began electronic recording two months ago). While trying to correct the problem, ACS eliminated deeds and mortgages as possible document types that could be selected by their customers (without informing us or the customers apparently), meaning that no eRX customers could submit either of those document types. Now that they’ve focused on deeds as the problem, eRX has supposedly reactivated mortgages for Middlesex North although they still have “deeds” blacked out until they fix the problem.

Throughout the time of the eRX problem, we have received a steady stream of deeds through the electronic recording system without any problems. Presumably these are coming from Simplifile customers. ERX continues to work on this problem, but there is no estimate of when it might be fixed.

Updating the Deed Indexing Standards

This fall is the 10th anniversary of the Massachusetts Deed Indexing Standards. There rules were intended to standardize the way that every registry of deeds enters names and addresses into its index. The first version of the standards (version 2.1) was effective on Janaury 1, 2000. Subsequent versions were issued on January 1, 2006 (version 3.0) and on Janaury 1, 2008 (version 4.0). Currently, there are no plans for a version 5.0 although I suspect that as electronic recording becomes more widely accepted around the state, the Indexig Standards will expand to include rules related to that method of recording. In the meantime, we'll use this site to keep you up to date on new issues that arise and to tell you how we've resolved them.

For those interested in the various editions of the Deed Indexing Standards, you may obtain copies of:

Version 2.1 (2000) here

Version 3.0 (2006) here

Version 4.0 (2008) here

Beatles punk Apple

Punk’d!
Did you ever hear the word punk’d?
No, what does it mean?
The word punk’d actually comes from the name of a TV show of the same name hosted by Ashton Kutcher. During the show Kutcher played practical jokes on other celebrities deceiving them into thinking a crazy scenario or situation is real.
When Kutcher fooled the celeb, the celeb was said to be "punk'd".
I’ve been punk’d before, and I am sure you have been to?
Well, yes, I have been punk'd, but what's punk'd got to do with anything?
I think the Beatles are “punk’ing” Apple CEO Steve Jobs and his fabulously successful music site, iTunes.
How are they "Punk'ing" Jobs?
Here is the situation...
Today Apple is holding it annual “invitation only” special music event and they are promising a major announcement, trying to keep the consumer world on edge and capture its attention.
Help me, give me some history to put this in perspective…
OK, here you go...The Beatles and Apple have been involved in a long standing, rocky relationship for years. It started when the Beatles sued Apple Computer for copyright infringement for using the name “Apple”, which is also the name of the Beatles music company.
Then... the rocky relationship got even rockier when Apple(the computer company that is) established iTunes and started selling music.
Oh yeah (or should I say yeah, yeah, yeah), iTunes sells music, but not Beatles music.
The negotiation between iTunes and the Beatles for the right to sell their music has been going on for years…without success.
OK, but what does all this have to do with “punk’d”?
First...the big announcement at Apple’s music event today is NOT going to be an agreement between the band and iTunes to sell Beatles music..rather my sources (also known as my gut) say it is going to have something to do with the iPod.
Now comes "the Punk"…
Today, while Apple makes its “big” music announcement hoping to engage the world,the long awaited video game Beatles Rock Band is being released. This event will undoubtedly steal the stage from Steve Jobs and "the announcement".
And it gets worse for Steve Jobs...
Trust me 9/9/09 is going to be an all Beatles day.
Today the Beatles are also releasing their entire portfolio of music in a new, remastered format, promising to be the best sounding Beatles music yet. Initial estimates predict this new release of Beatles music will make them the best selling album artists of this decade...40 years after they broke up.
Punk’d

Update on the new masslandrecords.com

Today I travelled to Worcester for a meeting of a registers of deeds subcommittee that's providing guidance on the new masslandrecords.com site. There were many issues discussed, but they can be grouped into just a few major categories.

First is the speed of the site which currently is just too slow. Until that's improved, the old site will remain active. The second area addressed dealt with the layout of each registry's home page and the location of the various search options on those home pages. Here, it seems that "good web design practices" have come into conflict with our own observations of how our customers use the site. Good design practice treats the entire front page as "valuable real estate" that is not to go unused. Our experience, however, is that customers have a better experience when using a simple design that has visual clues to direct the attention to the most commonly utilized features. The third major area is how document images get printed or downloaded. The existing mechanism, we believe, requires too many clicks on too many screens and could be made simpler.

The recommendations from today's meeting will be forwarded to the web designer (ACS) and the group will meet again next month. In the meantime, the "old" masslandrecords site will remain the default search program while the "new" version will stay alongside as an option. If you haven't already given us your feedback on the new site, it's not too late to do so. After trying out the site, just send me an email with your observations and recommendations.

Books: an "obsolete technology"

The Globe today reports that Cushing Academy, an exclusive prep school in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, is completely remaking its library by removing all 20,000 books from the stacks. In their place, students will find Kindle electronic book readers and computers that will give students access to millions of books online. (There will also be spaced carved out for a new coffee shop within the library building). The chief architect of this radical transformation is the school’s headmaster, James Tracy, who said “When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books.” Needless to say, the move is controversial.

I’ve long been an enthusiastic advocate of the electronic delivery of information. Here at the registry, we have converted all of our land records – nearly 10 million pages – to electronic form, making them freely available to anyone with an internet connection. Still, there’s something about a library that cries out for a few books, at least. But I suppose we should get used to this concept. Electronic delivery is really the most efficient means of sharing information.

Preparing for a Pandemic

As the days grow shorter and the temperatures grow colder, stories about a possible flu pandemic this winter have started to appear in the press with greater frequency. While I am not overly concerned about the risk of a devastating epidemic, I do think it’s advisable to make some preparations. Back in 1999 we prepared extensively for possible disruptions from Y2K. When the year 2000 finally did arrive, we had no date-related problems which was due in large part to the extent of our preparations. Additionally, our Y2K-inspired efforts at safeguarding our operations had the collateral benefit of improving the overall technological health of this office. Similarly, I don’t think any effort expended on preparing for the possibility of a severe flu outbreak will be wasted.

I’ve spent some time researching ways to reduce the risk of exposure to flu in the workplace. The recommendations are simple and based on common sense. Here are some of them:

*Stay home if you are sick
*Wash your hands frequently with soap and water
*If you can’t wash your hands, use hand sanitizer
*Cover your coughs and sneezes with a tissue or cough into your upper sleeve
*Avoid shaking hands
*Keep frequently touched common surfaces such as telephones and computer equipment clean

Those are just a few of the recommendations. We’ll soon be ordering tissues, hand sanitizer and sanitizing clothes for office equipment.

In 1918, the influenza pandemic came in two waves. The first struck in March and was relatively mild, no different than other seasonal flu outbreaks. But by August, the virus soon mutated into something deadly. By the time it was over between 50 million and 100 million people around the world had died from it. While medical science of today is light years ahead of that which existed in 1918, the flu is still a virus that is capable of rapidly mutating into something unknown and untreatable. It’s important to be ready, just in case.

Westford Kudos

I found this story in The Beacon, a publication of the Massachusetts Municipal Association…well, actually I didn’t find it, my wife (who works for the town of Westford) did and stuck it under my nose. "Here" she said "read this"..."yeah yeah yeah" I responded, "I'll do it later". Well, I did read it later and I was fascinated.

Westford Technology Director Chris McClure along with the town’s database administrator Tom Laflamme developed a software system that may revolutionize the way town/city records are accessed in Massachusetts and maybe even New England. And these two town employees developed the program in-house.

Here is how the McClure/Laflamme system works: Simply enter a street address or parcel ID and all the information on that property available at the Westford Assessor's Office, Board of Health, and Building Department are linked and can be displayed by the user. The Assessor's database lists the value of the property, the square footage of the structure and land, number of baths, bedrooms and even provides a picture. The system links this information with the town's Building Department information including building permits, electrical permits etc related to the same property. The public can even fill out an application for a building permit using the new software.

In McClure’s own words “In a traditional model, if I wanted to find out about an address on Main Street, I’d have to go into the Assessors Website, and I’d have to know about all those things, Here we have the ability to do virtual binding of all these tools so it’s a single point of search. I can go in and search and the system is going to find everything it knows about that property” (The Beacon).

“A single point of search”…I love it, that’s the future! That's how searching public records should be done.

The Westford system is available for use by both town employees and the public. I took a test spin myself before writing this blog entry and was very impressed.

This is great for Westford, but what does it have to do with the rest of Massachusetts or New England? Last month Westford contracted with Hawkeye Government Solutions “to sell and license” the new software to other communities. And since July Hawkeye already has a community in Rhode Island nearly on board.

Whether McClure and Laflamme’s system takes off state-wide remains to be seem, but regardless they certainly deserve kudos for their forward and creative thinking.

Tracing the Family Tree

We’ve recently had an upsurge in customer requests for assistance in conducting genealogical research. While we’re happy to help, our resources in that area are somewhat limited. The critical issue is whether the researchers ancestors owned real estate. Many Lowell residents through the years lived their lives not as property owners but as tenants and would not have left any imprint in our records. If an ancient relative was a property owner, however, we can certainly be of assistance.

Just this morning I assisted a researcher who knew that her great grandfather lived at a particular address in the 1880s but knew nothing of her great grandmother. After a few minutes of digging, we not only discovered the great grandmother’s name, we also learned that she was the sole owner of the property. As we traced the ownership history of the property through the years, it passed from generation to generation of the same family with enough sales to allow us to keep sight of the parcel. Inferences drawn from the simple language of these deeds painted a family portrait of marriages, deaths and relationships.

For those interested in genealogy or in any historical property research, obtaining an electronic copy of our pre-1976 indexes is essential. The entire index from 1976 to the present is already available in searchable form on our website and all document images and plans beginning with the very first one from 1629 are also on the website, but only by book and page number. The index for documents recorded between 1629 and 1976 is available in electronic form at the registry, but not on the internet. To remedy this virtual gap in our holdings, we provide customers with a free electronic copy of these older indexes. All you need is a 16GB flash drive (aka “thumb drive”) which can be purchased for about $30 from Walmart, Staples or a host of other stores. Bring that drive to the registry and 15 minutes later you have a complete copy of our index.

Another thing that would be helpful (but does not yet exist) would be something like a “lay person’s guide to current and past Massachusetts property law.” Those of us who deal with property law ever day know that it defies logic and easy explanation, so a booklet explaining the basic principles would be most helpful.

"Operations Management"

The Sunday Globe had an interesting story about increasing efficiencies at hospitals through better use of "operations management." I mention this here because many of the concepts are applicable to the operation of a registry of deeds. Here's a sample:

In the fast-food industry, maintaining an even flow is what keeps dozens of chicken fingers from stacking up while frustrated customers wait for cheeseburgers; at Toyota, it turns automobile production into a tightly choreographed dance that minimizes wasted time and materials. Thanks to strong central management and years of practice, companies have become expert at ensuring that steel arrives exactly when it needs to be rolled into car hoods, or a container of dishwashers from China shows up almost exactly when stores need to restock them for customers. Good flow keeps costs down and customers happy.

Maybe improving operations management and "flow" in the registry would reduce waiting time and the recording counter and increase our overall efficiency.

School opens tomorrow in Lowell

The public schools in Lowell officially open tomorrow, so commute times to the registry will be lengthened, especially in the morning and mid-afternoon as school bus drivers learn their routes and parents used to the slower pace of summer rush around, dropping off and picking up their children.

Traffic congestion in the immediate vicinity of the registry as well as competition for curbside parking should be considerably diminished this year with the closing of the nearby Rogers Middle School. Because of declining middle school enrollment and the budget crisis, the Lowell School Committee chose to re-assign the students and staff of the Rogers to other middle schools in the city and then move the school department central offices into the vacated school. The administrators, however, will be arriving gradually and are not yet there now, so there’s very little competition for curbside parking spaces, for the time being.

Welcome to the NEW LowellDeeds Blog

Welcome to the NEW LowellDeeds blog, the source of the latest news and information about the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds including our observations about the state of the real estate market and advances in new technology.

There are several reasons why we switched our hosting platform: (1) this new site contains some features that will make the blog more interactive while allowing us to provide you with more information in a variety of formats; (2) this is a Blogger site, which is owned by Google, which means it's all free; (3) the old blog, which remains available here for researching things we've written about in the past, had gone for nearly four years without a software upgrade and we decided shifting to a new platform would be easier; (4) this is actually the original LowellDeeds blog and still contains all of our posts from 2003 to 2005.

Besides the new platform for the blog, we have also created a Facebook page. If you're already a Facebook user, please click the Facebook icon at right to begin following us. We expect our Facebook page to become a must-see site for the most recent sales information.

We're also Tweeting - something we've been doing for sometime. If you have a Twitter account, please click on the link at right to follow us.

Finally, thank you for your continued readership. Your feedback helps motivate us to keep writing. Please note that we have activated the "comment" feature here, so we invite you to use that feature to become part of the conversation.

Is a housing market rebound underway?

Articles in yesterday’s Boston Globe and New York Times both suggest that the nation’s housing market is slowly starting to rebound. Both total sales and median price for sales in both June and July when compared to a year ago show a slight increase.

Locally, evidence of a market turnaround is more elusive. Looking at sales with prices above $75,000 and below $750,000, we find the following: For Lowell, in July 2009, the median sales price was $179,000 while in July 2008 it was only $173,500. That represents an increase of 3%. In the towns, the median price in July 2009 was $305,750, but in July 2008, the median was $316,450. That represents a 3% decrease.

Despite these figures, I believe the real estate market in the towns is bouncing back slightly, while Lowell remains troubled due primarily to the high inventory of foreclosed properties. Still, the situation is much better than it has been. For example, here’s what I wrote on August 14, based on mid-month recording statistics:

Besides the continuing trend of fewer foreclosures, the most important observation we can make is that homes in the towns seem to be holding their values pretty well. This conclusion is based on the significant increase in the number of suburban mortgages being recorded. In Lowell, on the other hand, the number of mortgages being recorded is down slightly, but it’s down nonetheless which suggests that any rebound in home prices has not yet reached the city of Lowell.

Ted Kennedy

So many many memories, so many many years ago...

House Histories

Homeowners often contact us asking us how they might determine the year in which their homes were constructed. Here’s an inquiry I received yesterday by email:

Hi. A fellow old-home owner in Lowell referred me to your website as a good source of historical info about our house. When I do a search on the address, I only see info going back to 1990. I'm looking for info back to 1890! Does the system contain old info? I'm trying to determine the actual year the house was built. I've seen conflicting dates on various documents, from 1860, to 1880, to 1905, to even 1917!
Here’s my reply:

All of the land ownership documents (deeds, mortgages, etc) going back to 1629 are available on our website (www.lowelldeeds.com) although they are in several places, depending on their age. The more recent ones are on masslandrecords.com while the older ones - before 1950 - are on www.lowelldeeds.com. Unfortunately, the name index used to find these documents only goes back to 1976 online. We have it all the way back to 1629 but that's only available here at the registry. It is in electronic form, however, and if you bring in a 16 gigabyte flash drive (also known as a "thumb drive") we will give you a copy at no charge. The files for the index are so large that we have not yet been able to get them on the internet.

More to your inquiry, records here at the registry of deeds are primarily concerned with who owns the land and not what is built upon the land, so nothing we have would tell you precisely when your home was built. The best you can do with our records is draw inferences from the various deeds and other documents. For instance, if someone bought the property for $1000 and a year later sold it for $5000, you could infer that something had been built upon it in the interim.

If you decide to come to the registry to conduct your research, we're open from 8:30 am to 4:15 pm Monday thru Friday. On whatever day you do make it to the registry, please stop by our Customer Service desk and ask for me. If I'm available, I'll show you how to use the computers; if I'm not, just ask anyone at the Customer Service desk to help you.

Sorry I can't be more helpful than that, but if you have any more questions, please let me know.

Great Job

Three Lowell High School Interns paid by the Lowell Career Center finished their employment at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds last Wednesday. The assignment I gave them was straightforward and clear…”actuately scan as many of our old records books as possible”. Here is a little context…Before July we had one volunteer employee scanning these books and one full time employee preparing them to be scanned. During a normal week these two working (without interruption) would scan 20-25 books. Truthfully, the prep work for these old books is far worse than the scanning. When the interns arrived our permanent employees we working on record book number 500, moving backwards. Scanning 20 books a week meant the project still had rough another six months before completion. Today there are 250 books left to scan. In a short five weeks these student workers finished 50% of the project (250 books)…we couldn’t be happier. It is difficult in the summer to make significant progress in long-term projects. This is mainly due to employee vacation schedules, so the accomplishment by these interns was a welcome development for us. Thanks for a great job.

Do-it-yourself deeds

August is a popular month for vacations here at the registry, so I usually spend more time than usual working at our Customer Service Counter which gives me a valuable opportunity to assist customers who call or visit the registry of deeds. Those in the real estate related professions typically have straight forward questions, but members of the public often have more complex inquiries.

This summer, many of these calls are requests to “take a name off of a deed” or make some other change to the ownership of property. These calls make it clear that much of the public is under the impression that we here at the registry maintain some kind of master list of who owns what property and that we either cross out or write in names as ownership circumstances change. In response to these questions, we try to provide a simple explanation of the role played by deeds in land ownership. We then explain that to change ownership, a new deed must be created. That leads to the inevitable question, “can I do that myself?” That’s a tough question to answer. Technically, the answer is yes, but we emphasize that real estate law is complex and that one or two words in a deed could completely change the meaning of the document. Because the asset involved - a home, typically - is worth so much money, it’s reckless for anyone to put it at risk by trying their hand at deed drafting to save the cost of hiring a lawyer to do it. Some people see the wisdom of that approach and call an attorney. Others insist that they can’t afford an attorney and will have to do it themselves. At that point, all we can do is suggest they visit a law library for further assistance.

Happy Anniversary Hawaii

Happy Anniversary to Hawaii. Our fiftieth state joined the Union fifty years ago today on August 21, 1959.

Electronic Recording Statistics

Now that the Middlesex South Registry of Deeds in Cambridge has been recording documents electronically for a couple of weeks, it’s an appropriate time to review some electronic recording statistics from Middlesex North were the system has been in use for several years. While processing electronically recorded documents has become a routine part of our operation here in Lowell, the percentage of documents being recorded by that means remains capped at about 12% of our total daily intake. My sense is that number is artificially low because many real estate practitioners have held off on adopting electronic recording until more registries of deeds allow that process. Now that Cambridge is open for business, perhaps our volume will rise.

For now, here are the stats for 2009 up to the end of July: In those seven months, we recorded 4889 documents electronically which accounted for 12% of our total of 41282 documents. The monthly volume of electronic recording rose steadily from a low of 344 in January to a high of 805 in July. On seventeen days, we recorded more than 50 documents electronically. The five highest volume days were April 13 (107 e-docs), Feb 24 (78 e-docs), Feb 23 (75 e-docs), July 21 (73 e-docs) and July 1 (68 e-docs). As for document types recorded electronically, 59% were discharges, 20% were mortgages, 3% were deeds and 18% were other types of documents.

And has been the case from the very beginning, electronic recording from the registry end has been a fast, efficient and trouble-free means of recording documents.

The Problem with Appraisals

For months now attorneys have been telling me that as many as two-thirds of the sales or refinancings that come through their doors are scuttled when the appraisal comes back with a lower than expected value. Recent comments, and our own statistics, suggest that this phenomenon is more often true for properties in Lowell than for those in the towns in this registry district, but it remains a system-wide obstacle to the recovery of the real estate market.

While many of the properties being valued have certainly lost considerable value, there may be more going on here. Today’s New York Times carries a front-page story detailing how the appraiser’s profession was upended by a new “Code of Conduct” that went into effect in May. The main feature of this code is that the lender, and not the real estate broker or the mortgage broker, selects the appraiser.

The intent of this rule was to insure the independence of the appraiser by eliminating any incentive he had to shade his valuation upward for the benefit of the broker or mortgage originator who both get paid only if the deal goes through. But with the lender making the decision, many local appraisers have been forsaken by major lenders who have turned to larger, centralized appraisal firms to do the work. The concern now is that the appraisers working for these firms are inexperienced and not locally based and are therefore less likely to accurately value the property. At least those are the concern raised by the article. Still, based on the comments of local attorneys, there is some validity to these concerns.

Tax Lien Foreclosures

The New York Times reports today that foreclosures are rising in some parts of the country, not because of homeowners falling behind on their mortgages, but because they have failed to pay their real estate taxes. This situation is somewhat foreign to us here in Massachusetts where the philosophy and the practice by municipalities is to encumber the property with a lien and then to wait until the present owner sells or refinances and brings the taxes current. In other parts of the country, however, governmental entities (usually towns or counties) routinely sell tax liens to private investors who charge interest of up to 18% and aggressively foreclose on homeowners who are in arrears. These investors are quite sophisticated (“you don’t get 18% return on a CD!”) and have their own organization - the National Tax Lien Association - complete with a sophisticated website.

The governmental entities find the practice of selling tax liens attractive because it results in a rapid infusion of cash into the treasury. But this practice also results in more foreclosed and vacant homes which causes further deterioration of the neighborhood. It would seem that a better approach would be to work with the homeowners to find ways to make the taxes current.

Trends in Lowell Home Sales

We’re in the midst of a study of home sales in Lowell during the month of June that we hope will provide a sense of what is going on in the real estate market. Looking at the prior sales history of the 146 properties sold in Lowell during June confirms that real estate values remain considerably lower than when they reached their peak during the 2003-2006 bubble. On the other hand, the current value of properties that last sold in 2000 remains higher than the earlier purchase price.

Here are some examples of bubble property sales:

In 2005, 119-121 Livingston St sold for $415,000. In 2009, it sold for $180,000.
In 2005, a condo at 16 Merrimack St sold for $142,100. IN 2009, it sold for $75,000.
In 2005, 52 Kinsman St sold for $240,000. In 2009 it sold for $135,000.
In 2005, 590 Pine St sold for $305,000. In 2009, it sold for $228,000.
In 2002, a condo at 18 Hampton Ave sold for $210,000. In 2009 it sold for $168,000.

Here are some examples of pre-bubble sales:

In 1998, 809 Chelmsford St sold for $128,000. In 2009, it sold for $199,000.
In 1999, 73 Magnolia St sold for $138,000. In 2009, it sold for $223,000.
In 2000, 25 Putnam Ave sold for $165,000. In 2009, it sold for $214,900.
In 2000, 250 Butman Rd sold for $230,000. In 2009, it sold for the same price.
In 1999, 16 Wetherbee Ave sold for $194,000. In 2009 it sold for $334,900.

These are just a few examples that illustrate the variability of prices during the past decade. If you bought ten years ago (and refrained from refinancing to extract increase equity during the boom), your house is probably worth considerably more than you paid for it. If, on the other hand, you bought five years ago, your house is worth less than you paid for it.

Mid-August Statistics

As we reach the half way point of this month, it’s time to look at the number and type of documents being recorded to help us spot any trends. Today, I’ve compiled stats from Lowell as one group and then stats for the other nine towns in the district as a second group. This differs from our previous practice in which we looked at Lowell in isolation but also looked at the entire district including Lowell. Because current trends in the towns differ significantly from those seen in the city, separating the two groups will provide a more accurate picture.

When recordings for the first two weeks of August 2009 are compared to the same two weeks from August 2008 for the nine towns, we find that the number of deeds recorded is up 13% and the number of mortgages recorded is up 27%. Foreclosure deeds declined by 38%. The picture in Lowell is different. While foreclosure deeds are down an impressive 63%, the number of deeds and mortgage recorded are also down (2% for deeds and 14% for mortgages).

The second major comparison we’ll make is for year-to-date recordings for the same groups. When the number of documents recorded from January 1 to August 14, 2009 is compared to the number of documents recorded from January 1 to August 14, 2008, we find that in the towns, the number of deeds recorded is down 4%, mortgages are up 34%, and foreclosure deeds are down 44%. In Lowell, deeds are down 12%, mortgages are down 4%, and foreclosure deeds are down 40%.

Besides the continuing trend of fewer foreclosures, the most important observation we can make is that homes in the towns seem to be holding their values pretty well. This conclusion is based on the significant increase in the number of suburban mortgages being recorded. In Lowell, on the other hand, the number of mortgages being recorded is down slightly, but it’s down nonetheless which suggests that any rebound in home prices has not yet reached the city of Lowell.

Update on new Masslandrecords.com

Yesterday I travelled to Worcester for a meeting with representatives from other registries of deeds, from the Secretary of State’s office and from ACS, the company that provides computer services to many of the registries. Our purpose was to review feedback that’s been received about the new masslandrecords site. Not surprisingly, the feedback has been mostly negative – that’s usually the case when you propose something new – and much of it was of the “new site is horrible” variety. But other comments were specific and we focused our attention on those. Rather than compile all comments and then try to make one big fix, fine tuning the new site will be an evolutionary process with gradual change implement in small doses over time. Two upgrades that will be implemented fairly soon will be to convert them format of document images viewable on the site from TIFF to PNG which should improve the speed of performance considerably without sacrificing image quality (and printed or downloaded images will continue to be of a very high quality that will yield a clear print). The other change will be to make a popup image viewer the default setting. A number of people found that having the image appear in the right half of the viewing window (the data retrieved in the query was in the left half of the screen) made it difficult to navigate around the image. The pop up viewer can be easily repositioned to allow the user to see as much of the document as the user’s screen will permit. Another change that should be implemented fairly soon is to add the ability to print multiple pages of a document rather than just the first page or the entire document. Other possible changes remain under consideration.

Hollywood arrives: The Fighter

Update on new Masslandrecords.com site

The new version of masslandrecords.com continues to be available for testing by customers. When you go to that web address, the old (a/k/a "classic") version displays and is fully operational. There is also prominent language inviting customers to "click here" to try the new site. Unfortunately, many customers are interpretting that as a command and not an invitation and are clicking through to the new site and becoming discouraged by what they find.

My sense is that the criticism falls into three general categories: The first is that the new site is more difficult to use which is true, at least for the first few times you use it. Once you become familiar with it, however, the added functionality of the new site should be readily apparent. Every time we've deployed new technology at this registry, it has resulted in a negative reaction from users, but that negativity only lasts for as long as it takes for them to get acquainted with the new system. Ironically, when "classic" masslandrecords first came out, the reaction to it was quite negative. Now that folks have grown comfortable with it, the reaction is much more positive.

The second area of criticism is the speed (or lack thereof) of the new site. I have to agree with this. For someone pulling up a random document, it might not be too bad, but when you have to do a title search and retrieve dozens of documents, it's aggravatingly slow.

The third area of criticism is the layout of the front page. The page is dominated by instructions and other non-functional items with the search boxes and links to advanced search funcitons tucked away in the upper 20% of the page. The functions available on this new site are an improvement over the "classic" version. I'm just concerned that no one is going to get to them to discover this on their own.

Sometime next week there is a meeting of all the registers of deeds who utilize the masslandrecords site. More information about whether it will be fully deployed or sent back for a re-configuration will be available then. I'll keep everyone posted.

Rain

Since we have become so very very familiar with rain this summer I figured a list of "rain facts" would keep us right in the same summer mood we're now accustom to.




1. Rain drops are really NOT shaped like tear drops…they look more like hamburg buns with a flat bottom.
2. Larger raindrops can split into many small ones as they fall to the ground.
3. Raindrops hit the ground at a speed of approximately two meters per second.
4. Rain has a PH level of about 5.6.
5. In Botswana the word “pula” means both rain and money reflecting the importance of rain to the economy of the region.
6. The pleasant scent of summer rain comes from a chemical called petrichor which is found in plants and released into the atmosphere during rain storms.
7. The city of Seattle has taken a bad rap when it comes to rain. Seattle averages 37.1 inches of rain a year, less than New York City which averages 46.2 inches.
8. The rainiest city in the United States is Ketchikan, Alaska which averages 200 inches a year.
9. The highest recorded rainfall in one year was in 1861 in Cherrapunji, India when 904.9 inches fell.

10. And Finally if we all click our heals three times and say “I want it to go away, I want it to go away, I want it to go away".... the rain may stop and the sun just may come out.

Bankruptcy decision invalidates mortgage

A recent decision by the United States Bankruptcy Court for Massachusetts dealt with the sufficiency of the acknowledgement of a mortgage. The case is In re Giroux, a May of 2009 decision and the alleged defect occured when the notary public failed to insert the borrower’s name into the notary clause (”Then personally appeared ______________ and acknowledged the foregoing to be his free act and deed”). The court held that even though the notary signed the notary clause which was located on the same page as the borrower’s signature, the absence of the borrower’s name in the middle of the clause invalidated the acknowledgement. Consequently, according to the court, the registry of deeds should not have recorded the document. Since the mortgage was therefore void, the lender was left as an unsecured creditor of the bankruptcy estate.

Ironically, the court cited the Massachusetts Deed Indexing Standards as support for its holding. The intent of the Indexing Standards was to be fairly liberal about what constitutes a sufficient acknowledgement, so the holding in this decision was certainly unexpected. Over the coming days, we’ll read the decision more closely, as well as the cases and statutes cited, to see whether it will alter our own standards for accepting documents for recording.

Electronic recording statistics

I’ve compiled some statistics on our volume of electronic recordings. Since we activated the system in June 2005, we have recorded more than 13,000 documents that were submitted to us electronically. The average per year continues to increase: In 2005 (June thru December) we averaged 151 per month; in 2006 the average rose only to 156; in 2007 the average reached 291; in 2008 it grew to 330; and for the first four months of 2009 it has exploded to an average of 588 documents per month. April 2009 saw the highest number of electronic recordings (781) followed by March 2009 (679).

Correcting "National Lumber"

On numerous occasions I’ve written about National Lumber v Lombardi, 64 Mass App 490 (2005) a case in which the Massachusetts Appeals Court held that a document was deemed to be on record when it was “delivered” to the registry of deeds, not when it was indexed and scanned by the registry. The members of the Massachusetts Registers of Deeds Association have been concerned that this holding could alter the longstanding practice that a document is “recorded” when it is entered into the registry’s computer system and not before.

Two identical bills, House #1527 and Senate #1826, are now pending in the state legislature. Here’s the language they both share:

SECTION 1. Section 14 of Chapter 36 of the General Laws, as appearing in the 2006 Official Edition, is hereby amended by striking out the last sentence and inserting the following:

“No deed or instrument shall be considered to have been received by the Register or left for record until said deed or instrument has been approved for recording by the register and an instrument number or document number or book and page has been assigned to said deed or instrument”

Hopefully this amendment will be enacted during this legislative session. I know if no case that has invoked the holding of National Lumber, but I suspect that is only a matter of time.

Electronic indexes for sale

At the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds, the Grantor and Grantee Indexes from 1976 to the present are available in a single, searchable computer database that is fully available on the registry’s website (www.lowelldeeds.com). Although Indexes from 1629 to 1975 are not yet on the internet, they are available as “electronic index books” at the registry.

These “electronic index books” were created by scanning the original paper index books and saving the resulting images in the PDF format. We have retained the original date ranges of the indexes (for example, 1916-1925; 1926-1940) but within each date range, we have separated the pages of the index into separate files based on the first letter of the last name.

Because some of the letter files are more than 1000 pages long, we have created a sub-index at the beginning of each file. This sub-index is a spreadsheet that contains the first name on each page of that letter file along with the corresponding page number. By finding the name closest to the one of interest to you and using the “go to” function in the PDF program, you can jump to the area where your name is located. Once there, you can use the forward and back arrow buttons to flip through pages just as you would with the printed/bound index book.

We have now established a pilot program to test the market for selling these indexes to our customers. We have purchased a number of 16 gigabyte flash drives and have copied the entire 1629-1975 Grantor and Grantee Indexes onto each. Customers may purchase one of these flash drives by coming to the registry in person and paying $50 (we can only take checks payable to “Commonwealth of Massachusetts” as payment). Once you have purchased one of our flash drives, you may copy the data to one or more computers and use it however you wish. It is not our intent to make a profit on these transactions: the $50 just covers the cost of purchasing the blank flash drives. We haven’t given up on getting all this data onto our website; it’s just taking much longer than we had hoped. These individualized copies of the index should serve as a useful bridge to the time when a web-based solution is available.

Wrapping up e-recording demos

The last of the electronic recording demonstrations for registry personnel was today at the Plymouth County Registry of Deeds. Monday’s was in Springfield and yesterday’s was in Lowell. Representatives of 15 of the state’s 21 registries attended at least one of the events and a few attended more than one. Besides being spread around the state geographically (Plymouth, Springfield, Lowell), each of the three sites uses a different electronic recording module. In Lowell, it’s the ACS system; Springfield has Browntech; and Plymouth uses the Simplifile system. It was especially valuable to hear and see how each of these three offices handles electronic recordings. Hopefully this weeklong orientation session will speed the rollout of e-recording to other registries.

E-Recording in Hampden County

Yesterday I travelled to Springfield for the first of three regional meetings of the state’s registers of deeds on the topic of electronic recording. The second meeting will be held here in Lowell tomorrow and the third and final meeting will be Thursday in Plymouth. Besides being spread around the state, these three registries are the only ones in the Commonwealth that are currently using electronic recording. These meetings have a number of objectives. One is to allow personnel from other registries to see electronic recording in action and to discuss it’s impact on registry operations with those who are actually doing it. Another objective is to work on a standard contract between the registry and the end-user of the electronic recording system (i.e., the lawyer submitting the documents) that clearly lays out the duties and responsibilities of the parties. The meeting in Hampden County was informative and well-done. It was attended by representatives from the following registries: Berkshire Middle, Berkshire South, Essex North, Franklin, Hampden, Middlesex North and Norfolk. Check back for updates on Thursday and Friday on the upcoming meetings.

Watermarks on documents

An early draft of the Formatting Standards contained a prohibition on recording documents that contained a “watermark” but the final version that is contained in the current Deed Indexing Standards is silent on the watermark issue. That is unfortunate, because we have started to receive death certificates that have the word “copy” embedded throughout as a watermark. Presumably this is someone in government’s effort to prevent the copying of these documents so that people will be forced to purchase multiple copies of the document rather than relying on photocopies. It couldn’t be to prevent attempts to pass off photocopies as originals since all original death certificates always bear the raised seal of the issuing office, a physical change to the document that certainly can’t be reproduced by a copying machine. While I don’t want to question the motives of whomever designed this anti-copying system, I wll say that they have really messed up the ability of the registry of deeds to include such documents in our records. As you can see from this document, the watermark that was nearly invisible on the original has completely obscurred all meaningful information on the scanned copy in the official records of the registry of deeds - all but the social security number of the deceased which I have manually redacted with the blue box. I expect to raise this issue of unreproduceable death certificates at future meetings of the registers of deeds association so that we can take collective action to preserve the integrity of our land records.

Same sex marriage and home ownership

A lawyer recently asked about the proper wording on a deed that was conveying a house to a same sex married couple who wanted to hold as tenants by the entirety. According to a memo from the Land Court dated May 6, 2004, the proper form would be “A and B, as tenants by the entirety” without any mention of “husband and wife” or “a married couple.” There’s no problem if that language is included, but it is not required and its absence is of no consequence. With same sex marriage having been legal in Massachusetts since early 2004, property ownership by same sex spouses is becoming more and more common.

National Lumber amendment

I have long been amazed by the nonchalance the Bar displays with regard to the “National Lumber” decision by the Massachusetts Appeals Court. To refresh your recollection, that case held that a document’s priority relative to other documents is established when it is physically received by the registry of deeds; not by when it is actually recorded. Let’s say you represent the buyer of a parcel of real estate at a closing scheduled at the registry at 10 a.m. tomorrow. The closing goes smoothly, you do your rundown, record and disburse the funds by 10:15 a.m. At 11:00 a.m., a full 45 minutes after you have finished at the registry, we record a new mortgage on that same property, granted by the person who just sold to your client. “Not a problem,” you conclude, since this new mortgage went on record after the deed into your client. But what if that new mortgage arrived by Fedex and we had signed for that package at 9:55 a.m. Fedex being an efficient company, it has precise records establishing when their delivery person relinquished custody of the package containing that document to the registry. When you apply the holding of National Lumber to these facts, you’re out of luck – you’ve missed a mortgage that has priority over your deed. Call your carrier.

The state’s registers of deeds recognize the havoc that could result from the holding of this case so we’ve proposed legislation that would rectify this problem. A bill was recently filed but has not yet received a number (when it does, I’ll make another post). Here’s the language:

“No deed or instrument shall be considered to have been received by the register of left for record until said deed or instrument has been approved for recording by the register and an instrument number or document number of book and page has been assigned to said deed or instrument.”

Old indexes: get your copies now

Those of you who come to the registry and use our public search computers are familiar with our electronic version of the pre-1976 indexes. Everything back to 1629, both Grantor and Grantee, are available as “electronic books” in PDF format. For the past three years, we have tried repeatedly to make these indexes available on their website. Given their electronic size, that’s been a challenge. We were making real progress when the current budget crisis struck, forcing us to cut funds that had been allocated for the completion of that project and prompting us to alter our strategy.

Recently, registry employees began a massive back indexing project. We have began with documents recorded in 1975 and are indexing them directly into our computer system without regard to the manner in which they were previously indexed. This will ensure that the data in our searchable database is consistent and in compliance with the latest deed indexing standards. Despite our best efforts, this will be a lengthy project. In the meantime, we have decided to once again make the indexes in PDF format available to you in electronic form for your own use.

Formerly, we asked you to provide us with a set of CDs upon which we would copy the various indexes. This required more than a dozen CDs, making it very difficult for us to physically copy that many disks for the number of customers who wanted the data. But as is often the case, technology may have come to our rescue. The combined Grantor and Grantee indexes from 1629 to 1976 total 12.5 gigabytes of storage space. Today, you can purchase a “thumb drive” also known as a “flash drive” of 16 gigabyte capacity for about $40 (at Walmart, at least). So, if you wish to obtain a copy of our indexes, next time you come to the registry, bring a blank 16GB flash drive with you and we’ll make you a copy that you can then add to any and all of your computers.

Launch of indexing project approaches

Today we introduced our new indexing project to a group of registry employees. Commencing next week, we will begin indexing documents recorded prior to 1976 in reverse chronological order. While most of today’s discussion dealt with technical matters related to our computers and software, some substantive items were discussed. Here are four of them:

Index names and addresses in accordance with the current Deed Indexing Standards

“Thirty years ago, documents looked a lot different than they do now. For example, many mortgages look just like deeds. Look for either “quitclaim covenants” (makes it a deed) or “mortgage covenants” (makes it a mortgage).”

“Try to avoid indexing things as MULTIPLES even though you will see quite a few of them. Try to decide which is the dominant document and use that for the document type. For instance, a Deed might also contain a Vote – call it a Deed – or a Mortgage might also contain an Assignment – call that a Mortgage but be sure to add to the index the name of the party to whom it is being assigned to the index.”

“If the property address on a deed is not clearly identified (and in older deeds it usually isn’t), just leave that field blank. Do not use a street name from the description in the STREET field. ”

Watch for additional blog entries on this topic as the project progresses.

"How do I take someone's name off of my deed?"

A name is never physically removed from a deed. To "take someone's name off of a deed" means conveying that person's interest in the property back to you or to someone else.

If that person is still alive, this conveyance is done by recording a new deed (one that conveys the property from him to you or someone else). The filing fee for recording a new deed is $125. There is no blank form available to use in creating the new deed. We strongly recommend using an attorney to prepare the new deed.

The procedure is different if the person whose name is to be removed is deceased. In the case of married couples, most own real estate as "tenants by the entirety" which means there is a right of survivorship. When one spouse dies, his interest in the property is extinguished and the surviving spouse automatically becomes the sole owner of the property. There is no need to create a new deeds since nothing is being transferred. To show the change in ownership, however, a death certificate for the deceased spouse should be recorded at the registry of deeds. The filing fee for a death certificate is $75.

If the deceased co-owner was not a spouse, then an automatic transfer also occurs if the co-owners held the property as "joint tenants" - look at the deed by which you and the decedent became owners to determine if this is the case. If it says "joint tenants" you need only record a death certificate. If it says "tenants in common" however, there is no right of survivorship and the decedent's estate must be probated to convey ownership of his portion of the property to someone else.

"How do I put another name on my deed?"

"Put another name on my deed" means that you want to make someone else a a co-owner of your property. To do this, you must convey an interest in the property to that person. You do this by creating a new deed that conveys an interest in the property from you (the current owner) to you and the new co-owner. This new deed should then be recorded at the registry of deeds. The filing fee for a deed is $125.

If you are selling this interest in the property to the other person, you (the seller) must also pay an excise tax based on the sales price. The tax rate is $2.28 per $500 (although a sale for $100 or less is exempt from the tax).

The registry does not provide blank deed forms. Technically, you can prepare a new deed yourself, but we strongly advise you to hire an attorney to do this for you. There are many consequences to owning a property jointly with another, so besides preparing the deed, an attorney will also advise you and your options and their consequences.

To queue or not to queue

One of the assumptions about electronic recording that I’ve been operating under is that for the system to reach a mature, fully utilized state, we must first have an electronic queuing system that regulates the order of walk-in customers and electronically submitted documents. Now I’m not so sure if that’s necessary. In theory, the queue is a good idea. When a walk-in customer arrives at the registry, he first stops and a registration kiosk and enters his name and the number of documents he has to record after which he is assigned a sequential number representing his place in the queue. Incoming electronic recordings would automatically be assigned numbers in the same queue. Registry recording clerks would process the documents in the order presented by the queue. This would keep electronic recordings that arrived at busy times from being neglected in favor of human beings standing in line with documents to be recorded. While such a queue would prevent e-recordings from being forgotten, there are other ways to accomplish that same task that don’t carry the downside of the queue. What down side? What if a major national lender suddenly sends two dozen mortgages electronically. They would take up 24 places in the queue and all would have to be processed by the registry staff before any customer who subsequently arrived in person could be waited on. That’s not how it works now. Today, a customer with many documents goes to a single recording terminal and we begin entering his documents while the next customers go to other recording terminals without having to wait for the first customer to have all of his documents recording. A queuing system would prevent us from doing even that. What is required is a disciplined approach to processing electronic recordings that handles them quickly but with common sense.

Electronic Recording update

Last week, the Plymouth County Registry of Deeds began accepting deeds submitted electronically with excellent result, I’m told. Plymouth had launched electronic recording several months ago but had deferred taking deeds until now. Plymouth now joins Middlesex North as full-service electronic recording registries. Hampden County (Springfield) is also accepting documents filed electronically, but it’s my understanding that neither deeds nor mortgages are permitted as of yet. Other registries are inching closer to activating electronic recording systems. While the number of documents we receive electronically varies from day to day, throughout August we were routinely recording more than 20 electronic documents on many days which, with the very slow pace of overall recording activity, would represent more than 10% of our daily volume. As more registries turn on the system, I believe that our volume of e-recordings will rise substantially.

Electronic Recording update

Earlier today I spent some time with other Massachusetts registers and representatives of ACS, Browntech, Ingeo, LandData and Simplifile discussing electronic recording in the Commonwealth. The good news is that two registries besides Middlesex North have commended e-recording. Register John Buckley of Plymouth County reported that they have already recorded more than 800 documents and have found the system to work “very well.” Because Plymouth has long operated two satellite recording offices, their users were already comfortable doing rundowns that involved documents they never saw, so they were mentally ready to accept e-recording. The folks from the Hamden County Registry of Deeds (in Springfield) had a similar report. They’ve only done about 50 documents but described the process as “flawless” and have rejected only four documents, all because they were registered land. Overall, the folks in attendance seemed optimisitc that the widespread rollout of electronic recording might very well become a reality in Massachusetts during 2008.

E-Recording spreads

At a recent gathering of all of the state’s registers of deeds, we received updates on the state of electronic recording around the Commonwealth. As readers of this blog know, we have been recording documents electronically here in Lowell since June 2005 with more than 5000 documents finding their way into our records via this means. Now, three other registries have joined us: Plymouth began electronic recording back in late 2007. They are proceeding gradually, just accepting discharges from a few local customers right now. Hampden (in Springfield) has been working closely with a company called LandData and that registry is ready to launch its e-recording system. And Worcester is in final meetings with ACS and Simplifile to allow both of those companies to submit documents.