Dear Coach Belichick

To:
New England Patriot's Organization
Coach Bill Belichick
One Patriot's Place
Foxborough, Ma



Dear Coach Belichick,

First, may I call you Bill? I am sure you won’t mind. It is far better than what I was calling you around midnight Sunday. Bill, on behalf of myself and the rest of New England, I need to ask you if you have ever heard the expressions...you don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger AND you don’t mess around when its 4th and two on your own twenty-eight? What!, what were you thinking.

Bill, let me describe my NFL Sunday night experience to you. I'm sitting, watching your/our team (The New England Patriots) go from "pounding" the Indianapolis Colts to "barely managing" them. There's a little over two minutes left in the game and it is 4th down and your/our team has two long yards to go for a first down. OK, I’m thinking...don't panic, we’ll boot that pig-skin deep down the Colt's throat. Hey, if Manning can march 80 yards down the field in 2 minutes the Colts deserve to win...but we’ll make them earn it.

Then I noticed Tom Brady your/our quarterback walked to the sidelines then came back onto the field. Now, I know Brady is good, but he can't punt, I don't think. My brain begins to stutter..."what - is - happening? - the - Pats - are - going – for – it”. Wait a minute, wait a minute, I wonder…am I confused, did I miscount? It must be 3rd down and not 4th? Then the TV screen flashes the bad news, 4th down and two…

OK, its late, I’m usually in bed by 7:30PM (so what, I get tired early). I start to think...am I disoriented? Are the Pats really on the Colts twenty-eight yard line and not their own twenty-eight. A quick field inspection proves that was not the case.

Whhhhaaaaat? Whhhhheeeere am I? Is this America football? Did they change some rule and I missed it? Are there five downs now? Bill truthfully, the last time I felt that confused was when I woke from being injected with sodium pentothal after a tooth extraction.

What were you thinking? Was the voice of former head coach Clive Rush whispering in your ear...(Spooky voice)Billlllllll, yoooouuuu aaarrreeee aaaaa gennnniussssss...gooo foorrrr ittttt Billlllll, goooo foorrrr ittttt...

Bill, as you painfully know, your team failed in its attempt for a first down. The Colts got the ball back, scored and won the game. Why didn’t you just boot the ball and pin Manning down on his own twenty and make him earn a victory instead of giving him one? Honest, I don't get it.

Coach, don’t you know there are certain unquestioned truths in this universe...you don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger AND you don’t mess around when its 4th and two from your own twenty-eight.

Sincerely
Tony Accardi

Electronic Payments and the "Virtual Wallet"

A story in today’s New York Times describes some of the progress being made by the “electronic payment” industry in its search for new and innovative ways for Americans to pay for things. The story points out something that should be obvious if we ever took the time to think about it (although most of us have not) namely that the way humans obtain goods and services has changed only a few times throughout our existence. Bartering gave way to coins which gave way to paper money which was eventually joined by paper checks which all have just recently given way to plastic credit and debit cards. Our next method of payment (already available but not yet adopted to any great degree) might be called the “virtual wallet” which describes a source of funds that is accessible electronically either through the use of a password or an interactive device, most likely a cell phone. Even though this new technology is feasible and available now, it’s has not yet reached the desirable stage because credit and debit cards seem to fulfill all of our current requirements.

Here at the registry we’re interested in the virtual wallet for a couple of reasons. We still handle small amounts of cash received in payment for document copies printed by customers here at the registry. Because so much of our holdings are freely available online, the amount printed here at the registry has greatly decreased through the years, but some still exists. Converting those dollar bills that still come across our counter into electronic micropayments would be much more efficient. The other major inefficiency I see, not just for the registry, but for the entire system, is the practice of paying recording fees and tax stamps by check. It seems that the entire real estate financing system is electronic until it reaches the registry. There, a check is written by hand and processed by hand with data that already exists in digital form being repeatedly keyed into computer systems at the registry, at banks, back at the lawyer’s office, everywhere. That’s not only efficient, it increases the odds of errors being made (have you ever tried to read a lawyer’s handwriting on a check or anywhere else?).

Because people seem satisfied with the established way of paying charges at the registry and elsewhere, a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude will ensure that these new, more efficient methods of payment are slow to be adopted here and elsewhere.

Elevator Location

Yesterday Register Howe wrote about the meeting of potential bidders to construct the new elevator at the Lowell Superior Courthouse this Winter. The elevator will cause the Registry of Deeds to lose work space: half of the administrative room located across from the jury pool will be taken as an entrance; a storage hallway that runs from this room to the "back indexing project room" will become a handicapped accessible ramp; and finally the "back indexing project room" itself will be taken by the elevator project. Fortunately, no space used by the public will be effected. At this time our former closing room is being used by the Middlesex South Satellite Office. Our plan is to restore this back to a closing room when the space becomes available again.

Here is an artist rendering showing the location of the new elevator and two pictures of yesterday's meeting with bidders.

Elevator Update

The Commonwealth’s Department of Capital Asset Management (DCAM), the state agency in charge of all buildings, held a “pre-bid conference” here today for vendors interested in bidding on the new elevator that is to be installed in the courthouse this winter. Because the accessibility of this building has been limited at best for so many years, the Architectural Access Board is requiring the state to go forward with the elevator installation even though the building is expected to be vacated in another two or three years when the new judicial facility is completed. This new elevator will originate in the employ parking lot in the place now occupied by the side entrance. That entrance consists of a wooden door at the top of a half dozen steps. The elevator will pick up passengers in the parking lot and have two stops: one at that first floor and the next on the second floor. Because the first floor is on two different levels, passengers being discharged will be able to go straight ahead towards the jury room. But those going to the lower level of the first floor (the registry, housing court, rest rooms), will have to travel over a slalom-like ramp that twists its way through existing registry space. While the elevator won’t impinge on any registry space, the ramp will, so we’ll be moving some furniture and people around in the coming months. Although nothing is definite, the last I heard as a proposed start time is this coming January.

Veterans Day

The registry of deeds will be closed tomorrow in honor of Veterans Day. Originally known as Armistice Day, this holiday was originally proclaimed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919 to commemorate the end of World War One which occurred when the Armistice was signed on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. Congress made Armistice Day a national holiday in 1938 and in 1954 changed the holiday’s name to Veterans Day to commemorate all veterans of the US military.

Because America’s involvement in World War One occurred at the end of that conflict, we often neglect the sacrifice made by our neighbors here in Lowell. According to a November 11, 1921 article in the Lowell Sun, 171 men from Lowell perished in the war. Surprisingly, almost half the deaths were from pneumonia (which was a complication of the influenza empidemic that gripped the world at the time). But many from Lowell died in action and they are memorialized around the city. Here’s a sampling: Kearney Square in downtown is named for Lt Paul Kearney who was killed in action in France on October 3, 1918; Cupples Square in the Highlands was named for Lt Lorne Cupples who died of wounds in France in October 1918; and Gallagher Square, just up Gorham Street from the registry of deeds was named for Pvt William Gallagher who died of wounds in France on October 7, 1918.

So as you make your way around Lowell or other area communities tomorrow and in the days to come, please take a moment to remember those who gave their lives in the service of our country.

Texting Question

Run this one through your head…

Its the year 2000...Lets say I’m an inventor and you’re a rich Venture Capitalist. One day you are sitting on the deck of your plush, ocean front home sipping Chardonnay. I visit you and tell you I have a revolutionary idea. We have this conversation…

Me: Hey, I've got a great invention that will make millions and I want to let you in on it.
You: (taking a sip from the wine glass) Go a head, tell me about it…I love making millions.
Me: (Holding a cell phone) I invented a way to send written messages over a cell phone. I call it “Text Messaging”. Pretty clever, huh. My idea is to charge people a small fee for every “Text" they send. People will send millions of them. I’ll be rich and you’ll be richer.
You: (with a look of confusion) Are you talking about the cell phones that people use to talk on?
Me: (demonstrating on his cell phone) Yes. This is how it works…Using the number keys on the phone you select a “letter”. Here's an example…press three times on the "number two" key and the phone types the letter “C”. Hit the "number eight" key twice and it types the letter “U”. Get it?
You: It sounds really complicated.
Me: I know it sounds a little difficult, but I’m hoping that in the future cell phones will come with built in keyboards. And people will start using abbreviations for phases...like LOL for "Laugh Out Loud". Get it?
You: (taking a long sip of the wine) Yeah, I "get it", but I don't GET IT...Built in keyboards, on a device meant to talk on?... Isn't it easier just to call the person rather than pound away on the number pad to write something?
Me: Well, yes but…
You: Then why would anyone in their right mind want to send one of your “Text Messages” rather than enter a simple ten digit number and CALL someone and TALK to them? And they probably have the number in speed dial!
Me: I just thought you’d want in on this million-dollar idea.
You: Million-dollar idea!…this Text Messaging thing will send you to the poor-house…Trust me, no one will ever use it. (finishing the wine)...By the way...URN
Me: What?
You: You Are Nuts!
Me: See, you're getting the idea already.


Google estimates that there are 1 billion text messages send every day…and according to the New York Times Texting Messages have increased by 80% in the US in the past year.

First-time homebuyer credit extended

Congresswoman Niki Tsongas informs us that an extension of the first-time homebuyer tax credit, scheduled to expire on November 30, 2009, has been extended by the House and by the Senate to June 30, 2010. The bill awaits the President's signature which should occur within the next day or two. As it was configured, this bill offered a tax credit of up to $8000 to a first-time home buyer as a means of stimulating home sales but it was only available to those who closed on their deals by the end of the day on November 30.

The new bill not only extends that deadline, it also expands the credit to many existing homeowners (and not just first-time buyers). Under the new bill, individuals who already own a home and have lived in it for at least five consecutive years are now eligible for a tax credit of up to $6500. Other changes include the ability of people who purchase the home in 2010 to claim the credit on their 2009 tax returns, meaning they would get the money (the "credit") sooner rather than later. Income caps have also been raised. Formerly, the credit was limted to those with income less than $75000 for individuals and $150000 for couples. The new limit is $125000 and $250000, although homes with a sales price in excess of $800000 would not be eligible for any credit. Finally, the deadline has been moved to April 30, 2010 (for an executed P&S) with a closing to occur no later than June 30, 2010.

Technology Meetings in Worcester

Yesterday I travelled to the Worcester Registry of Deeds for two meetings with representatives from other registries and the Secretary of State's office on technology topics.

The first meeting dealt with the continued roll-out of electronic recording around the state. Now, Middlesex North and South, Plymouth and Hampden are the only registries using this technolgy, but Worcester should be joining us in the next few months with a new system which, if all goes according to plan, will allow document submitters to send electronic documents directly to the registry without going through a third-party intermediary (which is how the rest of us do it). I'm not sure which way is better but I do know that this technology is still in its very early stages, so it's wise to try out a variety of methods before deciding which one works best in Massachusetts.

The second meeting dealt with the new MassLandRecords website which is still in operation alongside the "classic" version of MLR. Our latest testing of the new site still finds some unacceptably long response times for certain queries, so the technical people are completely focused on resolving them. By response time, I mean that a search that takes 1 second to get the result on the Classic version might take 6 seconds to respond on the new version. Since the new system is purposely designed to operate faster, the fact that it's running slower indicates something isn't working quite right. Until that's resolved, both websites will remain in full operation.

First Time Home Buyers Tax Credit

The National Association of Home Builders created and post this excellent YouTube video on the government's first time home buyers tax credit. Who's eligible and what they are eligible for is clearly explained here. The incentive program is due to expire on December 1, 2009, but it appears the Feds will extend it.

October recording statistics

Here are the stats for major document types recorded during October 2009 (compared to those recorded in October 2008). The numbers are split into Lowell properties and non-Lowell properties (i.e., those in the nine other towns in the district);

For Lowell for October 2009 vs October 2008:

Deeds: in 2008 there were 167; in 2009 there were 161 (down 4%)
Mortgages: in 2008 there were 222; in 2009 there were 236 (up 6%)
Foreclosure Deeds: in 2008 there were 24; in 2009 there were 29 (up 21%)
Orders of Notice: in 2008 there were 47; in 2009 there were 55 (up 17%)

For the nine towns in the district for the same time periods:

Deeds: in 2008 there were 326; in 2009 there were 384 (up 18%)
Mortgages: in 2008 there were 658; in 2009 there were 865 (up 31%)
Foreclosure Deeds: in 2008 there were 17; in 2009 there were 20 (up 18%)
Orders of Notice: in 2008 there were 24; in 2009 there were 62 (up 158%)

Improving Real Estate Market

According the National Association of Realtors things are looking up in the real estate market. The NAR data indicates that the number of Purchase and Sales agreements executed in September 2009 rose for the eight straight month.

“Sales of existing homes surged a record 9.4% in September to a 5.57 million annual rate, a report last month showed. The median price fell at the slowest pace in a year as the number of houses on the market shrank" (Bloomberg.com).

Many real estate experts surmise that much of this increase might be attributed to the government's $8,000 home purchasing tax credit. Of course, these same experts are concerned the increase in housing sales will slow down once the government ends the incentive program this month. Since a thriving real estate market is essential to an economic recovery an extension of the program is being considered. Although the sale of foreclosure homes are also a major factor in increasing home sales they are also contributing to the decline in housing prices.

"The Rivalry"

This morning I want to great credit to UMass Lowell for its presentation of the play “The Rivalry” yesterday at the university’s Inn & Conference Center (the former Doubletree Hotel). “The Rivalry” is a re-enactment of the 1858 debates between Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln in connection with that year’s U.S. Senate race. The Democrat Douglas was seeking re-election and was being challenged by the Republican Lincoln. Because Senators were elected by state legislatures and not directly by the people back then, Douglas and Lincoln were actually campaigning for members of their respective parties who were running for state senator and state representative.

Because the central issue being slavery, these six debates attracted nationwide coverage which caused Lincoln to become a national figure who was elected president in the 1860 election. In essence, Douglas advocated “popular sovereignty” for new states by which he meant the people of that state should decide whether it would be free or slave (which he saw as the only way to prevent the disintegration of the country into civil war). Lincoln said that slavery was an abomination and, while he did not advocate the forced elimination of it in places where it already existed, it should not be allowed to spread any further.

While I have attended many events at “the hotel” over the past twenty years, this was my first visit since its makeover as the UML ICC. This event - free to the public - was a great example of the potential that this facility has for enlivening life here in Lowell. The play was also a reminder that 2011 will be the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War, an anniversary we’re sure to hear more about in the coming months.

A surge in electronic recordings

Yesterday we established a new record for the number of electronic recordings processed. The previous high was 107 on April 13, 2009. Yesterday, we recorded 168 documents electronically. That group, which constituted 42% of our overall recordings for the day, included 120 discharges, 31 assignments, 1 deed, 9 mortgages, 1 certificate, 1 homestead and 5 orders of notice. We actually reviewed many more than the 168 that made it on record (for instance, at 8:30 a.m., there were 177 in the electronic pipeline), but we rejected quite a few with the most common reason being that the land involved was not in this registry district.

Unlike other registries, we do not use an electronic queuing system to control the order of recording of electronically submitted and carried-in documents. The reason we don’t have it was illustrated with our experience yesterday. With the current queuing systems, incoming electronic recordings are assigned a sequential number as are walk-in recordings and there is no way to bump someone at the back of the queue higher up in line. If we did have such a system in operation and a poor customer came in at 8:35 a.m. with a single document, he would have had to wait for nearly two hours until registry employees completed the review and recording of all the documents that arrived electronically. Without such a system, we had the flexibility to wait on that customer while other registry employees continued processing the electronically submitted documents, so everything got recorded within a reasonable amount of time.

County Layout Plans now on computer

We just finished scanning our “county layout plans” which are plans that were prepared by the Middlesex County Engineering Department to show takings by the county for roads and other governmental functions. Most of these plans were created during the first half of the Twentieth Century, but registry customers often make use of them. Formerly, we had them rolled up in a closet and would produce them any time they were requested. Now that we’ve scanned them, they are available on the in-house public access computer system (it will be a while until we get them on the website). There is also a bit of a trick to displaying them, but that information is contained in the following paragraph:

At any one of our regular public access terminals, go to the Recorded Land search page and select the “document” tab at the top of the search box. In the “Book” window, enter 200 and in the “Plan” window enter 1. Click “search” and when a line of data appears, double click on it. That causes the pop-up plan viewing window to appear with the plan in plan book 200, page 1. (shown in above picture). Click in that Plan Book window, delete the “200” and enter the “town plan code” from the list below. If you’re looking for a county layout plan in Billerica, for example, you would enter 910. Leave the number 1 in the plan window. Then click the “Next Plan” button to the right of the viewer. If the first Billerica plan only contains one sheet, that sheet will immediately display. If there is more than one sheet (which is frequently the case), a series of numbers will appear in the “”sheets in plan” window. Click on each (usually they are numbered 0001, 0002, etc) to display.

These plans have never been numbered in a way we can duplicate on our computers, so for now you have to just click through each until you find the one you’re looking for. We are working on an index for all of these plans which would list the names of the streets shown on each plan plus the corresponding plan number within our system. Once that index is done, I’ll write about it here. In the meantime, please check out this new feature.

"The dog ate my mortgage"

A column in Sunday's New York Times explores the way that homeowners, aided by various courts across the country, are pushing back against foreclosing lenders. At the peak of the past real estate boom, I remember a busy attorney telling me that the entire financial system was geared to rapidly executing and recording mortgages so that they could be shipped off to Wall Street and repackaged for investors. The complaint was that the entire system was electronic and fast until it reached a standstill at the paper-based registry of deeds. It seems that our financial system never got in sync with our recording system, so now lenders commencing foreclosure proceedings often do not have the documentation necessary to show that they in fact hold the mortgage. Such was the case in a New York bankruptcy case. The end result? The judge ruled that the debt secured by the mortgage was void and unenforceable. While that is undoubtedly an extreme case, it is in some ways indicative of what is happening around the country.

CPA Funding in Trouble

The ecomomic slow down in Massachusetts is taking a toll on the state's Community Preservation Act. The CPA was enacted in 2000 and is a “tool to help communities preserve open space and historic sites, and create affordable housing and recreational facilities (CPA website)”. There are currently 135 Massachusetts communities participating in the CPA.
Here is how it works...Local funds are raised through a property tax surcharge of up to 3%. The state provides matching funds to cities and towns based on the amount of CPA funds it collects. The Commonwealth's matching funds come from a $20 per document surcharge at the registries of deeds. According to the Boston Globe the recent decrease in recordings at the registries will result in a 40% decrease in matching funds distributed by the Commonwealth in the upcoming year. The big problem is many participating communities initiated long range projects and/or acquisitions based on CPA funding and now find themselves expecting less dollars.
The Boston Globe gives examples of towns receiving less CPA funding this year…last year Waltham received $1.3 Million, this year it will received $729,000; last year Ashland received $524,000, this year it will receive $294,200.

And this directly from the Boston Globe:

Stuart Saginior, Executive Director of the Community Preservation Coalition, a nonprofit organization that provides technical assistance to communities adopting or implementing CPA, said the matching is projected to be as low as 28% next year. The current CPA legislation states that it can go down as low as 5%.
In an effort to keep the match from continuing downward, the coalition is supporting legislation filed by Democratic Senator Cynthia Stone Creem of Newton and Democratic Representative Stephen Kulik of Worthington that would raise the minimum match rate to 75%.
To support the legislation with additional funds, the bill would increase the CPA fee on real estate recordings instruments from $20 to $40.

Undoubtedly, users of the registries of deeds will be following the Creem/Kulik bill closely. If it passes the recording fees of most documents will increase by $20.

The registry's role in documenting first-time homebuyer credit

Officials from the IRS and Treasury Department recently testified before a Congressional subcommittee regarding the first time homebuyer credit program. We’ve written about this before, primarily in the context of the surge in recordings it is expected to bring to us at the end of November. For those unfamiliar with the program, taxpayers who have not owned a residence in the past three years are eligible for a tax credit of up to $8000 for a residence purchased no later than November 30, 2009. The credit is a refundable one, so taxpayers with little or no tax liability would receive their credit as a tax refund.

In its reporting on this committee hearing, the mainstream media has focused almost exclusively on testimony that quantified the number of questionable or fraudulent claims. For example, of the 1.5 million who have claimed the credit thus far, the validity of approximately 100,000 of those claims is in doubt. Two examples: 19,000 claimants had yet to purchase the home for which the claim was made (you have to have already closed on the property before claiming the refund) and 580 claimants were under the age of 18 which is the minimum age for participation in the program).

One thing that seems clear is that the claimant has actually purchased the property within the time allowed. The best proof of that, I assume, would be a copy of the recorded deed. So, if the IRS does implement new documentation requirements when claiming this credit, we here at the registry of deeds should see a sudden increase in the number of folks looking for a copy of their deed.

"Do-over" foreclosures and tax liability

This week’s Banker & Tradesman (October 19, 2009) has extensive coverage of and reaction to Land Court Judge Keith Long’s recent affirmation of his earlier decision that foreclosing lenders must have had assignments of mortgages already in place from the beginning of the process for the foreclosure to be valid. There’s a related story about the effect this will have on registries of deeds which includes an interview with me. I told the reporter that besides bringing us a new wave of foreclosure deeds, the one unresolved issue was how to handle the excise tax on the second foreclosure deed.

Here’s the problem: Because of the speed and frequency with which the promissory notes secured by mortgages were transferred among lenders, Wall Street and investors, the system had difficulty recording assignments of those mortgages in a timely and accurate fashion. Consequently, when lenders commenced foreclosure proceedings, there often was not an assignment of that mortgage to that lender on record, but the lender went ahead with the foreclosure anyway with the expectation of cleaning up the record after the fact. Judge Long’s decision renders such a foreclosure invalid because, without the assignment in place at the beginning of the process, the lender had no standing to carry out the foreclosure. With the foreclosure invalidated, ownership of the property would revert back to the borrower, but once the lender was able to record all necessary assignments, the lender could start the foreclosure process over again.

At the registry, we’re frequently presented with documents titled “confirmatory” something or other. Those are used when the initial document contained some flaw that necessitated correction or clarification (such as a name or address being spelled wrong). In this foreclosure scenario, however, there is nothing to confirm since the initial foreclosure was void. The new foreclosure deed (the one from the foreclosure conducted after the assignments were properly put in place) therefore is an entirely new transaction and cannot relate back to the earlier foreclosure deed.

We at the registry are obliged to collect an excise tax based on the sales price of the property. When the first foreclosure deed was recorded, we would have charged the appropriate tax and a tax stamp in that amount would have been affixed to that document. But if that foreclosure deed is void, what happens to the tax liability? My understanding is that in such a case (where the deed was void and the money was refunded), there was no taxable transaction and therefore no tax liability. In such a case, the person who paid that tax would be entitled to apply for an abatement of that tax from the Department of Revenue (the registry has no mechanism to pay out a refund).

When the second foreclosure deed (the “do-over”) gets recorded, we must charge the tax and affix a new tax stamp to that document. Lenders have argued that since they only paid consideration once and have already paid the tax based on that consideration, they should not have to pay a second time.

As a practical matter, that’s true. That’s what I told the B&T reporter and that was what was written in the story. Unfortunately, I failed to make clear to the reporter that technically, the correct way to handle this was for the foreclosing lender to pay the full excise tax on the second foreclosure deed and then seek an abatement (aka a refund) for the first deed (which was void). Just yesterday I heard from one of my colleagues who had spoken with DOR which advised him to get the money for the second stamp and advise the customer to seek an abatement of the first payment. Supposedly, a written ruling should be forthcoming on this. In the meantime, I do think that we are obliged to charge the tax on the second foreclosure deed and that it is the customer’s responsibility to obtain a refund for the first payment from DOR.

Who is buying homes in Lowell?

While real estate is not exactly booming in Lowell these days, many homes are selling. That invites the question, who is it that’s buying them? Our records don’t easily answer that questions but with some analysis and a little effort we can draw a picture that should be fairly accurate. As a sample, I looked at sales in Lowell where the purchase price was more than $50,000 (foreclosures were not included in this set).

In January 2009 there were 63 such sales. Of that group, 23 (or 37%) involved banks selling to third parties after the bank had foreclosed on the property (and by “bank” I mean any lending institution including mortgage companies). Five more properties had banks as sellers but with no foreclosure in the property’s immediate past. This means that 28 of 63 (44%) of the properties sold in Lowell in January 2009 had a bank as the seller.

Since all Massachusetts deeds are supposed to include the mailing address of the buyer, we can look at the deed to determine where the buyer is from. In generally, if the buyer is moving into the house being purchased, that’s the address that’s listed, but if the buyer is an investor, another address is given. In the case of the 28 properties that were sold by banks, 13 of the buyers listed Lowell as their address; 8 listed somewhere other than Lowell; and 7 listed no mailing address. Applying that same test to all of the 63 properties sold that month, we find that 36 (57%) were purchased by buyers listing a Lowell mailing address; 19 (30%) by buyers listing a mailing address outside of Lowell; and 8 (13%) listed no mailing address.

In the coming days, we’ll collect this data for several other months in 2009 and try to draw a clearer picture of just who is purchasing homes in Lowell these days.

Rebel Droids

I thought the most famous Droids in the world were R2-D2 and C-3PO from Star Wars fame…but I guess I was wrong. Motorola, not SkyNet, is making the latest Droids to storm the world. Actually, Motorola’s Droid is a phone...but it is not just another cloned, smart phone. Droid is powered by Google’s Android Operating System and is being marketed by Verizon. If you watched the Patriots crush the Titans Sunday you probably saw Verizon's unorthodox commercial for its Droid.

Here's the text:

iDon’t have a real keyboard
iDon’t run simultaneous apps
iDon’t take 5-megapixel pictures
iDon’t customize
iDon’t run widgets
iDon’t allow open development
iDon’t take pictures in the dark
iDon’t have interchangeable batteries

Everything iDon’t

DroidDoes

When I first saw this commercial I was a little confused, but the lower-case “i” before the word "Don’t" indicated one thing for sure…The mission of Motorola’s Droid is to destroy the iPhone, not Darth Vadar. Like the lethal combination of Luke Skywalker, Hans Solo and Obi Wan the coalition of Google, Verizon and Motorola makes one powerful force that even Apple can't ignore. Experts (that’s not me) still believe that the Apple Empire will reign supreme until the rebels find a way to neutralize the company's real Master of the Digital Universe, iTunes!

Old Town Seals

Town Seals are fascinating to examine. They reflect both the history of a community and its goals. The video below contains the Seals of all ten towns in our Middlesex North District and several other interesting ones in other parts of Middlesex County.

"Commercially reasonable efforts to avoid foreclosure"

The Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary yesterday held a hearing on Senate Bill 1848, filed by Andover’s Susan Tucker and titled “An Act to Require Commercially Reasonable Efforts to Avoid Foreclosure. Senator Tucker and Attorney General Martha Coakley both testified in support of the bill.

The bill is directed at creditors and requires them, prior to initiating foreclosure proceedings, the determine whether the delinquent loan should be modified. The bill establishes a standard against which that decision may be measured: the creditor must “conduct an analysis comparing the net present value of the modified loan and the creditor’s anticipated net recovery that would result from foreclosure.” If the value of the modified loan exceeded the anticipated recovery at foreclosure (and if it is determined that the creditor is able to make the monthly payments on the modified loan), then the creditor must modify the loan. Only where the value expected to be received from foreclosure exceeds the value of the loan as modified may the creditor foreclose.

Additionally, this bill requires lenders to sign an affidavit in all foreclosures affirming that the lender is already in possession of a “written, signed and dated” assignment of the loan. This section relates to the Land Court decision we’ve written about frequently.

For at least a year, legislators and the Attorney General have requested lenders to work with creditors to modify loans and thereby reduce foreclosures, but these requests have been largely ignored. It looks like some in state government are now ready to make loan modifications mandatory under the right set of circumstances.

Reader Comments on Judge's Decision

Register Howe has written several posts on this blog regarding a major ruling by Land Court Judge Keith Long. Long's ruling says that the practice of mortgage holders of foreclosing on properties and later proving ownership is wrong. In an earlier post Register Howe explained this in more detail..."in each case the lender had conducted (or at least commenced) foreclosure proceedings before the documents assigning the mortgage being foreclosed to the entity conducting the foreclosure as 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." Yesterday Judge Long denied a request made by Wells Fargo and refused to reverse his early decision. The Boston Globe published a follow up article on this issue which encouraged many reader comments. I selected several of these I found interesting and posted them below.

Readers Comments
Comment 1: His decision is correct... you cannot call in a debt without proving you are owed the money.

Comment 2: Judge Long ruled correctly. Land Court rules are clear with limited room for interpretation. Banks have been playing fast and loose with the law. Banks have legal council and I'm certain Council warned them about this matter. These banks may be headquartered in other states but Massachusetts law must be obeyed.
Banks have been conditionally selling to other banks that specialize in liquidation for a fast profit. They have refused to accommodate owners with mortgage adjustments on adjustable loans that charge horrendous interest rates and will not allow short sales and yes they have refused to maintain the homes, letting the homes fall into disrepair.

Comment 3: Lenders use every single word on the mortgage note to insure they (or their assignees) receive their monies. Borrowers have the justice system to make certain to fight what maybe a wrong. plus, a borrower doesn't want to pay off a loan and have another party come and say "you should have paid me"

Comment 4: However, it impacts normal sales in the sense that the rules of real property transfers are being upheld. Just as you can't sell your house to someone without their bank (or them) being comfortable that title is clear and having title insurance in case it isn't, now the lenders are being forced to play by those rules as well. If they had been/will be allowed to flaunt the rules, chances are some normal sales could be impacted as well by other people trying to flaunt the rules, or other rules to their advantage.

Commment 5: This makes absolutely not sense what so ever. Why? Well in Massachusetts all sales of property that involves a bank are done requiring a title rundown. Attorneys who do the title rundowns then certify to the Title Insurance Company that the title is free and clear. Plus the attorney makes sure that the appropriate paperwork is filed in the appropriate registry of deeds to show their is a mortgage on the property. So this all smells of incompetent work on the part of the attorneys, banks and even the title companies. There are more to blame here and each of these entities and if I am mistaken each can be sued or at least their insurance policies.
Now, I want to state one thing - in Massachusetts I have never known real estate attorney to make such a mistake on making sure the titles were clear. My guess is this was done by non professionals or attorneys from other states who were not up on Massachusetts procedures.

Commment 6: Sally Homeowner has Mortgage with ABC Bank. Sally Homeowner stops making payments. ABC Bank is just a servicer and doesn't know how to foreclose. ABC Bank assigns Mortgage to XZY Bank. (unfortunately this Assignment is never recorded at the Registry of Deeds). XYZ records a foreclosure complaint at the Registry of Deeds. XYZ forecloses and sells house to Billy Bargainhunter. Foreclosure is incorrect because Assignment wasn't recorded prior to Foreclosure complaint. So how could Sally Homeowner have possibly known what was going on?!?! I mean, she just thought if I stop making payments, I'll be fine. (sarcasm emphasis added here) Just a very tickytack ruling that has been disguised as consumer protection but is just a ruling based on emotions. Appeals Court would be wise to overturn this, which I'm assuming will happen next.

Old Plan Scanning

Several years ago we bought a Minolta over-head camera capable of creating digital images of Record Books. In the beginning we used it exclusively for scanning our older, larger books during the back scanning project. The minolta took a secondary role in the project when we made the decision to cut these books up. The Minolta was/is slow but accurate. Our goal is to complete the back scanning project by early November, a project in which we re-scanned close to 8,000 records books containing some three million pages. Once completed we will begin another project. The new project will require us to re-activate the Minolta over-head camera. The Registry has some old, rare Plan Books that have never been scanned. These books date back to as early as 1840 and have wonderful historical value. Because of this we have been very hesitant to disassemble them. They include old Atlases of Lowell, Locks and Canals Plans, Middlesex County Town Plans and others. Our goal is to scan these plans using the over-head camera and make them available to the public through the Internet and on our in house database.

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.