MERS and the foreclosure freeze

The New York Times reports today that JP Morgan Chase, perhaps the largest bank in the country, acknowledged publicly that it had stopped using Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) in its home mortgage practice. The article, written in the context of the greater scrutiny being paid on foreclosure practices by attorneys general around the country, raises doubts about MERS but is fuzzy about the rationale of these doubts.

MERS came into existence about ten years ago. Its purpose was to serve as a central holding agent for mortgages so that lenders could sell and trade the underlying promissory notes at will without having to record corresponding assignment of mortgage documents with registries of deeds as would be required in traditional mortgage practice. MERS would be the record holder of the mortgage and would also serve as the long-term point of contact for anything related to that mortgage regardless of the whereabouts of the underlying note. Through the refinancing and home sales boom of mid-decade, MERS did a tremendous volume of business. As is always the case when things go bad, everyone's practices are under scrutiny. The only questions I know that have arisen about MERS come from a couple of court decisions from other parts of the country questioning the whole "mortgage holding agent" concept that MERS is built upon. But this Times article implies other issues without specifying their nature. We'll stay tuned for follow-ups to this story.

Google's Self Driving Car

Sometimes I am completely amazed by Google's projects... For two reasons, first what they do is often mind-boggling and second sometimes I don’t know why they do it.

The following is a perfect example of what I mean.

Google has developed a car that drives itself. Honest!, nobody steers it, accelerates it, or puts the brakes on. Google has modified two models, an Audi TT and a Toyota Prius for the experiment.

I know what you are thinking…big deal, they hitch a remote control up to a Prius and drive down the street in a straight line.

Wrong! Google’s self driving cars have traveled more than 140,00 miles in "real traffic".

OK, so how does it work? Honestly, I have no idea…google uses radar, laser sensors and video cameras. Combined together these devises detect twists and turns in the road and other cars. Notice how vague I was with this explanation? That's because I have no real idea how it works.

Google's self driving car is truly an amazing invention…what google intends to do with it remains to be seen.

The video below shows a google car on the road...yes, someone is in the car, but they act as an overseer, not a driver.

Foreclosures and condominiums

The computer system here at the registry gives us a limited ability to identify and track condominium units. (Usually, we can't tell what is built upon a property). I recently looked at the rate of foreclosures for condominiums and compared it to foreclosures of non-condos. Here is what I found:

In Lowell from January 1, 2010 to September 30, 2010, there were 286 foreclosure deeds recorded. Of those, 82 involved condominiums. That means that 29% of foreclosures for Lowell were for condos. Comparing the same period of 2009 with the first nine months of 2010, we find that there were 178 Lowell foreclosures of which 65 (37%) were condominiums. The overall rate of foreclosures for 2010 represented at 61% increase over those in 2009. The rate of condominium foreclosures, however, represented only a 26% increase from 2009 to 2010. So as a percentage of overall foreclosures, the number of condos is going down.

In the nine towns in the Middlesex North District, there were 232 foreclosure deeds recorded between January 1, 2010 and September 30, 2010. This was an increase of 125% over the number recorded during the first nine months of 2009. The number of condominiums being foreclosed in the towns went up substantially: from 19 in 2009 to 52 in 2010, a jump of 174%. In the towns for 2010, condominiums represented 22% of all foreclosures.

National Notary Bill Vetoed

A small item in today's New York Times caught by Register of Deeds eye. President Obama is exercising a "pocket veto" of a bill that would mandate all states to recognize acknowledgements taken in other states, including those done electronically. The story explains how up until now, this bill was considered to be non-controversial, so much so that both parties in Congress acquiesced to its passage in an informal session which is truly astounding given the gridlock in Washington. The reason for the president's veto is that the recent furor about shoddy administrative practices in foreclosures by major national lenders has thrown the whole issue of the authenticity of foreclosure documents into question, so now is not the time to loosen existing rules on notarizations.

Out of state acknowledgements have never been an issue for us. We regularly receive and record them. Here is what the Massachusetts Deed Indexing Standards say about out of state notaries:

4-4 OUT OF STATE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
An acknowledgment made outside of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts but within any state, territory, district or dependency of the United States shall be made (in accordance with Massachusetts General Laws chapter 183, section 33) by:
1) a justice of the peace, notary public, or magistrate of the state in which the acknowledgment is made;
2) a commissioner appointed therefor by the governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; or
3) any other officer of the state in which the acknowledgment is made provided that a certificate of authority of said officer in the form prescribed by M.G.L. c. 183, s. 33 is attached thereto.
To be recorded in Massachusetts, such an acknowledgement does not require the seal of the Notary Public taking the acknowledgement.

Holiday Schedule

With this coming weekend being of the three-day variety, I thought it appropriate to review the registry's holiday schedule for the rest of the calendar year. We are closed this Monday for Columbus Day and also on Thursday, November 11 for Veterans Day. We are of course closed on Thanksgiving (Thursday, November 25). That's it.

With Christmas and New Years both falling on Saturdays, we won't be closed for either of those holidays. The registry will function as usual the day before and the day after Thanksgiving, the day before Christmas and the day before New Years. We will also be open on the Mondays following Christmas and New Years.

The Rise and Fall of Internet Explorer

I think this is really big news...
For the first time ever, Microsoft's Web Browser Internet Explore has dropped to less than 50% market share (49.87%).
How the mighty have fallen...At one time 90% of users surfed the Internet with Explorer. It was the 500 pound gorilla in the browsing room.
Can you believe, in five short years IE lost 40% of its customer base.
So where did these Internet Explorer defectors go?
Mozilla's Firefox has increased to 31.5% market share. Google's new browser "Chrome" leaped from a 3.69% share last year to 11.54%. And Apple's Safari owns about 6% of the market
Me?
I dumped Internet Explorer about three years ago after contacting a virus that destroyed my computer. A few weeks later I discovered that the virus has been written to specifically attack Internet Explorer. That was it for me!
Now I alternate back and forth between Chrome and Firefox. I like Chrome better...but I still find some programs don't optimize with Chrome.

More on power outage and website problems

In yesterday's blog post, Tony addressed last Friday's power outage. Here are some more details about what happened and why. The courthouse and the neighborhood lost electricity at 11:05 a.m. We were in the midst of recording documents but we had previously equipped all of our recording terminals and scanners with UPS devices. These are battery backups that are intended to keep equipment functioning for a short period of time so as to allow the user to finish a task and save work. The UPS's worked as intended and we were able to finish the recordings underway and shut everything down smoothly. We have bigger UPS's on our computer servers, designed to last longer, but when the power was not back on by 1 pm. we decided to shut down the servers, as well. The UPS that powers the telephones continued on until 3 pm when it powered down. Because the metal detector at the entrance to the building was not working, Courthouse Security shut down access to the building once the power went out.

By 4 pm when the power had not been restored, I decided to let the registry staff leave for the day. A resumption of power would still require us to do about 20 minutes of testing and restoration of our computers, so no new documents would have arrived by the time the building officially closed. Strangely enough, just as the employees left (a few of us were staying until 4:30), the Lowell Police arrived saying there had been a bomb threat to the courthouse. The few folks inside evacuated. It took about 30 minutes for the police to issue the all clear at which time the electricity magically came on. I spent about an hour bringing up the computers and fixing some errors that appeared so on Monday morning (yesterday) we were ready to go.

One problem unrelated to our power outage was an issue with the masslandrecords.com website. The domain name had somehow been allowed to expire (that's done at an echelon above the registry) and the way the registration company reminds you of that by pointing anyone who tried to reach that site on the internet to a completely different site. The technique works. The name was quickly renewed on Saturday, but it took about 48 hours to cycle the replacement page out of the various servers that make up the internet. Everything seems back to normal now.

Last Friday's Power Outage

Last Friday, October 1, 2010 at 11:05 AM the electrical power went out at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds. National Grid informed us that the problem was isolated to a small block of homes and buildings in and around the registry. When the power went out some employees were in the middle of recording and scanning documents. These documents were put to the side to be verified when things returned to normal.
Initially, National Grid estimated the issue would be resolved and power restored by 1:00PM.
Unfortunately, it didn't happen that way.
Rather, it took until approximately 4:30 PM for the lights to finally come back on.
During this time period Security kept the building closed to the public for safety reasons.
This morning (Monday)we arrived early to test the computers and servers. Everything worked well except for one server and fortunately that too was back up an running before noon.

September recording statistics

Here are the numbers for September 2010 vs September 2009:

The number of deeds recorded district-wide dropped 18%, from 519 to 426
Mortgages rose 46%, from 953 to 1393
Foreclosure deeds were up 165%, from 23 to 61
Orders of notice rose 87%, from 62 to 116

The rise in foreclosure deeds was steepest in the nine towns in the district (as opposed to just the city of Lowell). Town foreclosure deeds rose 125%, from 12 to 27 while those for Lowell went up just 38%, from 21 to 29. The increase in orders of notice was more balanced, however, with Lowell orders on notice rising 56% from 48 to 75 and the town orders orders of notice going up 63%, from 49 to 80.

Old grantor/grantee indexes online

A short time ago we finally added the scanned images of our old Grantor and Grantee Indexes to our website. They're available to everyone now, but not in a way that is easy to use. While we work on making the system more useful, you can access this info now. This morning I received an email from a person doing genealogical research asking how to find older documents online. I used that as an opportunity to write a set of instructions. Here they are:

What you're missing is access to the Grantor and Grantee Indexes. Anytime a document is recorded, the registry adds the names contained in that document to an alphabetical index. The Grantor contains the name of the person giving something and the Grantee the person getting something. For entries since about 1970, these indexes have been combined in a searchable database that's available on the registry's website (go to www.lowelldeeds.com and click the yellow "search" box). For earlier index entries, we've scanned the old index books and have made those pages available as electronic images. Unfortunately, due to the size of the resulting files, we have only been able to make the scanned indexes available on computers here at the registry. Recently we succeeded in adding these images to our website, but that effort is remains a work in progress and is not yet as user-friendly as we would like. Still, there is a way to access those indexes online. Here's how:

Go to www.lowelldeeds.com and click the yellow "search" box. A new window will appear. Near the top is some text printed in blue and red that says "CLICK HERE to try the new version of the Massachusetts Land Records web site." Click on that link. When the new version of masslandrecords appears, look at the upper menu bar for the "Search Criteria" link (it's right above "land" in masslandrecords). Move your cursor over that and a window of menu choices will appear. The last two choices in the "Recorded Land" section are "Pre-1976 Grantor Indexes" and "Pre-1976 Grantee Indexes"

How to proceed from here is best illustrated by an example. Let's say we're interested in a man named Francis H Porter who we know owned land in Billerica in the 1920s. We want to learn what happened to that land. Because we know Porter owned the property and we want to discover who he transferred it to, we will look for Porter's name in the Grantor Index that covers the 1920s, so click on the "Pre-1976 Grantor Indexes" choice. The search windows to the right of the "masslandrecords.com" title at the top of the screen now change to show three fields: (1) Index; (2) Book (A-Z); Page Number. click the drop down arrow within the "index field". That gives you the date ranges of the various Grantor Index books. We'll start with the "1916-1925 Grantors". The next field - "Book" - can only contain the first letter of the last name of the person you're interested in so type "P" for Porter. Here's where we hit one of the shortcomings of the present system. The "page numbers" are literally numbers so you have no idea which page number of the index to turn to for "Porter." With a physical book, you'd estimate how far in "Porter" would appear, open the book there, and then flip forward or back until you found the right page. That's kind of what you have to do here. Click the "search" button. Across the bottom of the screen you'll see the numbers 1-10 followed by three dots. Click on the number ten. That retrieves the tenth page of index page numbers. Click on one of the individual page links. In the right hand window, click on the tab that says "Images" and the image of that page will appear. Keep jumping around until you find the page containing the information of interest to you. Once you've found the relevant page, just copy down the book and page number for any entries of interest, and then retrieve those documents separately from the site. Please note that this index feature uses a popup window to display the index page images, so you may have to click "allow popups from this website" to display things on your computer.

I told you it was a complicated process. We are working to simplify it but because some people from distant locations have no alternative, I thought I'd explain how to use the system as it now exists. Remember, if you're in the vicinity of the registry, you can always bring us your won 16GM computer thumb drive and we will copy the entire index onto it for your own use, free of charge.

Electrical Issues

For the past few months several of our computers have exploded while being plugged in. At the time we rationalized the situation with various possible excuses...dust or moist in the unit; possibly a bad power supply, a brief power surge ect. But recently the situation has escalated. Two days ago a surge protector exploded when a two year old scanner was plugged into it. The spark was so intense it cracked the unit's plastic frame.
And this morning things got even worse...we had two computers explode. One when first powered-up and the other about two minutes after. With the help of the Secretary of State's Office we had an electrician at the registry within hours of the incident this morning. His first look brought nothing unusual to his attention.
He determined further investigation was needed, so tomorrow the electrician will hook a computer up to the main breaker panel. The flow of current will be monitored for several days then the experts will assess the results.

More culpability for the mortgage meltdown

Clayton Holdings is a company that analyzed mortgage pools for rating agencies such as Moody's and Standard and Poor's and many of the big Wall Street banks that bundled these mortgages into securities that were then resold. A former president of Clayton testified last week before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a bipartisan, Congressionally appointed panel that is charged with investigating and reporting on the causes of the worldwide financial meltdown.

D. Keith Johnson told investigators that Clayton reported to banks and rating agencies that "vast numbers of loans were being packaged as securities even though they failed to meet underwriting standards." Rather than insist that these bad mortgages be bought back by the mortgage originators and replaced with more reliable ones, the banks squeezed originators such as Countrywide and Fremont financial to discount the mortgages which the originators did, happy to not have the burden of such bad mortgages returned to them. In turn, the big banks with the willing cooperation of their co-conspirators in the rating agencies, peddled these already failing mortgages as AAA bonds that were gobbled up by investors who were probably equal parts greedy and naive.

The Clayton story gives us some insight into how the widespread practice of making bad loans grew from a real estate crisis to a world financial crisis.

The Looms at Boott Mill Lowell

This video was originally post on YouTube by lala412

Here is the video description:
The looms in the museum at Boott Mill in Lowell, MA. http://www.nps.gov/lowe While only a few of the many looms were running, the noise in the room was deafening, so I lowered the sound and added a classical music piece as a soundtrack. The museum does offer earplugs. :-) At one point near the end, the second time I show the blue cloth being woven, there is a white thread marker that the "mill girl" added in the center of the fabric right before I started taping again to show how fast the looms weave - they do 140 - 150 rows per minute! The very last loom is the only 4 shaft automated loom in the factory. Since it can have 4 weft threads going at once, it can weave plaids - the others cannot. They can have different warp colors, but only one weft color going at a time.

Techie Shorts

Thursday a software glitch crashed the popular social networking site Facebook. For two hours and millions of Facebookers found themselves unable to answer the question “What's on your mind?

Just last week scientist released the results of testing that proved Einstein’s theory that time moves faster as an object moves away from the earth…interesting theory. With this in mind I have decided to extend my life by living mainly on the first floor of my house.

Rental movie giant Netflix is now offering a fee plan that will provide consumer “instant play” programs only (in Canada that is). This is surely a sign of the future of this industry.

For months, no for years rumors have circulated that Apple was on the verge of contracting with Verizon to allow the carrier to sell the iPhone. It looks like this is just that, a rumor. Verizon CEO, Ivan Siedenberg was quoted last week saying... “We don’t feel like we have an iPhone deficit”. I guess that will end speculation for a while.

No question Amazon’s e-reader, the Kindle is in a major battle with Apple’s iPad. In a move that will surely help its cause Kindle recently released an application that will allow its ebooks to be read on Andriod driven phones.

"Reinstating" a mortgage

A major national lender contacted us with a question about "reinstating" a mortgage. The lender had erroneously recorded a discharge of a mortgage and is now trying to "reinstate" the mortgage. It seems that the lender's standard way of doing this is to send a letter to the registry stating something like "We erroneously send a discharge of [this] mortgage to your registry; Please reinstate our lien." I don't recall any such document being recorded here and I'm not quite sure what the lender would have to do to revive the mortgage. Since we are just the recording office, I don't have to judge whether the lender's approach does what it purports to accomplish. Still, it's an interesting issue.

The problem that I see concerns the nature of a mortgage. In Massachusetts, a mortgage is a conveyance of an interest in real estate. The borrower conveys to the lender an interest in the property so a mortgage is technically a deed and all deeds must be notarized to be recorded. When the mortgage is paid off, the lender conveys that interest back to the borrower. That document - the discharge - must also be notarized because it is a conveyance of an interest in real estate. My point is not that the "reinstatement" document needs to be notarized - my point is that if the bank has conveyed its interest in the property back to the borrower whether that was inadvertent or not, I'm not sure that the bank can unilaterally reinstate the loan. If the property interest went back to the homeowner, doesn't the homeowner have to convey that interest back to the bank to accomplish what the lender wants? If I learn anything more on this topic, I'll do a follow-up blog post.

You've Got Mail...From Steve Jobs

This story is almost unbelievable, if it is true.

Let me ask you this...Can you image any circumstances under which the CEO of a mega-company would email a college student an tell her to “Please leaves us alone”.
What CEO would do that?
Apple CEO Steve Jobs did.
According to Post Long Island University student Chelsea Issacs she was trying to impress her journalism teacher by getting an outside quote for an article she was writing. She thought it would help her get a better grade. The ambitious young lady found a way to email Apple’s Prince Steve Jobs himself and asked for a comment.
Shockingly, the billionaire emailed back, but here is what he wrote “Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade”.
Steve, come on. Are you kidding? Why be like that? Why didn’t you just ignore the email.
Jobs response offended Chelsea and she wrote back...”If you get a message from a client or a customer isn’t it your job to return the call? That’s what I always thought, but I guess it’s not one of your goals”
OK Steve, drop this right now. You are above this...you’re worth $5/6 billion. You don’t need this.
Did Steve take my advise? Not! Jobs writes back, “ Nope, we have over 300 million users and we can’t respond to every single request, unless they have a problem of some kind. Please leave us alone”.
Steve, Stevie, Steveo...I think you went too far.
Now Chelsea is famous. You look bad and I’ll bet, bet she got an A on that paper.

GMAC halts foreclosures

GMAC announced that it would immediately halt all foreclosure related activity in 23 states (including Massachusetts, I believe) to complete a thorough review of their policies and procedures regarding foreclosures. The New York Times theorizes that with more and more jurisdictions requiring proof that the foreclosing lender is actually the legal holder of the underlying note and mortgage, GMAC's "fast and loose" approach to documenting transactions might now pose a substantial risk of liability to the company. If, for example, GMAC foreclosed on a mortgage that had not properly been assigned to it, the foreclosure could be void. If that property had already been sold to a third party buyer, that buyer's title would be flawed. GMAC's stand down is probably necessary to avoid additional problems, but this also means that more and more abandoned and thought-to-be-foreclosed homes currently on the market will remain unsold and unoccupied for months to come which in turn will further diminish the value of surrounding properties.

Redfin v Zillow

Two years ago a website called Zillow.com burst upon the scene providing extensive information about homes for sale. Last week, someone told me about a competing site called Redfin. I did a search on Redfin in my zip code and found most (but not all) of the houses for sale in my neighborhood. Different icons designate single family homes, multifamily homes and condominiums. Sliding the cursor over one of these icons displays the asking price plus the number of bedrooms and baths. Deeper into the site are interior photos of each of the properties and other data. Schools in the vicinity are also plotted on the map with icons and another feature provides you with the test scores of that school, comments from parents of children at the school and a variety of other information. For anyone interested in buying a home, these sites (Redfin and Zillow) are excellent tools to employ.

Trailer for "The Figther"

The trailer for The Fighter filmed right here in Lowell hit YouTube yesterday with as bang. After just one day, over 126,000 people have viewed the preview of what many think will be one of the top movies of the year. The movie tells the life story of Lowell's own boxing great, Irish Micky Ward . There are many recognizable scenes of Lowell in this 2:30 second trailer, but the most interesting for us is the scene filmed in the upper lobby of the Lowell Superior Courthouse, the home of the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds.

The movie stars Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale and will be released December 10, 2010.

September 2010: mid-month statistics

With September half done (that's hard to believe) I decided to take a mid-month glimpse at our recording stats. Here are the number of major document types recorded from September 1 thru September 15 for 2008, 2009 and 2010.

Deeds: In 2008 there were 198; in 2009 there were 231; in 2010 there were 180

Mortgages: In 2008 there were 328; in 2009 there were 438; in 2010 there were 605

Foreclosure Deeds: In 2008 there were 19; in 2009 there were 14; in 2010 there were 33

Orders of notice: In 2008 there were 24; in 2009 there were 36; in 2010 there were 57

Total documents: In 2008 there were 1951; in 2009 there were 2390; in 2010 there were 2612

Apple's Almost Jacket

I finally bought the new iPhone 4G.
I’ve had it for about two weeks now and yes, I like it.
Sure, I was a little nervous about purchasing the 4G because of the phone's reputation for dropping calls.
I bought it at the Apple Store and asked the salesman about the problem(he wouldn't call it a problem, rather an issue). He told me Apple would send me a "free jacket" for the phone that would resolve the problem, I mean issue.
Fortunately, after using the iPhone for two weeks I haven't lost a call, yet. But I sent away for the free Apple iPhone 4G "jacket" away. I got it yesterday.
It came in a hard, securely sealed case, so secure I had to cut it open with a knife.
According to Apple, an open seam in the chrome rim around the phone that acts as an antenna is the cause of the dropped calls, I mean issue. The purpose of the "free jacket" is to cover this seam.
Great...So I’m figuring, even if I don’t need it to prevent calls from dropping, the "jacket" will protect the phone.
Wow, I was shocked when I finally removed the so called "jacket" from the shipping box. It really isn’t a "jacket" at all. It is more like a “vest” with no back. This "almost jacket" only fits around the rim of the phone and affords no real protection whatsoever.
I laughed when I saw the "almost jacket". All I could think was how much I love Apple products, but how they don't give anything away for free... problem, I mean issue or no issue...not even a lousy, little, phone "jacket".

Foreclosures and home values

I'm researching the long-term consequences of all the foreclosures we've experienced during the last few years and have some preliminary info worth sharing. In 2008 there were 376 foreclosures in Lowell. Of those, 367 properties (98%) were purchased at the foreclosure auction by the foreclosing lender. Of that group, 355 (97%) had been resold to third parties as of August 31, 2010. The average length of time from the date of the auction to the date of the third party sale for those 355 properties was 267 days which is just about 9 months. To determine the change in value of these properties, I randomly selected 75 of them and found the city of Lowell's FY2008 assessment. That averaged $268,601. That same group of 75 properties sold to third parties, post-foreclosure, for an average of $146,992 - a 45% decrease in value.

Registered Land Doc Check

Last month we began to quality check our Registered Land Documents. In Massachusetts the Registry of Deeds is required to keep all original Reg Documents in its possession. Currently, we store about 220,000 documents in plastic containers (I blogged on these containers last month). It is painstaking work that requires patience and concentration. An employee literally flips through the documents one at a time looking for those that are missing or misfiled. When he/she finds a problem the instrument number is written down. The "checker" finishes the day by refiling found documents correctly. An employee can check approximately 1500 documents in a day. At this pace it will take between 12-15 weeks to run through all 220,000 docs.

Mortgage fraud indictments

Today's Globe reports that a Massachusetts attorney has been indicted by the US Attorney for his role in a mortgage fraud scheme which recruited "investors" to purchase condominiums, mostly in Boston, under false pretenses. It seems that the condo buyers never had any intention in living in the units, but were persuaded by the attorney and his co-defendants to obtain mortgages by falsifying financial information and by indicating that they would occupy the condo units as personal residences when that was not the case. Predictably, most of these units are in foreclosure.

Although bending and breaking the rules becomes commonly accepted practice during boom times, the state must aggressively prosecute all who participated in schemes such as this and fully publicize such prosecutions, both as a deterrent to future wrongdoing and as an acknowledgment to the public that those who break the rules will be punished.

Electronic Recording Stats

During the last few days of August, it seemed like we were processing a never-ending stream of electronic recordings, certainly more than would normally be the case. To quantify this impression, I reviewed our electronic recording stats for this summer. From June 1 to August 31, we recorded a total of 16,067 documents, 2578 of which were recorded electronically. This accounts for 16% of all recordings, a significant percentage increase over the 12% we have averaged for several years. And yes, August 27 (the last Friday of the month) and August 31 (the last day of the month) both were particularly busy with e-recordings - 80 each day whereas our daily average through the summer was just 40. Some more averages: of the 40 docs recorded each day, 15 are discharges, 11 are mortgages, 2 are deeds and 12 fall into other categories.

Why the upsurge in electronic recording? I think more registries are offering the service so our customers see some economies of scale in using the system. When Middlesex North was the only one operating electronic recording, there wasn't much incentive for an attorney to devote time and resources to learning the system. Also, after six years of electronic recording, there have been no incidents, no reversals, no complaints. For many attorneys, that's a long enough test drive. Now they're finally ready to make the jump.

Google TV is Coming

Google TV is coming this Fall and if it lives up to the hype it will change our television viewing experience forever. Google TV will run Google Android software.

What’s the big deal?

Why don’t I let Google explain it themselves...

Let the market fall?

Over the weekend an article in the New York Times suggested that some economists and housing analysts are coming to the conclusion that the only way out of our current housing slump is to let the market fall to whatever level occurs naturally. The reasoning is that all of the steps taken by the federal government thus far - the home buyer tax credit, incredibly low interest rates, foreclosure prevention programs - have been unsuccessful in halting the skid of the market. There's now a sense that even though a further drop in prices would cause even more pain, such a drop is the only way to break through the stagnation that now grips the market.

In the past I've written about this approach with regard to foreclosed properties - that lenders should move quickly to execute the foreclosure and get the properties back on the market and in the hands of new owners as soon as possible, but the type of blanket approach suggested in this article seems extreme even to me.

Hurricane Earl

A quick glance at online weather radar shows that the leading edge of the rain accompanying Hurricane Earl has reached Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard and continues pushing in this direction so we could see rain by lunch time. Even now (10:15 am) the sky has clouded over and is looking ominous. Other than some stiff wind and a lot of rain, this part of the Merrimack Valley should avoid the worst of the storm.

The same was not the case seventy-two years ago. On September 21, 1938, a devastating hurricane tore through New England, killing hundreds. The storm first made landfall on the outer edge of Long Island and then slammed into the Rhode Island coast and crossed through central Massachusetts and Vermont.

Here in Greater Lowell, the hurricane killed one man, injured dozens and caused at least $1 million in property damage. Here is the beginning of the top story in an "extra" edition of the Lowell Sun published late on the night of Wednesday, September 31, 1938:

Lowell went under martial law tonight as the city was ripped, torn and laid waste by the worst gale in its history. Terrifying in its intensity and rising in whining crescendo to high-pitched moans, the wind hit with hurricane force shortly before 5 p.m. Sweeping in from due east, it rapidly stepped up its velocity to a maximum of 65 miles an hour. It whipsawed every living thing, toppled trees by the hundreds, smashed roofs, doors and windows, menaced life and limb and ran up a property toll that will run into thousands of dollars.

Registry records on Google Books?

This past Monday I attended a meeting in Boston with most of my register of deeds colleagues to discuss technology. Electronic recording and the cost of storing archival microfilm were two big topics, but Greg, the IT guy from the registry in Springfield, said something that got me thinking about new ways to use existing technology.

when Hampden County was abolished as a governmental entity, the registry of deeds inherited records from the county agencies that were going away - like the county commissioners and the engineers. The registry recently scanned old books containing meeting minutes of county government and succeeded in sharing the resulting digital images with Google Books.

Google Books is a great (and free) service whereby Google has scanned millions of pages of out-of-copyright books and made the images freely available online. What's especially nice about Google Books is the service's ability to search for a word or words within the digital text of a scanned image.

This type of software has amazing implications for registries of deeds. Imagine seeking a deed from 1938 to Richard Howe for property at 360 Gorham Street. Using software like that on Google Books, you could perform a search for the words "Howe" and "Gorham" and the computer would scan through all of our images, locating every one that contained those two words. I'm not advocating the replacement of the grantor and grantee indexes. They will still be vital to the performance of a traditional title exam, but many of our users, particularly those interested in history or genealogy would greatly benefit from such a simple, stream-lined way of finding documents.

Google Trends

You know what I think is really cool and fun to play around with?
“Google Trends”.

Did you know that Google keeps statistics on searches made with its engine?
Oh sure, some people might get bent out of shape about this and scream “Big Brother”...but really, no names are attached to the results, so I don’t find it a problem.

Anyway...Google takes these results and compiles them for the public to review...and the numbers are really interesting. In my opinion these statistics represent an unscientific reflection of the American public’s mind.

Here is an example of what I am talking about.

Today (September 1, 2010) the Top Ten Hot Topics being researched on Google are:
Venus Williams
Tropical Storm Fiona
The Blaze
Puppies
Mike Wise
Meghan McCain
Hurricane Earl
Cancun Bar
xbox live
White Sox

Pretty cool right?

And if you click on one of these topics a bar graph displays showing the search activity at certain times of day.
Pretty cool again, right?

But the most fascinating part of Google Trends are the updates.
Here is how it works...if you click one of the Top Ten Hot items...a long list of tweets and news stories related to the selected topic is displayed and “updated in real-time”. Its like a scrolling information board.
Don’t think its is pretty cool, yet?

Well, how about this. Not only can you view real-time updates for the top ten topics, you can search your own topic.
I did it.
I put the words “real estate” in the search criteria and watched...new tweets and news stories dealing with real estate came up every ten seconds or so...It was amazing.

So this is what I’m thinking...When there is a major storm coming (like Hurricane Earl) or a major news event happening...all you have to do is plug the topic in and watch news about it in real time.

Pretty cool, right? I thought you’d agree

August recording statistics

As our business day on August 31 eases to a close, here are the recording statistics for this month compared to August 2009.

In 2009, there were 5099 documents recorded in August; in 2010, there were 5469, an increase of 7%.
In 2009, there were 492 deeds recorded; in 2010 there were 437, a decrease of 11%.
In 2009, there were 977 mortgages recorded; in 2010 there were 1232, an increase of 26%.
In 2009, there were 23 foreclosure deeds recorded; in 2010 there were 61, an increase of 165%.
In 2009, there were 62 orders of notice recorded; in 2010 there were 116, an increase of 87%.

Also of note is that on each day since last Friday, we've had 80 or more electronic recordings, a substantial increase in that type of activity.

Reorganizating Our Plans

This morning around 9:00AM workers arrives to begin removing our old Plan cabinets and installing the new ones. The new cabinets will be stacked three high (15 drawers) and sit on palettes built specifically to hold them. The old cabinets are made of wood and about 4 feet high a two feet wide. Both the front and the top can open. These storage boxes were very useful when registry workers needed to frequently access the original plans to make copy. This need is long gone. The new cabinets are much more space efficient.

The last Friday of August

While the last day of the month is usually our busiest day volume wise, the last Friday of the month is typically the second busiest day. I took a few minutes to look up how many document we recorded on "the last Friday of August" going back to 2002. Here are the stats:

August 30, 2002 - 861 documents
August 29, 2003 - 817
August 27, 2004 - 894
August 26, 2005 - 408
August 25, 2006 - 384
August 31, 2007 - 491
August 29, 2008 - 314
August 28, 2009 - 384
August 27, 2010 - 341

As of noon today, we had recorded 188 documents. I'll update this post at the end of today with the final number. UPDATE: We recorded 341 documents today more than a quarter of which were submitted electronically.

Merrimack Valley Housing Report

For more than I year, I've been co-editing along with David Turcotte an electronic newsletter named the Merrimack Valley Housing Report. Produced monthly by UMass Lowell and the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds, the Housing Report scrutinizes real estate activity in the Merrimack Valley with a focus on the cities of Lowell, Lawrence, Methuen and Haverhill. In the August edition, I wrote a story about the sharp increase in the number of Executions being recorded. The story must have struck a chord with the mainstream media because since Monday I've been interviewed by the Lowell Sun and radio stations WCAP and WBZ.

The latest issue of the Housing Report (which contains the above mentioned story) is available online here and includes instructions on how to become a (free) subscriber.

Historical Footnote

On Monday contractors will arrive at the registry of deeds to begin installing new plan storage cabinets. This morning another registry employee and I began assessing our inventory. The job brought back an interesting registry footnote to me.

Way back in the old days the registry allowed the public to use original plans for research. When you think about it, there really was no other way of making the plans available in these pre-computer times. But this practice, although unavoidable led to rapid wear and tear on the original plans. To rectify this problem the registry began hand copying original plans.

“Registry lore” says one employee was assigned this task and spent the entire day on the project. Of course, the work was time consuming and tedious. Only about 30 of 160 plan books were completed before better microfiche technology allowed for mass reproduction and distribution of plans.

These plans are distinguishable from the originals by a stamp that says…”Middlesex North Registry of Deeds, Copy of Plan Book (blank) Page (blank)”.

Today, all of our original plans have been scanned and the digital images are available to the public both here at the registry and on the Internet, so these “copies” are no longer needed. But they do mark an interesting historical note at the registry of deeds

The "Out Clause" in state building leases

The August 16, 2010 edition of Banker & Tradesman has a front page story about the Massachusetts Land Court terminating its lease with the owner of the building in which the court has been housed for the past several years. Located at 226 Causeway Street in Boston, just a short walk from the BankNorth Garden, the former Stop & Shop bakery building was renovated specifically for the Land Court. According to Banker & Tradesman, there are still 3 years left on the lease with $9 million in rental payments due, but the lease also contains a "subject to appropriations" clause that allows the tenant to terminate the lease if the legislature fails to appropriate sufficient funds to pay the rent. That's the clause the court is exercising.

Earlier in this decade, DCAM (the Department of Capital Asset Management), the state agency that owns all state buildings, developed a model that would ease DCAM out of the building ownership business, essentially privatizing that function. The thinking was that by housing state agencies in privately owned buildings and paying annual rent, it would be more efficient than the long term cost of building, maintaining and repairing state-owned structures. I even spent time working with a DCAM task force that explored ways to shrink the footprint of registries of deeds by moving from paper to electronic records. (For instance, by ceasing the production of record books and taking existing books out of service, this office has gone from needing 17,000 square feet of space to only 10,000 sf). Fortunately for us, it turns out, we were not designated to move into new quarters. The registries that did - Worcester, Fitchburg, Lawrence and Salem - all gained beautiful new facilities but also acquired large annual rental payments. When the financial crisis hit a few years ago and everyone's budgets were slashed, those rental payments loomed large. So now I believe the state has shifted its thinking back to housing state agencies in buildings owned by the state. That's why whenever someone asks "where will the Middlesex North Registry move to when the new courthouse is built?" I answer that I don't think we'll be going anywhere.

Hot Potato

Its a funny thing about technology... the more you learn about it, the more you realize how little you know.

Case in point…Hot Potato. I never even heard of Hot Potato before and this morning’s big techie news is Facebook just bought it.

Heck, Hot Potato is only nine months old. How do I know? I had to look it up. Why? Because I never heard of Hot Potato until this morning, remember?

I’ll never be able to keep up with this technology stuff.

After reading the article I became curious...What is Hot Potato and why did Facebook want to buy it.

Actually, once I logged in I found Hot Potato very interesting. Hot Potato and Facebook are very similar.

Both social networking sites are all about meeting people and sharing what you are doing. Case in point (hey, that is the second time i used that expression...) Everyone who logs into Facebook is prompted by the same general phrase "What's on your mind?". After you tell the Facebook world "what's on your mind", people who are interested make comments.

Hot Potato is a little different and I think a little more fun. When you log into Hot Potato you see a square with seven tabs. Each tab gives you a "specific prompt" about a different topic...

"I'm watching..."
"I'm listening to..."
"I'm attending..."
"I'm reading..."
"I'm thinking about..."
"I'm playing..."
"I'm..." (this one is a catch all for anything you would like to write about)

So lets say I'm reading War and Peace by Tolstoy, I'd click the "I'm reading..." tab and write something like..."I'm reading the last chapter of War and Peace by Tolstoy. I hope his great grandson writes a sequel".

Writing something on a specific topic attracts other people interested in the same things, or in this case, reading War and Peace.

Truthfully, I like the Hot Potato idea...but the question is did Facebook buy it to squash the potential competition or did they buy it to incorporate some of its better features into its own successful application? I don't know either!, remember I'm overwhelmed by this techie stuff too.

The video below will help you/me understand Hot Potato.

Foreclosure update

An editorial in today's New York Times reviews the federal government's efforts to date to stem the rising tide of foreclosures across the country and finds those efforts to be inadequate.

Our own recording statistics thus far for the month of August provide strong evidence that the foreclosure problem is not getting better. For the first 20 days in August of 2009, we recorded 17 foreclosure deeds and 39 orders of notice. For the same 20 days this August, we recorded 42 foreclosure deeds and 72 orders of notice.

Archeology in Lowell

Three archeology professors from Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland arrived in Lowell this week to work jointly with professors and students from University of Massachusetts Lowell in an archeological dig of the front lawn of St. Patrick's Church on Suffolk Street in Lowell. From a preliminary examination of records of the earliest Irish in Lowell, it appears that the church's lawn may be the portion of the Acre (the neighborhood in which the Irish first settled)that has changed the least since the early- to mid-Nineteenth Century.

Yesterday I stopped by the dig at lunch time and ended up assisting with some documentary research for the team, providing them with contemporaneous plans and documents that may help identify who lived where back in the 1830s. The archeologists stressed that this is just a "reconnaissance dig" which will help ascertain whether deeper and more extensive excavation will be worthwhile.

Courthouse elevator construction report

Work on the new elevator of the Middlesex Superior Courthouse in Lowell is well underway as is shown in the above photo. A brick tower will be added to the exterior of the building where the Elm Street door was located. The elevator will not be available for the use of the general public. Instead, it will be used only for those with mobility limitations. The timetable calls for the project to be completed in November.

Document History feature added to computers

The newly enacted amendment to MGL chapter 36, section 1 (the so-called "National Lumber" bill), established that a document is deemed to be recorded when the registry of deeds issues it an instrument number. The amendment contained an additional requirement that

Any change or correction made to the record shall be accessible to the public in the particular registry district in which the affected land lies. Such change or correction shall be maintained by the register as part of the record for public inspection during registry business hours at each office in the registry district. Any change or correction to the record shall document the nature and date of the change or correction.

The feature that we've now activated on the public search computers at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds displays a red check mark box on the document detail screen. When you click on that red box, if any change has been made to the index entry, a popup box will display the date the change was made, the original entry, and the change that was made. The red box appears all the time. If you click it and nothing happens, that means that no changes have been made to the index entry.

This new feature is available on both registered and recorded land although it does not yet exist on our website. Because we consider the document recording process to continue until we have finished our verification of the document, this document history feature only displays changes that occur more than five days after the document is recorded.

Here's a link to a handout I've prepared that shows screen shots of this feature.

Electronic Recording procedures

Electronic recording has become a regular part of our operations here at the registry of deeds. If there aren't electronic recordings in the queue waiting to be processed when we open in the morning, we know that there's something wrong with the system. Because this method of recording has become so popular, I thought it might be helpful to revisit the things we check for in deciding whether or not to record an electronically submitted document:

· How many documents are in the payload?
· Is the fee correct?
· What town is the property in? (Is it this registry?)
· Is there a Recorded Land book and page (No registered land!)
· Is the document signed and (if necessary) notarized?
· How many pages are in the document?
· Is each page a good quality image?
· Is the document type correct?
· Is the consideration correct?
· Are the names correct?
Is there any reason why this document should not be recorded?
· Write date/time, document type, and one name in E-Recording log book

One thing we've added to our reject list is tax-exempt transfers. For instance, if a governmental entity is a party to a sale, there is not deeds excise tax due. But when such a transaction is recorded, we still must enter the full amount of consideration but we are able to "exempt" the transaction and permit the customer to record the document. That's not a function we're comfortable outsourcing to the document submitter and there's no way for us to override the transfer tax when it's electronically submitted. Consequently, for now we're not accepting deeds in this category. This is another example of how the procedures for electronic recording must be allowed to develop over time.

· RECORD DOCUMENT

16 Years of Scanning

This registry of deeds began scanning documents in November of 1994. Back then the images were stored on a digital platter called an Optical Disc. Each Optical Disc held 940 MB (less than one gig) or approximately two weeks worth of recorded documents. From1994 until 2001 We scanned these document on a flat bed Fujitsu scanner. One person working all day could scan about 300 documents with it.

Boy have things changed.

Today we scan using a Fujitsu 6670 that capable of scanning 600 documents or more a day and we store the images on RAID drives that have several terabytes of memory.
Below are various scanners we used from 1994 to present...

Internet Equality!

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...

That’s how the country’s most sacred document, the “Declaration of Independence” reads.

Unfortunately, the time has come when we need a similar statement protecting the Internet...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all “information” is created equal and should be treated as such.
Call the document “The Declaration of Net Neutrality”.

I don't mean to be melodramatic but I believe a monumental, intellectual challenge looms ahead concerning the flow of information on the Internet. At risk is the concept of Net Neutrality or "equality" of information.

Last week Google and Verizon struck a deal to create a system where “some information is more equal than other” (excuse the Orwellian reference). In other words the agreement between Verizon and Google would allow certain pieces of information to travel to an Internet user faster IF its creator “pays a higher fee”. This agreement threatens to destroy Net Neutrality.

Check out this quote from web guru Tim Berners-Lee:

“Control of information is hugely powerful. In the US, the threat is that companies can control what I access for commercial reasons. In China, companies could control what users access for political reasons. Freedom of connection with any application to any party is the fundamental social basis of the Internet.”

Bravo Tim! You’ve stated the dangers of eliminating Net Neutrality perfectly.

YES even without Net Neutrality you WILL still have access to all information, but premium providers (those are the ones that pay a fee) will send their information to you faster, hence influencing where you go to get information.

Look at it this way...lets say you are heading out to eat with your wife. You pull into a restaurant and the hostess tells you the wait is 45 minutes...you’re too hungry to wait 45 minutes so you get back in the car and drive across the street to another restaurant...the wait there is only 5 minutes. Where do you eat? Its a no brainer...you eat where the food is provided faster.

Think this is a stretch? Ask yourself...how many times have you “X” out of a site because it was taking too long to load...see, I’m right.

But there is still hope that the federal government will step in and void this dangerous agreement between Google and Verizon preserving the idea of equality...as it did back in 1776.

National Lumber bill signed into law

A number of years ago the Massachusetts Appeals Court decided a case that involved the recording priority of a mechanic's lien filed by National Lumber Company. The facts were that National Lumber sent its notice of contract to the registry of deeds by Fedex well within the time required to perfect the lien. Because this was at the height of the recording boom, the registry was months behind in recording documents received by mail and so by the time the notice of contract was recorded, it was outside the allowable time for doing so. The Appeals Court held that the notice of contract was "recorded" at the moment it was received by the registry of deeds and not when it was eventually entered into the registry's computer system. National Lumber's lien was therefore perfected.

The troubling aspect of this case is that registries of deeds receive dozens if not hundreds of pieces of mail each day. While all mail is now recorded promptly, it's a process that runs throughout the day. To deem all of those mailed in documents on record the moment the postal carrier drops them on our counter would wreck havoc with our recording system and the idea of priority of recording.

A new law, signed by the governor just last night, remedies this situation. Called "An Act to clarify recording requirements at registries of deeds" specifically states that "No instrument received by the register shall be considered recorded until the register assigns to the instrument an instrument number, or book and page number, as the case may be." Now (or in 90 days, when this law takes effect) recording priority will be based solely on the sequence in which documents were entered into the registry's computer system.

A rise in Executions

One document type that is reflective of tough economic times is the execution. Issued by the court after judgment has been recovered and the appeal period has passed, the execution commands the sheriff or any constable to “from out of the value of any real or personal property of such judgment debtor found within your jurisdiction to cause payment to be made to the judgment creditor.” When a judgment debtor owns real estate, the sheriff records the execution at the registry of deeds with a description of the debtor’s property attached. The next step would be for the sheriff to auction off the property and pay the creditor out of the proceeds. In almost all cases, however, the process stops short of the auction and the execution is “suspended” to await the eventual sale or refinancing of the property at which time the owner would have to settle up with the creditor.

Since 2003, the number of executions recorded annually has risen steadily and substantially:

251 in 2003
298 in 2004
318 in 2005
557 in 2006
602 in 2007
724 in 2008
985 in 2009
1234 in 2010 (estimate based on projection of Jan-July recordings.

Most of these executions are in favor of credit card companies and banks (that presumably issued credit cards) and range from $1200 to $18,000 - further evidence that the bill for a decade of living on consumer credit is still outstanding.

Project Problem Causes Re-direction

The project our summer interns have been working on for the past month hit a major snag last week. One of the integral pieces of equipment used in the project broke. On Tuesday morning an Intern heard a loud pop come from the Minolta PS 7000 over-head camera.

We inspected it and found nothing physically wrong, so we examined the CPU attached to the camera. When we opened the inside we noticed that a small resistor had explored.

OK, this is going to be simple...all we have to do is change the computer, Wrong!

For a solid week our MIS Director work on the problem, but could not get another computer to recognize the camera.

The interns continued to work on the project while we looked for a solution.
And this morning after a weekend of thinking about it I decided to re-focus our energy.

I instructed one Intern to take all the plans that would have been scanned on the Minolta and shrink them down to 11X17. A second intern is scanning these reduced plans and the third is re-organizing the completed files.

Lowell Summer Music Series

Driving to work this morning, I heard folks on the local radio station discussing the Lowell Summer Music Series. The quality and quantity of the acts presented each summer are really amazing, so I thought I'd share some of the names with our readers. Tonight, for instance, Suzanne Vega and Patty Larkin will perform. Tomorrow night it will be Herbie Hancock. Future acts this summer include Lyle Lovett, Jonathan Edwards, Aztec Two-Step, the B-52s, James Mongomotery Blues Band, Marcia Ball and Natalie McMaster. That's on top of Joan Armatrading, Marc Cohn, Amos Lee, Jimmy Cliff and Indigo Girls all of whom have already performed this summer.

The site of the Lowell Summer Music Series is Boarding House Park at 40 French Street in Lowell. The cost of the shows range from $20 to $50 (for a few top acts). For more information, check out the Summer Music Series website.

I Can't make Up My Mind, I Think

Ok, I just can’t make up my mind, well not always, sometimes I can make up my mind.I think...but, when it comes to buying a new smart phone... I can’t make up my mind.

Last June I made up my mind (see I told you I could, sometimes) that I was going to purchase the new iPhone 4G. And when the phone was released, I loved what I saw...but them I heard the bad news, if you hold the new iPhone a certain way it will drop the call. So I changed my "made up mind".

So then I started looking at Andriod smart phones, like the Droid. I loved what I saw so I decided to buy a Droid. They're sleek looking and are not locked into the AT&T network. Then I saw the price, $499 and I changed my "made up mind", again (Hey, the iPhone would only cost me about $299...two hundred less).

So then I started thinking, Apple will surely fix the “dropped call issue", maybe...So I made up my mind I was better off with the cheaper iPhone. I even made plans to buy it over the weekend.

Then...I read that when Apple CEO Steve Jobs was told his company's new iPhone 4G dropped calls if held a certain way his answer was...”well, then don’t hold it that way”... Bad answer.

So I changed my "made up mind" about buying the iPhone.

But... the Droid is so expensive.
But... now Apple is giving away free cases that solve iPhone's problem, maybe.
But... Google has developed new software for the Droid that will allow you to create your own Apps and maybe I can write Apps, maybe...
But maybe...iPhone has hundreds of thousands of Apps so maybe I can find the App I want anyway, maybe and need to write one, maybe.

Sometime, honest, sometimes I can make up my mind...I think.

Old Index Images now on Masslandrecords

Perhaps five years ago, we scanned all of our non-computerized grantor and grantee indexes and made them available in PDF form here at the registry. Rather than a searchable computer database, this method created an electronic book that duplicated the experience of paging through the book-form indexes of old. Because of the size of these collective files, we had been unable to deliver them to users via the internet. We've now solved that problem, partially at least.

First, a word about the new masslandrecords.com site. It seems that many of the (lack of) speed issues that have plagued that application have been resolved so it is worth revisiting, especially since that's where our index images reside. Here's how you do it:

From www.lowelldeeds.com, click on the yellow search box which brings you to the Middlesex North search page on the "old" masslandrecords. Above the search box is some blue and red text which says "Click Here to try the new trial version of the Massachusetts Land Records website." Click on it. When the new site opens, click on "search criteria" on the upper menu bar. One of the search types is "pre-1976 Grantor (or Grantee) Index." Click on that. You next have three fields to populate: date range; letter; page. Through the years, indexes were consolidated into multi-year sets - 1620-1855, for instance. Pick that one. The scanned index images are next divided by the first letter of the last name. Select "H". "Page" is the page number you want within all the "H" pages. For now, this computerized index does not identify what names are on those pages, something that is necessary to make this system user friendly. Because it's not feasible to include such a "table of contents" in the masslandrecords app right now, I'm created a separate PDF table of contents for each date range that will be available on the lowelldeeds website and that will allow you to focus in on the exact page of interest to you. That extra index will be available by Labor Day. So this isn't the true roll-out of this application; it's just a preview, so please check it out when you have a chance.

July recording statistics

Negative trends continue to be evident when we compare July's recording statistics with those from July 2009. The total number of documents recorded was down 23% from 6555 to 5054. The number of deeds recorded dropped by 12% from 501 to 440. Mortgages dropped by 26% from 1306 to 971. Foreclosure deeds were up 87%, rising from 30 to 56. The one piece of good news was that orders of notice dropped 30%, from 67 down to 47.

The continued decline in mortgage volume is perhaps the most significant statistic. Foreclosure-related activity has been bouncing up and down for a long time, so no real trends are evident there. The volume of mortgage recording however is down for the seventh consecutive month. This low level of lending activity has and will continue to have a stagnating effect on real estate.

20,000,000,000

I've written about Twitter before, so why write again, you ask?
Simple, I find the concept of expressing relevant thoughts in 140 characters fascinating.
And it seems I'm not the only one that feels this way.
Saturday a graphic designer in Tokyo sent out the 20 billionth tweet. Yes, that's 20,000,000,000 tweets.
Can you believe 20,000,000,000 (OK, so I like to write it) in just three years? Astounding!
But this incredible number also represents Twitters biggest problem...the over-whelming volume.
The amount of information being pumped out from Twitter is so large it is almost impossible to navigate.
I started this post saying I found the concept of expressing "relevant" information in 140 characters interesting. The key word here is relevant.
And with 20,000,000,000 tweets floating around in the cyber-world how do you figure out what is relevant, to you anyway?
So as Twitter's founders celebrate tweet number 20,000,000,000... you have to wonder if the micro-blogging phenomenon is becoming a victim of its own success.