E-Recording progress

Earlier this week at the Fall Register of Deeds meeting, we discussed how to move forward with electronic recording. Right now, Lowell has been recording documents electronically for more than two years, having recorded 5000+ documents by that method. Now, some of the registries that still are within county government (and who therefore retain more technological independence) are moving forward in a tangible way and should start receiving documents electronically in the coming weeks. The registries that are within the Secretary of State’s office have been on hold, more or less, and the reason for that has not been entirely clear to me. Now, however, we have a plan for moving forward. We will document the electronic recording process and take it to you, the potential users. If you (and representatives of the title insurance industry) find it acceptable, we should be able to turn electronic recording on at all of the registries. It really won’t take off (i.e., be widely accepted by our users) until that happens because if you’re going to go to the effort to learn how to do electronic recording and set up your internal processes to handle it, you’ll want to do it universally, not at just a handful of registries. There’s no timetable yet but hopefully we’ll have something to share with you all by Thanksgiving.

E-Recording seminar aftermath

About 30 people attended the Simplifile electronic recording seminar this past Tuesday at the DoubleTree Hotel in Lowell. Simplifile’s president even flew in from the companies headquarters in Utah. The local rep, Paul Roth (a Burlington, MA attorney) first demonstrated the Simplifile customer interface. At their most basic level, all electronic recording software allows a user to transmit images of original documents along with data about the document that is entered by the customer to the registry for immediate recording. Paul took the presentation up to pressing the “send to the registry” button at which time I took over, showing how the registry processes incoming electronic recordings. In the questions that followed, the audience of experienced real estate lawyers seemed most interested in the “gap” that exists betwen the final rundown on the registry’s website and the time of recording. Everyone recognizes that this is typically only a few minutes, but it is something that must be addressed. Right now, it seems that most title insurance companies are perfectly willing to cover that gap although they don’t seem to be putting anything in writing so far. Although this meeting was hosted and arranged by Simplifile, I’ve already done another such meeting with eRX, another company that does e-recording with us and I will make myself available to any company or group that has an interest in discussing e-recording.

LowellDeeds Blog has moved

This should be the last post to the Blogger interface for the LowellDeeds Blog. We've completed our transition to a new blog interface that's an integral part of our website. All prior postings from here have been successfully imported into the new blog although we are still fine-tuning its appearance and functionality. If you have this blog bookmarked or stored in your "favorites," please change the link to www.lowelldeeds.com/blog which is our new home. Thanks to Blogger for the wonderful service it provides.

New Blog Format

Thank you to our readers for your patience over the past few days. We've been transitioning to new software for our blog. The new format will provide many new features and will allow us to categorize our postings, so if you're interested in electronic recording, for example, you need only click on the "electronic recording" category and all postings pertinent to that topic will display regardless of when they were posted. There's still some fine tuning to be done, but it might be live as early as tomorrow. If not then, we'll unveil it early next week. If you'd like a peek at it, follow this link - http://www.lowelldeeds.com/blog/ - but remember, it's still under construction.

1630-1855 Records

The Middlesex North Registry of Deeds opened its doors in July of 1855. Prior to that all records for our ten communities (Billerica, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Dracut, Dunstable, Lowell, Tewksbury, Tyngsborough, Westford, Wilmington) were held in the Middlesex Registry of Deeds in Cambridge (we now call this registry Middlesex South). When Middlesex North opened, these records were copied by hand and sent to the new registry here in Lowell. These old “Middlesex South” records contain documents from 1630 to 1855. Recently we began to explore possible ways of digitizing these records and making them available both on the Internet and CDs. Their value to genealogists and historians particularly can’t be overstated. They are organized in an unconventional manner for registry records. The records consist of thirty-eight index books (Grantor & Grantee) and 244 “record books". The record books are organized and labeled according to “town”. So if you were looking for a deed from John Trull to John Kittredge on a parcel of land in Tewksbury you look in the main index for the title reference but would find the deed in a “Tewksbury Record Book”. Each town’s books start with “one” and the series usually contains about twenty books. Lowell is the exception; it has eighty books. We estimate that these records consist of approximately 150,000 images. We will keep you informed on developments regarding scanning these historical records.

Lowell Sun Reports on Foreclosures

The Lowell Sun ran a front page above-the-fold story today on rising foreclosure rates in the greater Lowell area, a topic we have frequently visited on our blog (full disclosure: I was interviewed for the story and am quoted in it) . While showing that the numbers are up significantly as compared to last year (Lowell’s foreclosures are up by 18%, Tewksbury’s by 22%, Dracut’s by 25% and Westford’s by 69%), the story also explained the dilemma facing many homeowners. Taking advantage of historically low interest rates and greatly relaxed lending practices, many folks have acquired homes by financing almost the entire purchase price. Others, who bought homes when prices were lower, have exploited the increased value of their homes by repeatedly refinancing, each time drawing out more and more cash. The problem with both of these situations is that heavily-leveraged homeowners have no equity cushion – they owe an amount that is almost equal to the value of the home. If they get laid off or suffer a medical setback or some similar bad event, they might be able to sell the house and receive enough money in return to pay back the amount owed on the mortgage. But what happens when the value of the property goes down? Unfortunately, the amount owed is not reduced proportionately, so the homeowner finds himself owing more than the house is worth. If he’s forced to sell, he must come up with additional money to pay of the balance of the mortgage. Realistically, most people don’t have this kind of money in savings. If they did, they wouldn’t have borrowed so much in the first place. Anyway, congratulations to the Sun for writing about this important issue.

The Perfect Gift

“It’s the most wonderful time of the Year” or at least it is when your holiday shopping is done….I really don’t mind the gift giving…it’s the gift “picking” that I find tough…deciding on the right gift for the right person is difficult…my wife is easy…”expennnnnsive Jewelry” but everyone else is another story… I am hoping this year will be a little easier…I purchased a subscription to the techie magazine “Wired” and happily found this month's edition loaded with gift ideas…So I have made some decisions with help from Wired…

For Bill & Deb- a “Pocket Phone Excuser”…Just press the button and this device plays a doorbell ring, a baby crying, a police siren or a number of other sounds that make it easy to tell an annoying caller…“Gotta go”.

For Rich & Chris- These two love sitting by a camp fire toasting Marsh Mallows… guess what Wired has for them?…an electronic Marsh Mallow toaster…This three pronged toaster rotates Marsh Mallows rotisserie style …it’s faster than a twig(healthier too) and there is much less chance of Marsh Mallows being lost to the fire (according to the manufacturer).

For Warren & Linda- It's called “Water Talkies”… It allows you to speak clearly underwater. No more of those irritating gurgling sounds. Swimmers can hear you as clear as a bell from as far as fifteen feet away.

For Liz & Eric-a Darth Vader Voice Changer…It allows you to take command using your own words or... you can press a button and hear some of the bad guys most memorable lines...”Luke, I am you father...so... stop arguing with me”.

Lena & Frank- The “Drivers Anti-Doze Alert”… This device rests on your head and senses shifts in the angle of your head. Nod too much and the darn thing screeches at you…"wake-up!" Thank you Wired...this is perfect for these two.

Henry (the family dog)…It’s a ball… no it’s a Frisbee… wait its both. Just toss it into the air and it will randomly change from a Frisbee to a ball…poor Henry, he’ll never know what he is trying to catch…It doesn't matter... he thinks he's a cat anyway.

And what do I want?… A Bluetooth Snowboard Jacket… yes, “Bluetooth enabled” snow clothes (just what everyone needs)... This waterproof jacket toogles seamlessly between an MP3 player and a cellphone… the phone's speakers are mounted in the hood and the microphone is embedded in the collar. Mounted on the sleeve is a “control panel” that even has Caller ID. This same controller shuffles through songs on your iPod, also . Cleaning?…don’t worry…Just pull out the control panel and drop it in the washing machine...the remaining intregrated wiring is water proof...sure... after washing...I think I'll have Henry try it on first.

Hope this helps you...in your quest for the perfect gift for the right person...

Population of the Northern District

Yesterday, someone asked how many people lived in the Northern District of Middlesex County. I didn’t know, but I promised to find out. First, the Northern District is made up of ten communities with the city of Lowell in the geographic center of the district and the towns of Dracut, Tewksbury, Wilmington, Billerica, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Westford, Dunstable and Tyngsborough (named clockwise, starting at twelve o’clock). According to the 2004 census estimates (which are almost identical to the actual 2000 census results, 296,947 people live in the Northern District. Here are the 2004 population figures for each town along with the percentage of the Northern District’s population represented by that town’s residents:

-Billerica – 39351 inhabitants (13% of the district’s population)
-Carlisle – 4830 inhabitants (2%)
-Chelmsford – 33769 (11%)
-Dracut – 28681 (10%)
-Dunstable – 3101 (1%)
-Lowell – 103655 (35%)
-Tewksbury – 29130 (10%)
-Tyngsborough – 11387 (4%)
-Westford – 21475 (7%)
-Wilmington – 21568 (7%)

Besides these most recent figures, I have also located US Census statistics for 1990, 1980, 1970 and 1960. Next week I’ll write some more about how the population of these communities has changed during the past 45 years.

The Whole World's Watching

In case you have missed it…the Eyes of the World are on Massachusetts…Well, at least the Technology eyes. Massachusetts recently became the first state to adopt a plan for government agencies to begin storing documents in a non-proprietary format. Currently, most state computers run Microsoft software (proprietary) as does most of the world…Free "open-source" software is available online to anyone from Sun Microsystems…and it is compatible with all other office programs. This "open-source" software is called OpenDocument and offers applications such as text, spreadsheets, charts and graphical documents. Open-source is in direct competition with propriety software. If Massachusetts follows through on its plan to go open-source it means removing Microsoft Office software from tens of thousands of government computers. Governor Romney’s plan is to embrace an open-source format for state government computers in 2007. How big would this be?…well let me say this…Google News displays articles about this topic from news sources as far away as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Australia and …of course Redmond, Washington (home of Microsoft). To steal a phase from the 1960’s “the whole world’s watching”…but, it appears Microsoft is up for the battle…the computer giant has decided to seek approval for Office 12 software to be rated as an international standard. Office 12 is Microsoft’s next generation of office software due out next year. It will use a different format and be readable by other “outside” programs… in other words it will function like an open-source, non-proprietary software. Massachusetts’ decision will have a huge impact on the computer world…but for now “the whole world’s watching” …and waiting.

New Direction for the Blog

We’re putting the final touches on the newest version of our Blog. The new version will have an entirely different appearance and will use software called WordPress. Best of all, the Blog will reside on our in-house registry server. Blogger has served us well, hosting the Blog for nearly two years at absolutely no charge to the Commonwealth, but it’s flexibility is somewhat limited. The new version of the Blog will have many additional features including a display of the titles of the most recent posts. There will also be posting categories, so if you want to read all of our comments about electronic recording, for example, you need only click on the “electronic recording” category and all the postings relevant to that topic will be displayed. This new version should appear sometime next week unless we run into some unforeseen difficulties. We are also working on a compilation of our past blog entries that will be divided by subject category. The first installment, “Electronic Recording”, will contain all the Blog postings we’ve made about electronic recording during the past two years plus an up-to-date commentary that provides background and context for the original entries. The collected Blog entries will be offered as installments in PDF format on our website.

October Stats

October was not the best month for the Massachusetts Housing market. Our once red-hot real estate market is definitely showing signs of cooling. According to the Massachusetts Association of Realtors 3,863 houses were sold last month…that makes this October the slowest of the past four. Sales fell 9.1 from October 2004 and 14.5% when compared to September of this year. The median price of a home in Massachusetts is still very high …$349,000…but, this figure is 3% lower than September and 6.9% lower than August ($375,000). Of course, high interest rates and high prices are having a negative effect on sales...
The news is better in the condo market. Sales remain strong, although the market is beginning to show signs of change. The MAR reported that 1,777 condominiums sold in October 2005. That's 14.8 percent higher than October 2004… but (the bad news), 17% lower than September 2005. The median condo price in Massachusetts is $271,350…7.5% above last October. Some experts believe that the high demand for condominiums is having an impact on the sale of single-family homes in Massachusetts. Traditionally, not much happens in the real estate market during the holiday season...with this in mind we could see even higher inventory levels come January.

Open Meeting Law & the Internet

Yesterday’s Boston Globe NorthWest weekly section contained an interesting article about the use of the Internet by elected officials. A member of the Westford Board of Selectmen has apparently been posting comments on a private, politically-related bulletin board called http://www.westford.com/. Some of the other members of the board of selectmen are concerned about the practice, asserting that it may constitute a violation of the state’s Open Meeting Law. Representatives of the Middlesex County District Attorney (the office charged with enforcing the law) recently traveled to Westford to host a seminar on the implications of online communication and the Open Meeting Law. The folks from the DA’s office reminded everyone that any time that three or members of a board come together to discuss official business, it constitutes an official meeting that must be open to the public and notice of which must be posted in accordance with the law. Without addressing the specifics of this case, the DA representatives reminded everyone that if the three or more officials use technology (phones or computers) to communicate, it still constitutes a meeting notwithstanding the fact that the parties to the communication may all be at distant locations. While I can’t imagine a situation where the registry of deeds would be subject to the open meeting law, we do use the Internet extensively to communicate with our users. Ironically, I’ve found that communicating online opens up the process, giving everyone with a computer and an Internet connection and equal opportunity to track what is going on. Nevertheless, since the Open Meeting Law does have broad application and since it’s last amendment was done in 1974, long before the Internet as it now exists was envisioned, cases of this type are exploring new territory in government operations and deserve our close attention.

FBI Virus Emails

During this past week, some of us have been bombarded with emails purportedly from the FBI stating that the Bureau has tracked our IP addresses logging onto more than 30 illegal websites and instructing the recipient to answer the questions contained in the attached document. For a split second, I thought this might be some new wrinkle on the Patriot Act but then a half dozen more emails arrived in rapid succession along with a few from the CIA so it was pretty obviously phony emails. Shortly thereafter, a warning notice arrived by email from our computer security folks alerting us not to open the attachments. Doing so would unleash a computer virus known as the Sober X worm. I don’t know of anyone who did open the bogus messages, but this episode just reinforced the guideline that if you receive an unsolicited email from someone who you don’t know, it’s probably best to just delete it.

Hope all our readers had an enjoyable Thanksgiving. Only 211 documents were recorded today.

Thanksgiving Quiz

Here’s your chance...

TEST YOUR THANKSGIVING KNOWLEGDE…







a. In what year did the Pilgrims have the first Thanksgiving Feast?
1619, 1620 or 1621

b. The Horn of Plenty, or Cornucopia, which symbolizes abundance, originated in what country?
Holland, Greece or Canada

c. Which President established that Thanksgiving would take place on the fourth Thursday in November?
Lincoln, Washington or FD Roosevelt?

d. In what month is Thanksgiving celebrated in Canada?
May, October or November?

e. What was the name of the Captain of the Mayflower?
Roger Smith, Miles Standish, Christopher Jones

f. Approximately how many Pilgrims were on the Mayflower?
100, 200 0r 300? Bonus…About how many survived the first winter?

g. Which Turkey is considered to be most tender?
Old Female, Old Male, or Young Male

h. What is the name of the Native American tribe that celebrated the first Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims?
Sagamore’s, Wamesit, Wampanoag

i. Approximately how many Turkeys are eaten in the US on Thanksgiving?
20 million, 45 million or 100 million

FOR ANSWERS SCROLL DOWN TWO BLOG ENTRIES...

Foreclosures on the Rise?

The legal notice section of last night’s Lowell Sun was larger than usual for it included ten notices of foreclosure sales (there was an eleventh one, but that was for Fitchburg, so we won’t count it). While there always seem to be two or three such notices in the paper, the sheer mass of space occupied by these ten caught my attention. Trying to spot trends or common circumstances, I briefly glanced at our records relating to the subject properties. Though not scientific, here’s what I found. Six of the properties being foreclosed were in Lowell, three were in Westford and one was in another town. Two of the ten properties were acquired in “related transactions” meaning that the purchase price was stated as $1; the others all appeared to be arms-length transactions. Of the eight that paid what appeared to be full price, none of the property owners put much of their own money into the deal. Here are the percentages of the purchase prices that were borrowed: 91%, 95%, 97%, 100%, 100%, 102%, 102%, 156%. Refinancing frequently was another common element. One had 8 mortgages in 9 years, another had 5 mortgages in 11 years, another had 4 mortgages in 4 years, another had 3 in 8 years, another had 2 in 1 year, another had 1 in 3 years and the final one had 2 in 7 years. Based on this small sample, the newer the mortgage, the more likely it will be foreclosed. Of the 10 in last night’s paper, 7 mortgages were recorded in 2004 with one each being recorded in 2002, 2001 and in 2000. We’ll continue watching for trends in foreclosures and will report anything of interest.

Quiz Answers

Thanksgiving Quiz Answers

a. The First Thanksgiving was in 1621, one year after the Pilgrims arrived.
b. Cornucopia originated in Greece
c. FDR established the fourth Thursday as Thanksgiving
d. Thanksgiving in Canada is on the second Monday in October
e. Christopher Jones Captained the Mayflower
f. 102 Pilgrims sailed across the Altantic in the Mayflower...Bonus: about half died the first winter.
g. An Old Tom
h. WamPanoags
i. Americans eat approximately 45 million turkeys on Thankgiving

Notes

The largest phase of the 1941-1950 “Grantor Index Imaging” project is done. Two tasks remain… quality checking the images and verifying for completeness. The free CD’s of this index should be available in the next few weeks…just in time to give away as a stocking stuffer.

Since the bulk of ‘41-50 is complete we have begun the 1926-1940 Index. This project is going well also…as of today we have finished about 40% of the images.

And…
more on Grantor Index Imaging…while these two indexes are in process a registry employee has begun preparing the next index (1916-1925) for imaging… so, actually we are working on three indexes at the same time…each at a different stage.

The Probate Indexes from 1648 to 1939 have been taken off their shelves and brought to the Plan Department…also, our old Atlases are now off the shelves and in the Plan Department (these include various Atlases of Massachusetts, the City of Lowell, Middlesex County, Lock and Canals etc). The decision to move these rare, irreplaceable books is long overdue. To avoid any inconvenience to the public both the Probate Indexes and the Atlas are “immediately” available on request.

For the past two weeks we have had a “minor” problem with the new Probate computer connection…Simply put…after ten minutes of inactivity the computer went to “sleep” then required a password to logon. Of course, we don’t have the manpower to have someone running to the record hall every ten minutes to reboot it… We believe we have solved this problem…this morning we swapped our internal computer (which doesn’t require a logon) with the public one…this should work.

In a related topic…we are in the halls often… but please, if you see a logged off computer let us know.

We awarded a new public copier contract last week…the new copiers should be arriving in about a month. In the last ten years this area has seen major changes. Since over computer system now holds approximately 90% of our images (with more being added every day) the public copiers get less and less use.

Coming Wednesday…a Thanksgiving Quiz…There is still time to brush-up.

Mortage Company in the News

When you spent a lot of time working with Deed Indexing Standards, certain names become quite familiar to you. One is E*Trade which is noteworthy because of the presence of an asterisk in the middle of the name. The general rule of the indexing standards is no punctuation, so we’ll probably be jettisoning the * but that’s still a matter of debate. Another familiar name is 1-800-East-West-Mortgage, one of the most active lenders in this area. That name is indexing standards-worthy because of all the hyphens but the standards make an exception for that particular punctuation mark so they will probably stay. This all came to mind early this morning when I stumbled upon an article in the Boston Globe business section describing how “East-West settlement ends kickback investigation.” According to the Globe, East-West has agreed to pay $150,000 to settle an investigation by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and the FDIC into the alleged practice of East-West of funneling mortgages to closing attorneys, home appraisers and title companies who provided East-West with Red Sox and Patriots tickets as well as other costly perks. East-West denies any wrongdoing and says it settled the claim just to avoid the costs of litigation. Government sources say that East-West is cooperating in the further investigation of those who provided the tickets and other gratuities.

Indexing Standards Update

There's still time to comment upon the proposed update to the Deed Indexing Standards. I plan to compile all of the comments I receive by next Wednesday (the day before Thanksgiving) and group them by the specific standard they refer to. Standards that have generated no comments will be implemented without any change. As for those standards that have received comments, I will create a referendum-like document that contains the specific standard, the content of the comments received, my response to the comments and two or more options formatted as a type of ballot. I will then mail each registry one of these documents and the registry will have a certain amount of time to "vote" and return the document to me. The majority will dictate any modifications to the standards. This will all take place in early December so the new version of the standards can be finalized prior to their effective date on January 1, 2006.

Joseph P Thompson

We assigned an employee to inventory all our of books, documents, records etc... a huge task, of course. Over the past two weeks this individual has come across some interesting finds (one of which was the 1910 Massachusetts Lawyer’s Diary which I blogged on last week). This week as he scoured through our “seldom used” storage areas there were even more finds. One of these was a box of records dating back to the late 1800’s. It contained original documents signed by past Register of Deeds Joseph Thompson. An example…one of these documents is an Assignment of Mortgage dated Feburary 16, 1883 notarized by Hiram Browne and attested by Register Joseph P Thompson in his own hand. An original Thompson signature is exciting. He certainly was an accomplished individual.
Thompson had a distinguished career as a military man. He was born in Broomfield, ME in 1830 and lived there until he was fourteen years old. He moved to Lowell in 1849 and went to work for Addison Putnam on Central Street. In 1862 after the break out of the Civil War Thompson enlisted in the US Army serving in Company G the 33rd Massachusetts. Lt Thompson severed as an aid on the staff of General Francis Barlow commanding the second brigade, Third Division of the 11th army. Later he was promoted to the staff of General A. Von Steinert. He fought in the Battle of Gettysburg and was promoted to Marshall for distinguished service during the battle. Thompson also served with General Sherman at the siege of Atlanta and took part in Sherman’s infamous “March to the Sea”. After the war President Abraham Lincoln promoted Thompson to Captain honoring his gallant and meritorious service. In 1874 he was elected Middlesex North Register of Deeds, a position he held until 1908. Unfortunately Thompson died “suddenly” in a Worcester Asylum.