May 2017 Mortgage Market Report

We?re at the height of the homebuying season. Buyers, sellers and bad guys are out in abundance.

Attempted wire fraud against realtors, lenders and title companies continues to increase. The bad guys now know there?s lots of money moving around before a closing. This is a real problem and people are losing real money.

John Bethell Title encrypts all emails including wire instructions, account numbers and other personal private identifying information. Most of the time, our emails will be delivered as normal with a header that the email was encrypted. Users with older email platforms may receive a link to a secured website from which our email may be downloaded.

Most wire fraud attempts involve compromising email accounts hosted by public domains such as Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail. Bogus wire instructions are then forwarded to the party suggesting that the real wire instructions have changed. We are aware of at least one attempt involving a BBOR member. If you use a public domain for your business, I?d suggest that you reconsider.

This is a friendly reminder about ways to protect yourself and your clients when working with John Bethell Title.

• Do not forward wire instructions via unencrypted email.
• Direct buyers to call us for wire instructions. We will send the instructions to them via an encrypted email.
• Advise your clients that John Bethell Title will never ever ever change its wire instructions for a transaction already in process.
• Advise your clients to treat any communication purporting to change wire instructions as highly suspicious.

If we all stay vigilant, the bad guys will look elsewhere!

Effective July 1, 2017, the fees for recording documents with county recorders will finally be predictable regardless of the number of pages the document contains. Recording deeds on or after that date will be a flat $25. (This does not include any fees charged by the county auditor or other offices.) A mortgage will in most instances be a flat $55. Other documents, such as powers of attorneys, will in most cases also be $25. This will make determining final cash to close figures much easier for you and for us.

During the four weeks ending May 26^th, our team helped 420 people buy, sell or refinance their property. Our closing team produced seller side closing statements two or more days prior to closing 93.6% of the time. Our title team produced 83% of our Monroe County title insurance commitments in four days or less with an average turn time of 3.6 days. Thank you for your continued confidence. We greatly appreciate your referrals.

~ John Bethell

June 13, 2017