Lowell Deeds

On the day that the American League Championship Series is about to start, some might argue that the Boston Red Sox have been the most successful major league team of the Twenty-First Century. As evidence, here’s a review of the past five years:

2003 – The “Cowboy Up” season. The Sox came back from a 0-2 deficit to defeat the Oakland A’s in the ALDS. Tied 3 games to 3 against the Yankees in the ALCS, Pedro Martinez had a 5-2 lead after 7 innings when manager Grady Little inexplicably sent his starter back to pitch the 9th. The Yankees tied the game and eventually won it with an Aaron Boone home run off of Tim Wakefield. Here’s the opening day lineup for the Sox:

Johnny Damon – CF
Todd Walker – 2B
Nomar Garciaparra – SS
Manny Ramirez – LF
Kevin Millar – 1B
Shea Hillenbrand – 3B
Jeremy Giambi – DH
Trot Nixon – RF
Jason Varitek – C
Pedro Martinez – P

2004 – The “Idiots” added Curt Schilling to the starting rotation and Keith Foulke as closer. On July 31, they traded Nomar to the Cubs, receiving shortstop Orlando Cabrera and first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz in return. They also picked up speedy reserve outfielder Dave Roberts from the Giants. After winning the Wild Card, the Sox swept the Angels in the ALDS but quickly went down 3-0 to the Yankees. Ahead 4-3 in the ninth inning of game four, Yankee closer Mariano Rivera walked Kevin Millar. Pinch runner Roberts stole second and scored the tying run on a Varitek single. David Ortiz won the game with a 2-run home run in the 12th. The Sox won game five in 14 innings on an Ortiz rbi single. Game six was Schilling’s “Bloody Sock” win that included a 3-run home run by second baseman Mark Bellhorn. In game seven, Derek Lowe threw a 1 hit, 1 run masterpiece. The Sox swept the Cardinals in the World Series. The 2004 Opening Day lineup:

Johnny Damon – CF
Bill Mueller – 3B
Manny Ramirez – LF
David Ortiz – DH
Kevin Millar – 1B
Gabe Kapler – RF
Jason Varitek – C
Mark Bellhorn – 2B
Pokey Reese – SS
Pedro Martinez – P

2005 – The Red Sox made it into the ALDS but were swept in three games by the White Sox. The Opening Day lineup:

Johnny Damon – CF
Edgar Renteria – SS
Manny Ramirez – LF
David Ortiz – DH
Kevin Millar – 1B
Jason Varitek – C
Jay Payton – RF
Bill Mueller – 3B
Mark Bellhorn – 2B
David Wells – P

2006 – This team finished third in the AL East and did not make the playoffs. The Opening Day lineup:

Coco Crisp – CF
Mark Loretta – 2B
David Ortiz – DH
Manny Ramirez – LF
Trot Nixon – RF
Jason Varitek – C
Mike Lowell – 3B
Kevin Youkilis – 1B
Alex Gonzalez – SS
Curt Schilling – P

2007 – The Sox swept the Angels in the ALDS and beat the Indians in the ALCS after falling behind 3 games to 1. They swept the Rockies in the World Series. The Opening Day lineup:

Julio Lugo – SS
Kevin Youkilis – 1B
David Ortiz – DH
Manny Ramirez – LF
J D Drew – RF
Mike Lowell – 3B
Jason Varitek – C
Coco Crisp – CF
Dustin Pedroia – 2B
Curt Schilling – P

2008 – to be continued.

Besides the Homestead issues mentioned in yesterday’s post, Ed Williams discussed a number of other policy positions of the Land Court. UCC financing statements have been a controversial topic. Although the governing statute was amended a number of years ago to dispense with the requirement that the debtor must sign the form, Land Court continued to impose the signature requirement on financing statements bound for Registered Land. Now, if a financing statement is presented for registration along with other financing documents (i.e., a mortgage or an assignment of leases and rents), then the UCC need not be signed. If the UCC is presented by itself, it will be accepted for registration, but with a notation on the encumbrance sheet stating the lack of a signature. Registered Land does not accept confirmatory documents. Instead, for mortgages at least, a party may register an “amended mortgage.” But an amendment implies that both parties agree to it so such a mortgage would have to be signed by both parties, not just by the borrower. Now, the attorney for the creditor may sign an amended mortgage on behalf of the creditor. Another issue discussed was the use of certificates prepared in accordance with chapter 184, section 35 (what we call “Trust Terms” the summary document recorded in lieu of the full trust instrument). While these documents will be accepted for registration, in order for them to be used on more than one occasion, they must contain a statement of when the trust terminates (or a formula for determining that date) and they must contain the name of a successor trustee. Absent those two things, a new version would have to be registered with each transaction. Finally, the Land Court will soon be providing Land Registration Offices at the various registries of deeds with a memo regarding “off record” holders of mortgages in the context of foreclosure proceedings. Currently, the currently, the plaintiff on a complaint to foreclose a mortgage must be the holder of the mortgage at the time the complaint is filed. Because assignments are sometimes not filed or filed late, the name of the plaintiff and the name of the record holder of the mortgage often do not match. This memo will give Land Registration offices a clear checklist for how to determine whether an Order of Notice may be registered.

I was on the road yesterday, so we’re doubling up our blog postings for today.

Land Court Chief Justice Karyn Scheier and Chief Title Examiner Edmund Williams recently met with the Massachusetts Registers of Deeds Association to provide a preview of several policy memos that will be forthcoming from the court and a review of some existing policies. This entry will review what was said about homesteads. Two years ago the Land Court announced that multiple owners of property would be permitted to file separate declarations of homestead with two exceptions: married couples and property held in trust. A married couple who held property as tenants by the entirety are only allowed to file a single homestead with a minor caveat. If one spouse has already filed a declaration of homestead and the non-declaring spouse then turns 62, that spouse may file an Elderly and Disabled Homestead in addition to the original one. If the sequence of recording changed, however, so would the result. In other words, if the first spouse to record a declaration of homestead records the Elderly and Disabled version, than the “non-elderly” spouse would not then be permitted to file a regular homestead. The second homestead situation discussed involved property held in trust. Land Court still adheres to the rule that trust property may not be the subject of a declaration of homestead. A possible way around this rule would be for an individual owner who was about to convey property into the trust could reserve a homestead estate to himself in the deed which conveyed the property into the trust. There was a theory that a person living in property that was held in trust could file a Declaration of Homestead on his right of occupancy of the property (as opposed to any ownership interest in the real estate), but this theory has fallen out of favor and this method of recording a homestead is no longer allowed. Please check back tomorrow for more information from Land Court.

Two years ago when Google paid $1.65 million for YouTube I thought…are they crazy. First, I had no idea how significant and popular YouTube would become. Why do I say significant? Consider this…if you missed the Tina Fey/ Sarah Palin Saturday Night Live skits, all you have to do is simply log into YouTube and they are there for your viewing, when you want, and as often as you want. Essential YouTube makes video available “on demand”. Google’s investment in YouTube has paid off with huge advertising revenue. Just image, the video-sharing site attracts an incredible 100 million people a month. Now Google has decided to begin what is called “hotspotting”. Here is how it works…you are watching a YouTube music video. You love the song and want to buy it. Just move your mouse to YouTube’s new “click to buy” button…click it and bam, the song from the video begins to download. With Google’s $1.65 million dollar investment, hotspotting music may be just the right thing to finally bring YouTube into profit.

There is an Internet battle going on that may effect the future of Apple’s iTunes. The world’s two biggest social networking sites are slugging it out for your loyalty. Its Facebook Vs MySpace and the financial stakes are high. MySpace, the older of the sites practically invented the concept of networking on the Internet, but suffers from bad PR in many circles. The latest statistics on use reveal much about their battle. Facebook, the industry’s newcomer has actually overtaken MySpace in visitors…Facebook gets 120 million “unique” visitors everyday, MySpace 115 million unique visitors. These numbers are truly astounding. Being number two doesn’t sit well with MySpace, so they’ve taken action. The site recently launched a new weapon…music. Check this out…A MySpace member can now listen to “free” streaming music on the site. Members can even make play lists of up to 100 songs…but how does this threaten iTunes? Well, not only does MySpace allow you to listen, but with one click of the mouse the site directs you to amazon.com’s digital music store …and yes, you can purchase the song there. Should Apple be worried?…time will tell.

Last week Register Howe revealed our intention to open a self-service recoring kiosk. I like his explanation. He compared it to the self-serve check out line at Home Depot. Now that the conceptual plan is in place, this week I am putting the physical piece in motion. As always the first step is identifying the hardware…we need a computer with a WiFi connection, a scanner capable of processing both 11” paper as well as legal size; a printer to generate recording forms, receipts and document copies and of course three desks. I can put my hands on most of these items which are readily available at the registry right now. The tiff scanner used by our interns this summer can “probably” scan 8.5X14, I think. I have to test it. Since we will be using a desktop PC for the operation we need to purchase an external WiFi card to connect it to the Internet. I will keep you informed as we move forward.

If you searched our records for the most prolific lender in this district, you would conclude that it was Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems. Unfortunately, that entity, more commonly referred to as MERS, is only an agent for a wide variety of banks and mortgage companies. When MERS first came into existance, we and other registries concluded that the only name we would enter into the index as a grantee on a MERS mortgage was MERS. Even though the underlying lender was named in the mortgage, we felt that by also entering that name, it would defeat the purpose of MERS which was to have a central point of contact for anything related to these mortgages. This approach helped us handled the enormous number of mortgages we recorded during the past real estate boom. Now with the market having slowed so much and everyone trying to sort out what exactly happened, knowing which banks made all of those MERS loans has become more important. Starting next week, therefore, we will begin revisiting our index entries for MERS mortgages during the past five years and add the name of the underlying bank to our computer system.

Here’s a comparison of the number of key documents recorded for the city of Lowell in September 2007 and September 2008:

Deeds - in Sept 2007, 157 deeds were recorded. In Sept 2008, there were 144 - an 8% decline
Mortgages - in Sept 2007, 268 mortgages were recorded. In Sept 2008, there were 196 - a 27% decline
Foreclosure Deeds - in Sept 2007, there were 24 foreclosure deeds. In Sept 2008, there were 26 - an 8% increase.

The new Sales and Foreclosure report is available on our website. It ontains a town-by-town lists of property sales and foreclosures for September 2008 and the year-to-date.

You may remember that we purchase a new Kodak Archive Writer several weeks ago. This machine makes microfilm from digital images. It is going to save the registry both time and money. Since the installation is somewhat complicated, we waited until after Labor Day to take on the task. Last week our MIS Director and I met with a representative from Kodak to discuss the installation. As I mentioned earlier the Archive Writer is a unique machine…so much so, that it needs a customized PC to operate it. Well, maybe I am exaggerating a little here,…What we really need is a PC with two network cards (please don’t ask me why). Yes, we do have one of these…no, we can’t use it. Why? The CPU we have with two NIC cards is too old. Yes, we have extra network cards….no, we can’t use them. Why? We recently changed to small format PC’s and our extra network cards are too big to fit in them. A few days ago I ordered new network cards that will fit our smaller computers. In spite of all this, I think we will have the Archive Writer up and running by the middle of October.

Anytime I go to Home Depot or Shaw’s Supermarket, I usually end up in the self-service checkout line. For a long time I avoided the self-serve lines because I didn’t want to make a fool of myself by not knowing what I was doing. One day I had no choice and it turned out to be pretty easy. The efficiencies of these systems got me thinking about their applicability at the registry of deeds. We’ve now moved from the idea phase to the drawing board phase. What I envision is making use of electronic recording technology to set up a “customer submission terminal” at the registry. When a walk-in customer arrives, the customer would sit down at one of these terminals and its attached scanner and go through the electronic recording process only in this scenario, a registry employee would be standing by to offer assistance (but not to do the work for the person). Unlike electronic recording where the fees are paid through bank transfer, the customer could pay us directly by cash or check just as in the normal recording process. Why would anyone use an electronic recording terminal whent he recording counter was only steps away? Like at Home Depot, if there’s a long line waiting for a human being to process your paperwork, you might want to expedite the recording by doing it yourself. Once the technology and the work flow is perfected, we could also point the electronic recording terminal at other registries that were accepting e-recordings, thereby creating a universal satellite office that would handle recording at multiple registries with very little overhead.

This morning the NFL announced that Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will provide this year’s Superbowl entertainment. Even though our Brady-less Patriots are unlike to be there, I thought it might be fun to look back at some past Superbowl entertainment…So in reverse order, here are the last ten years…

2008: Tom Petty and Heartbreakers
2007: The Artist Formerly Known As Prince
2006: The Rolling Stones
2005: Paul McCartney
2004: Six star performers…Jessica Simpson, Janet Jackson (wardrobe malfunction), Justin Timberlake, Nelly, P.Diddy and Kid Rock
2003: Shania Twain, No Doubt and Sting
2002: U2 and a tribute to 9/11 victims
2001: Aerosmith, N’Sync, Britney Spears, Mary Blige and Nelly
2000: Phil Collins, Christina Auguilera, Enrique Iglesias, Toni Braxton, Edward James Olmos

Good luck to The Boss…he’s got to be better than the 1970 Superbowl entertainment, Carol Channing.

This blog was created on December 23, 2003. Almost from the beginning, one of our regular topics has been the rise and fall of the housing market. Revisionists will say that no one could see the current financial crisis coming, but a review of our posts on the topic show some felt unease about housing years ago. A compilation of these posts is here and some highlights follow:

January 12, 2004 - “I’m no economist, but something about this economic “recovery” just hasn’t seemed right.
February 29, 2004 - “Lately, however, things have been quite slow . . . due almost entirely to the collapse of the refinance market that began last fall.”
May 20, 2004 - “Economists predict that this will cause a slight slow down in home sales and will begin to depress the value of real estate.”
October 12, 2004 - “The problem with this approach is that it makes it twice as likely that you will lose your home to foreclosure.”
October 20, 2004 - “This could spell trouble if housing prices fall.”
December 6, 2005 - “The problem with both of these situations is that heavily-leveraged homeowners have no equity cushion.”

The problem was apparent more than four years ago. Recent events should come as no surprise.

A story in today’s Globe reports that the country’s financial crisis is creating numerous challenges for state government. Tax collections are down and the cost of borrowing is up. There is now some question whether the $1.3 billion in local aid payments due to cities and towns next week will be made on time. With municipal and school budgets already strained and reeling from cuts last spring to balance the books for this fiscal year, any cut in the money communities were planning to receive will have devastating consequences. The same holds true for state agencies. Back in 2001, the state budget was not finalized until mid-November. From July till then, most state agencies were operating on 1/12 budgets - meaning that the agency could spend 1/12 of its prior year’s budget each month. But in November, budgets were cut 15 to 20%, but because funds had already been spent at a higher rate for July, August, September and October, when the cuts were finalized, the impact was greatly magnified. If the recent news stories are to be believed, it looks like history might be repeating itself.

The Middlesex South Registry of Deeds is opening a terminal that record Middlesex North documents in Cambridge. Right now details are still being work out so there is no set date for the “opening”. But officials expect it will be in the near future. The concept of a reciprocal satellite office in Cambridge has been on the table for several years…but the reconfiguration of the South’s recording area was the factor that made it become a reality. Middlesex North documents recorded in Cambridge will be scanned and returned immediately the same as here in Lowell. At this point in time there will be only one remote terminal. Check back in for more details…

Earlier this year, much attention was paid to so-called “multifunction documents.” Such a document would consist of a single paper that performed multiple functions. The most common example is probably a single document that discharges a mortgage, an assignment of leases and rents and a UCC financing statement. That document performs three separate functions. The
Appeals Court, in the Patriot Resort case, ruled that the plain language of the recording statute allowed the registry to only charge a single fee - $75 – for such a recording. In an outside section to the FY09 budget, however, the legislature amended the recording statute to charge a separate fee “for each document referenced.” Consequently, the fee to record the document described above would be $205 - $75 for the discharge of mortgage, $75 for the discharge of the assignment of rents, and $45 for the termination of the filing statement.

A related formatting practice that has largely gone unnoticed is called a “multiple document” in which a document that would be recordable in its own right (such as a death certificate or trustee’s certificate) is attached to another document (such as a deed) as an exhibit. Today I received the following email from an area law office:

There has been discussion on various list serves of incorporating a trustee certificate inside a deed. We have questioned a few attorneys and they confirm they routinely do it. We are wondering if we adopt the same practice could we save our clients the extra $75 of a separate filing fee. (This is simply for a deed out of a nominee trust. Thoughts?

Here’s my response:

The Massachusetts Deed Indexing Standards (standard 7-9) specifically prohibit that practice so if the registry personnel spot the attached certificate, they should refuse to record the document. The deed and the trustee certificate should be recorded as separate documents. I suspect that the enforcement of this and the rules regarding “multifunction” documents (such as a discharge that discharges both a mortgage and an assignment of leases and rents) will be enforced more strictly in the coming weeks.

As the economy worsens, there will be more pressure to save on recording fees, but there will be equal pressure on the registry to maximize the revenue coming into the state.