Lowell Deeds

Back in early August (check out the August 5 blog entry) our computer company modified the search program we use in the registry and on the Internet. The purpose of the change was to allow the search to ignore spaces and punctuation, a very desirable situation. Unfortunately, we paid a price for this change. Previously, the search completely ignored the “start date” when retrieving documents by book and page number. This was significant in Lowell where our name index reaches back to 1976, but our images go all the way to 1950. We could leave the default start date as 1976 (accurately reflecting our name index) while still retrieving older document images without changing the start date. With the “start date” field turned on, however, the only way you could retrieve a pre-1976 image would be to manually change the start date to 1950. Since many of our Internet users are not real estate professionals, we have found that simple works best, so we decided to roll the default start date back to 1950 which would allow all images to be retrieved without the user having to modify the date at all. While we realized that pushing the start date back to 1950 might mislead a user into thinking that was the coverage of our name index, we decided to try out the 1950 default date for a limited period during which we would gauge user feedback. We have now decided to return the start date to 1976, the name index start date. This means that if you want to retrieve an older document image by book and page number, you should change the start date to 1950. Sorry this entry got so long, but I wanted to share with all of you the thought process we followed in this situation. This is also an instance where user comments and feedback would have greatly assisted me in how to handle this tricky situation. Unfortunately, the only feedback I received was indirect and second-hand, so this well-intentioned but ill-advised experiment persisted for longer than it should have.

The front page of today’s New York Times has an interesting story about property insurance. In the late 1990’s, most American insurance companies quietly switched from coverage that guaranteed the replacement of a destroyed home regardless of cost to a similar sounding type of coverage that would only pay the amount stated on the policy plus an additional 20 to 25%. While estimates vary, they all agree that most American homes are underinsured, usually by a substantial amount. One study contends that 64% of American homes are underinsured by an average of 27%. Perhaps one reason why this has not become more of an issue is that few houses are completely destroyed. (Today’s article features a couple whose San Diego-area home was consumed by a wild fire in the fall of 2003). Nevertheless, homeowners have the responsibility to update the amount of their coverage. This is especially important given the substantial increase in real estate values over the past few years. On another topic, thank you to those blog readers who chose to comment on yesterday’s posting. Please take a moment to read the posted comments and to add your own.