Announcing Our New Website And Title Platform

We are excited to launch our new website! Midwest Ohio Title Agency began operating as a wholly-owned division of Harrelson & Harrelson LLP on July 1, 2018. Over the last six months, we have been working to develop our new brand, update our resource library, and build a new website.

Midwest Ohio Title Agency is also pleased to announce the launch of our first-in-the-area integrated title and settlement platform which will allow local lenders and Realtors the ability to instantly obtain quotes for title insurance, prepare loan and closing disclosure estimates, and create estimated ALTA settlement statements. Simply click on the widget at the bottom right corner of every page on our website or click “Portal” on our main menu.

What is Title Insurance

If you own or lease a car, you should already have an automobile insurance policy. Some people buy an insurance policy before they take an expensive vacation in the event it gets cancelled. Superstar athletes sometimes even take out insurance policies on their legs or arms in case they are injured. But many people buy their home without understanding that they have the opportunity to buy title insurance to protect their greatest single asset.

Title insurance is a policy that you can purchase as the purchaser of a home (an “owner’s policy”) or that lenders purchase to protect their interest until the loan is repaid (a “lender’s policy”) that will protect you from claims that allegedly took place before you purchased your home.

When you purchase your home, farm, business, or other piece of real estate and take out a mortgage loan, the lender typically will request that a title company search the public record of deeds, mortgages, liens, and other recorded documents to ensure that their mortgage is protected. If a problem is found, such as a deed that was improperly recorded, the title company will work to remedy that issue and then the underwriter will consider whether they can issue a title insurance policy for the lender.

Sometimes there are problems in the public record, such as a mistake in the filing or a forgery in a recorded document, that are not discovered before you purchase your home. This often happens despite a skilled title examiner carefully reviewing the records. In that case, the lender’s title insurance policy will help protect the lender’s mortgage rights.

However, the purchaser also can purchase an owner’s title insurance policy that will protect their rights of ownership and this policy will last as long as you own your home.

Why New Homes Need Title Protection

You have worked for years to save and save to build the home of your dreams. Hours and hours at the kitchen table drawing up “blueprints” of your perfect floor plan and flipping through magazines for landscaping ideas. And then, in the middle of construction, you learn that someone you’ve never met is claiming that they actually own your lot where your new home is being built.

Title issues with newly constructed homes most often involve claims of legal ownership of the property on which the new home is being constructed. Even though your newly-constructed home is new, the land has been there since title records were first kept and it is possible that some other person or organization may claim that they actually own the property.

As the first owner of this newly-constructed home, you can actually be at greater risk for a title defect because the title examination conducted as part of your construction project could be the first review for title defects in years. Especially if the land was being held for development and has sat empty for a long time.

Likewise, when purchasing a new home in a brand new subdivision, it’s extremely important to make sure that the land was properly subdivided and that your home is located on the correct lot within the subdivision to ensure that there is no question of ownership in the future.

Lenders and buyers (especially when they are building a new home) can be protected against claims with title insurance. Most mortgage lenders require the purchase of a lender’s policy even if you are purchasing a lot to build or are buying a brand new, already-constructed home. The lender’s policy does not protect the buyer, though, so it is important to consider purchasing your own separate owner’s title policy to protect your investment against potential future claims.

If you are in the market to build a new home or are purchasing a newly-constructed home, contact our title agents at 937-552-7050 for more information.

How to Prevent Wire Fraud in a Home Purchase

According to a recent blog post by the American Land Title Association, over $1 billion in wire fraud losses occurred due to online schemes in 2017.

Title agencies and Realtors have spent the last decade improving their security policies, implementing new industry standards, and training employees to spot attempted wire fraud. However, scammers have started to transition from targeting the title companies and lenders to targeting the homebuyers and sellers who may not have the same level of training to spot criminal activity.

That same blog post by the ALTA cited an interesting fact about the vulnerability of homebuyers:

According to the BuyerDocs’ market surveys, 52.2 percent of 200 recent homebuyers are completely unaware of wire fraud in real estate. On top of that, 74 percent of those surveyed believed their title company or bank can recover funds that are wired to the wrong account.

Therefore, it is vitally important that homebuyers stay vigilant to ensure that they are not scammed during the home purchase process. Most fraud attempts use “social engineering”, or attacks that rely upon human vulnerability and seek to manipulate people to trust emails or requests that they otherwise should suspect is potentially a fraud. Criminals will create realistic-looking email templates, email addresses (often times with misspellings or foreign domain suffixes), or even fake websites that appear to be real banking or mortgage lending companies but, in fact, are simply ways to convince you to provide your login information.

Once the scammer has collected your user names, passwords, bank account numbers, or other similar information, they immediately transfer your funds to an account they control (and then often move the money around multiple times to make it harder to trace and recover).

Check out our flyer “Protect Your Information” from the First American Title Insurance Company for steps you can take to protect yourself from wire fraud. And remember to always contact us if you are not sure whether a request from our title agency is legitimate before you act upon it.