Despite warnings from state regulators that consumers could suffer, the governor’s office has granted an exemption from state law under the “Regulatory Sandbox” for business, the first such waiver given through a much-ballyhooed, first-of-its-kind program in the country. The details of the waiver, granted to Homie Title, Inc., are fairly deep in the weeds, but essentially it exempts the company from having to abide by one particular law that competing title companies have to follow.

The shift back to an office environment creates friction for those employees who prefer working from home. This presents significant challenges for independent agents in retaining key people, or attracting new talent. In this episode, FNF's Chuck Cain welcomes Erik Biro, Founding Partner of Anderson Biro, the nation's leading talent search firm for the title & settlement industry. Biro provides his insight on how to reward key people- and it's not all about money.

A rule making its way through the New York Senate could significantly shorten the time allotted for a lender to initiate a foreclosure action. This may have ramifications on all lenders operating in the state of New York.

A public school teacher in metro Atlanta said Wednesday that she learned a tough lesson and has a word of warning to people, like her, who are trying to buy a house in this sellers’ market. Her house builder bailed on her a week before closing and tore up her contract in order to put the house on the open market for tens of thousands of dollars more.

Cyberinsurance spurs many complaints from US business. The cost is skyrocketing, retentions (deductibles) are rising quickly, and the insurance companies push their own panel lawyers on customers despite other relationships. Ransomware or email fraud can be excluded from some policies.

In Title Nerds Episode 8 Riker Danzig welcomed two professionals from Qualia, a digital real estate closing platform that is changing the industry. Lyman Hopper, a long-time title insurance pro, and Tim Calandro, a senior account executive, spoke with hosts Michael R. O’Donnell and Bethany A. Abele about why title and escrow companies are turning to digital platforms to better serve their clients.

Mettiki Coal, LLC owned and operated a coal cleaning and processing plant near Oakland, Maryland. It piled the refuse after extracting coal in huge piles on its property, and then covered the mounds with topsoil and vegetation. Mettiki was required by the Maryland Department of the Environment to limit the height of the refuse piles to 3,203.5 feet. It received approval to increase the height to 3,285 feet, and then it applied to raise the limit again.

The North Dakota Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Thursday to consider who owns the right to the porous spaces within subsurface rock formations. The issue is over Senate Bill 2344, passed by the Legislature in 2019 and, no surprise here, supported by the oil and gas industry.

The United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida recently granted a title company's motion for summary judgment, holding that an E&O insurance carrier was required to defend its insured in a related lawsuit brought by the title company arising out of wire fraud.

The use of private covenants governing the use, improvement, and occupancy of real property has a long and sometimes checkered history in California, as it does throughout the nation. Beginning in the late 19th century, the proliferation of larger real estate developments and subdivisions in growing metropolitan areas was accompanied by a proliferation of deed restrictions, restrictive covenants, and reciprocal covenants or equitable servitudes of various kinds.

We are quickly heading towards the age of the metaverse – connected, persistent virtual realities where we will live digital lives alongside our real lives.

It’s not every day that global investment banks predict a sector to be an $8-trillion opportunity. And yet, on January 24, Goldman Sachs described the metaverse as potentially being just that, thus joining its rival Morgan Stanley, which had already put an $8-trillion tag on the space in November.

People are building basic structures purporting to be farmhouses on lands near a planned national highway to claim higher compensation rates if they are acquired.

Read More [Contributed by Bill Collins, Frontier Abstract]

A family dispute over a piece of land in the town of Meadows that started in 2010 came before provincial court in Corner Brook on Tuesday, March 22, as one of the parties attempted to lay criminal charges in the matter.

He was a pioneer in grappling with suburban sprawl and preserving open spaces, helping to shape the region.

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Hassett Title Company remains open for business despite its downtown office sustaining extensive damage from a firebombing incident earlier this week. Meanwhile, Monroe Police detectives have made progress in the investigation but so far no arrests have been made.

Alisher Usmanov, who has been closely tied to top Russian leaders, hides behind trusts, secretive offshore companies, Swiss bank accounts, and his family members to detach his name from his billions.

For agents interested in growing their business by expanding into multiple states, we’re here to make the process simple and profitable. We offer you one point of contact to streamline your options and solutions.

A quote from Judge Steven Seeger of the Northern District of Illinois:

“If the reader is thinking that things have, at this point, gone completely off the rails, buckle up, because the ride is not yet over.”

If you want to fill out your own bracket, you can get the spreadsheet here — you just need to make a copy and save it your own Google drive, and then fill out your bracket, take a screenshot and share it on Twitter (and tag @techdirt).

Bewley’s Cafe on Grafton Street has been a Dublin institution ever since it opened almost 100 years ago. Such is the public’s affection for the grand three-story period cafe that each threatened closure is met with an outpouring of nostalgic horror. But now the building is facing an existential threat of a different kind over a plan to sell the six large stained glass windows in the main coffee hall in a dispute over rent.

Read More [Contributed by Bill Collins, Frontier Abstract]

In the opening scene of the Season 3 premiere for FX’s Atlanta, a white man and a Black man sit in a boat on an unnamed lake, discussing why the murky waters frighten them. The Black man comments that he nearly drowned in the water once, recalling a feeling of being “pulled” underneath. “It’s a whole town underneath us,” the white man says. “The town was Black, too. A self-governed Black town.”