ALTA ONE Highlights, A Commercial Commercial & Renewed GTO

Hello Members!

Fall is here! Enjoying a couple of days here in Orlando that are oddly cool. I've been at the ALTA annual convention (called ALTA ONE), and it has been a great 3-4 days. Even an old cynic like me gets energized and inspired by some of the presentations while simultaneously being overwhelmed by all of the stuff going on in our world. High level points:

• Changes to Best Practices have been made to reflect some of the new things we are dealing with in the industry, and more are in the works. We have great folks from Florida participating in these discussions, and I am so proud of our involvement.
• FinCEN is coming, and it might be as big a challenge to implement as TRID was back in 2014-2015. It was great to get the perspective from title agents from around the country on how they plan to deal with this.
• The challenges coming from fraudsters getting smarter every day, from politicians and regulators viewing our industry with a skeptical eye, and from the blah market are all things we have to keep an eye on. And keep our heads up high! We will survive.
• A nice thing: lots of efforts to help with hurricane relief were evident, and (being from Florida), this was great to witness.

That's enough about ALTA for now.

What else is interesting?

Commercial transactions. The commercial real estate market remains strong in Florida, and I’m hopeful that many of you are participating in this boom. Per a recent NAR report, these markets stood out across all sectors (office, multifamily, retail, & industrial): Pensacola-Ferry Pass-Brent; Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach; Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-Pompano Beach; Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford; Ocala and Port St. Lucie. The Fund wants to help grow your commercial real estate practice. In the coming weeks, our Legal Education Department is presenting three live webinars on commercial topics and offering this year’s final Fund Commercial Training class on December 11-13. Take advantage of what The Fund offers you.

Renewed GTO.  No one was surprised to get notification that FinCEN has extended the existing GTOs through April 14, 2025.  Nothing has changed other than the reference number that you have to include when you file the report.  Here is a link to the updated GTO. https://www.thefund.com/information-center/pdf/fincen/regto1024_old-republic.pdf

That's all for this week. 

Let me know how we can help you. 

Melissa Jay Murphy
Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer,
and General Counsel