Identifying the property that is the subject matter of a deed, mortgage, contract or any other agreement, is a critical component for enforceability. Back in the 17^th and 18^th century, the Boards of Proprietors, a few individuals who owned the majority of land in New Jersey, commissioned surveyors to survey and prepare maps or descriptions of their lands, which the boards wished to convey. Similar to today, larger tracts of land were divided into smaller tracts. The descriptions were, and still are based on land measurements taken by surveyors, who go on-site to the property to identify its boundaries.

There is a history of conflicting division lines between the Eastern Board of Proprietors and the West Jersey Board of Proprietors.  Over the centuries that have passed, there have been several instances where boundary line location disputes, overlaps and gores existed due partially to the less advanced systems of measures and recording that were relied on.  The records of both Boards are now with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP).

A [legal] description identifies the land being conveyed in a particular instrument, used to indicate the delineation of boundaries, which separate a given parcel from the surrounding land. The description used in a deed, mortgage, or lease needs only to identify the property with reasonable certainty to constitute a valid conveyance. One court decision states, “It is not necessary that the description of property conveyed by a deed shall define it by the metes and bounds or by reference to a specific location, in order to pass title”.  Thus, a description by reference to a tax assessment map or by street address alone is usually adequate to pass title; however, such little information is not generally acceptable from a title insurance standpoint.

For purposes of insurability, the description used in a deed, mortgage, or lease should be as precise as possible. The best modes of describing land, from the title insurer’s standpoint, are metes and bounds and filed map descriptions.  Tax lot and block references are generally only accepted as a legal description when the property is conveyed by a municipality.

Metes and bounds descriptions are written versions of what is graphically set forth in a survey. It should contain a beginning point, which locates the starting place of the description, oftentimes with a readily identifiable point and end with “thence”, indicating there is more to come. For example, “BEGINNING at the point formed by the intersection of the westerly sideline of Main Street with the northerly sideline of Elm Street, thence,”. Next, the description should contain bearings and distances, which are the compass bearings indicating the location of the boundary lines with respect to “true” north and the length of the boundary lines in feet and inches. For example, continuing from the above beginning point the bearings and distances are listed for each boundary line as such, “ North 34 degrees 58 minutes 43 seconds east, 92 feet to a point, thence,”. There will generally be multiple lines of bearings and descriptions, sometimes ending with monuments or boundaries, such as a utility pole, intersections of roads, the boundary of a named person’s property, a stream, or sometimes even just a particular type of tree.  Finally, the description should end with closure, or the last boundary line in the description, returning to the beginning point, “South 55 degrees 10 minutes and 04 seconds East, 906.34 feet to the point or place of BEGINNING”.

When buying property, it's important to be aware of any liens that may be attached to it. A lien is a legal claim on a property, usually as a result of an unpaid debt or obligation. Liens can affect a home buyer's interest in a property and can cause financial and legal issues if not properly addressed prior to purchasing the property.

Liens can be placed on a property for a variety of reasons, such as unpaid child support, Medicaid bills, Public Defender bills, or even the judgment resulting from court proceedings. When a lien is placed on a property it becomes encumbered, meaning there is a right to, or interest in, land held by a person other than the fee owner, or a claim, lien, charge or liability attached to and binding real property. At the state level, liens are filed with the Superior Court of New Jersey.

A judgment of the Superior Court becomes a lien upon all of the lands of the debtor (or defendant) in the State of New Jersey, from the time of its entry upon the Superior Court Clerk’s Civil Judgment and Order Docket. This includes final judgments for a fixed amount of money, whether entered into the Law or Chancery Divisions. The lien is purely statutory in nature. An abstract of the judgment must be submitted to the Superior Court Clerk together with the requisite filing fee in order to create the lien (entry upon the minute book of the court clerk of the local county is insufficient). If the judgment abstract is filed in the local county but not submitted to the Superior Court Clerk (with the requisite filing fee) then the lien was never created.

 Judgments entered into the US District Court for the District of New Jersey are treated like judgments entered in the Superior Court of New Jersey. The same applies to judgments entered into the US District Courts of other states as the judgment may be docketed with in the US District Court for the District of New Jersey due to the Uniform Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act. **In order to discharge the judgment, a Warrant of Satisfaction must be filed with the state. **

Institutional Liens are statutory liens created to enforce the financial obligations of persons suffering from mental or other illnesses who receive treatment at state or county medical facilities. Due to N.J.S.A. 30:4-27.2, state or county owned psychiatric hospitals are no longer allowed to file new liens (and their previously filed liens from before the date of the statute have been extinguished); however, hospitals that are not government-owned, but which receive State subsidies to provide psychiatric or non-psychiatric treatment  can file certificates of debt with the CJ&OD or may choose to reinforce the claim by filing an action in Superior Court in order to reduce the claim to judgment.

Medicaid Liens arise from a program, jointly administered by federal and state governments which provides medical assistance to the needy. As services provided to eligible recipients have proved to be quite expensive imposing  a heavy burden on both federal and state budgets, government agencies have become increasingly aggressive in their efforts to recover funds expended on behalf of Medicaid recipients. To do so they frequently rely on the asset transfer penalty allowing for recovery against real or personal property. A statute provides for the imposition of a lien on the “estate of a deceased recipient” however, if a “deceased recipient” is survived by a spouse or child (under age 21 or disabled), “no encumbrance or recovery shall be imposed or sought” against the until the surviving spouse dies or the child reaches age 21. Furthermore, the Medicaid lien only becomes effective as of the date it is filed with the court.

Public Defender Liens are from the reasonable value of the services rendered to a defendant by a Public Defender. When unpaid, the Public Defender may file a lien on any and all property to which the defendant shall have or acquire an interest. To effectuate such a lien, the Public Defender must file a notice setting forth the services rendered to the defendant and the reasonable value thereof with the Clerk of the Superior Court. The date of filing is the date the lien becomes effective and therefore becomes a lien on said property for 10 years, unless discharged sooner. ***UPDATE***

Real Property generally should not be sold or transferred without satisfying open liens. This means that the seller must pay off  any open liens and file the appropriate documents before transferring ownership to the buyer. A good title company will do extensive research on the property being sold to ensure that there are not open liens that may affect the buyer’s ownership of the property.

When purchasing property, the manner in which title is vested is an important decision which sets a plan for what happens to each owner's interest in the property when they pass. 

When more than one buyer is involved in purchasing property, how they take title is an important discussion to have. When two or more buyers take title together, it is a co-tenancy; however, there are different main options for co-tenancies and whichever option is chosen determines the future of each owner's share of the property. 

The most common ways to take title are: 

As title agents review searches and prepare commitments for their transactions, there are oftentimes title issues that arise. Issues may include old mortgages that were never discharged or satisfied of record, tax sale certificates that were paid but never cleared from record, errors in land descriptions, etc.; however, it is possible that the current owner's policy in place may not have added the title issues as exceptions to the policy. In such cases, the title agent insuring a transaction can rely on the prior insurer's policy to issue without exception on the new policy. 

Prior to 2006, title companies had to request a letter of indemnity from the prior underwriter insuring the policy for each and every title issue. In 2006, all title insurance underwriters doing business in New Jersey entered into an Inter-Underwriting Indemnification Agreement. The agreement's purpose was to streamline the indemnity process between underwriters for specific issues and eliminated the need for a formal letter. In 2009, the treaty was revised, increasing the liability limit to the lesser of the face amount of the Prior Insurer's Policy or $1 mil- lion and expanding the coverage of issues that were included in the treaty. 

When seeking indemnification for one of the seven title issues covered by the treaty, the title insurance company that has issued the current policy in effect (known as the "Prior Insurer") must provide the title company that is insuring the transaction (known as the "Current Insurer") with a copy of the Owner's Policy that is still in effect, including schedules A and B of the policy. 

The seven issues included in the Indemnification Agreement are: 

• Judgments;
• Federal Tax Liens and other statutory or common law liens provided nevertheless that in the case of any lien which will not expire in a fixed period of time;
• Liens of Federal Estate Taxes, NJ estate taxes and transfer inheritance tax;
• Tax Sale Certificates, provided there are no pending or successfully concluding proceedings to foreclose, and further provided that contemporaneous notice is given to the Prior Insurer of the Current Insurer's intention to rely on the prior Insurer's policy in accordance with the terms of the agreement;
• Marital Rights arising in favor of the spouses of record titleholders;
• Legal Description errors such as lack of metes and bounds or filed map descriptions or scriveners' error contained in descriptions, provided that the land conveyed may still be identified from the documents themselves using recitals, tax information, etc.; and,
• Alleged or Actual Defects in judicial proceedings, provided they are not major defects

Title issues NOT included in the indemnity include any lien of record against the current owner, defects in a master deed, missing interests, defective bankruptcy or foreclosure proceedings, association dues,  violations of restrictions, pending judicial proceedings, insufficiencies of Power of Attorney, open property taxes and assessments, escrow compliance issues, etc. 

While the agreement only includes the seven title issues, a title insurance company can still request a letter of indemnity form the prior insurer for other types of issues. 

A fraudster's income is largely based on defrauding innocent individuals, so like most other careers, the more proficient they become at their "job", the more they earn. Real estate transactions are a huge target because it means a bigger pay day. This is simply a reminder that they are working relentlessly to defraud individuals because their livelihood relies on it. 

Individuals can pay for and implement many forms of cybersecurity defenses such as security software and email spam filters; however, phishing and spoofed emails often get past the defenses and make it to the Inbox. Therefore, it is each person's job to be alert for suspicious activity to keep from becoming the scammer's next victim. 

Spoofed Emails in Real Estate Transactions

In real estate transactions, scammers use phishing emails to compromise an email account of someone involved in a deal to gain access to that person's emails. Once they have access, they can read all of the emails related to the transaction and learn specific details that only those included in the emails would know (i.e. loan amount, closing date, funds needed to close, other parties involved in the transaction, etc.). Next, they will try to impersonate someone in the email thread by creating a similar email address or by forging the "email from" address. This is a process known as spoofing. Spoofed emails are emails from scammers that are made to appear like they are coming from a real person. 

Spoofed emails are more challenging to spot because the messages look like they are actually coming from a known, trusted party. In real estate transactions, scammers will use transaction specific information gained from studying prior emails, to craft spoofed emails that are difficult to identify. When scammers choose who, within the transaction, they want to impersonate, they will study the prior emails written by that person and note any key words and phrases often used. Then, when crafting a spoofed email, they use those same key words and phrases, along with transaction specific details and will even copy that person's email signature to make it seem more legitimate. The scammer's ultimate goal, when sending spoofed emails, is to send fake wire instructions so funds are sent to their account, instead of the account of whomever is handling the settlement. 

When reading about real estate wire fraud victims, many of them have said they had sent a few emails, back and forth with the scammer spoofing emails before receiving fake wire instructions, and they had no idea they were not communicating with the actual person. This is a clear indication that scammers are skilled at spoofing emails and impersonating people. Hence, learning to identify spoofed emails is critical for preventing wire fraud. 

The following are some examples of how you can identify a spoofed email. 

1. Look at the sender's actual email address.

When sending their spoofed emails, scammers often create an email address that is similar to the person they are trying to impersonate by changing a few characters, or using a different domain extensions (such as “.net” or “.org” instead of “.com”) to trick users into thinking the email has come from a friend, colleague, vendor, client or other known party . They may even create a new email account at a public domain (i.e. Gmail, AOL, etc.) by copying the person's full email address (domain and extension included) to make it appear legitimate. The unsuspecting user won't see any spelling errors in the email address and may overlook the domain. Additionally, scammers often add a Display Name to their email which distracts the user from their spoofed email address. 

Real estate transactions are target or a cover for many different financial crimes. As a title and settlement agency, we are in a continuous battle against financial crime and our technique for fighting these financial crimes is to prevent the crimes from taking place. Thus, Zwiren Title has established the following procedures:

• Daily Closing Department Meetings: Our closing team meets daily to discuss upcoming closings and potential issues that may occur. 
• Verbal Confirmation of Wire instructions: Before sending a wire, we call to confirm the wire instructions we've received are correct, to ensure funds are wired to the correct account.
• Two-Party Wire Approval: In order to send a wire, two authorized employees must be involved: an initiator, who enters the wire amount and an approver who confirms the amount and instructions are correct.
• Positive Pay: Everyday, we receive images of our disbursed checks that have been cashed or deposited. We review the check amount and endorsement to confirm the intended payee(s) deposited the checks. If there is any issue, we can stop they payment of the check.
• Daily Escrow Account Reconciliation: Our escrow account is reconciled every day to ensure all funds coming in and going out are accounted for. (Account Reconciler is prohibited from disbursing any funds from the escrow account).
• Company Insurance: We have a comprehensive Cyber Insurance and Fidelity Policy. 

National Financial Crime Fighter Day is celebrated on October 26 every year. The objective of the day is to celebrate anti-money laundering professionals and the positive effect their work has on financial institutions in the US. The first ever Financial Crime Fighter Day was held in 2017 and was organized by a risk management technological platform used by financial institutions in America. It was created to honor anti money laundering professionals and acknowledge the extremely important work they do.

As of March 2022, the State of New Jersey updated the RTF-1 & RTF-1EE Forms, otherwise know as the Affidavit of Consideration for Use by Seller and the Affidavit of Consideration for Use by Buyer. As stated in both new forms, transfers of real property that are intercompany transfers between combined group members filing a New Jersey combined return as part of the unitary business of the combined group are exempt from the grantor and grantee fees.