Podcast appearances and mentions of Melissa Murphy

What should fellows be looking for when searching for their first job? In this episode, Dr. Melissa Murphy, an anesthesia-trained interventional pain specialist and private practitioner, shares expert advice on navigating employment contracts, identifying red flags, and setting yourself up for long-term success. From understanding fair compensation to recognizing non-negotiables, she breaks down the key factors that can make or break your first job. Learn more: https://apmsuccess.com/255             Watch the video: https://apmsuccess.com/255v    Need help with wealth management? Learn about APM Wealth's process, here: https://apm-wealth.com/services. Or, get our free guide explaining some of our key methods for building wealth with clients: https://apm-wealth.com/freedom  Or check out our webinar for helping practice owners optimize wealth building: www.apm-wealth.com/webinar 

In this episode, Wellington is joined by special and first-time guest Melissa Murphy, an entrepreneur and diehard Miami Heat fan. They give their final takeaways from the Luka-AD trade, De'Aaron Fox heading to the Spurs and how Zach LaVine will fit with the Kings. Finally, they discuss how well OKC looks, possible trade destinations for Jimmy Butler and KD plus much more! In the second half, Wellington is joined by guest Jamil Davis, Florida State Coordinator at Black Voters Matter Fund, and host of the BLKFLA the Podcast to highlight Kendrick Lamar's historic sweep of the Grammy's and winning 5 awards for "Not Like Us" plus what Drake should do next including the PND album on Valentine's Day. For their album reviews, they discuss Central Cee's Can't Rush Greatness debut album, Ransom's Cabrini Green and Conductor Williams' latest project. 

Dealing with major #lifetransitions or #midlifecrisis? Listen now to this interview with Melissa Murphy, Nutrition and Fitness Coach and host of the #NowWhatPodcast", to discover how you can navigate the twists and turns of your #MidLifeJourney with confidence and curiosity.Whether it's an #emptynest, a #careerpivot, or you're seeking to #ReinventYourself in other ways, we'll unpack the questions, fears, and opportunities that come with midlife transitions.Get the practical advice and inspiration you need to embrace life's surprises with humor, resilience, and love. :)Learn more and connect with Melissa now at:https://motivatewithmelis.com/ https://www.instagram.com/motivatewithmelis/#MotivateWithMelissa #midlifeawakening #midlifewellness #midlifemagic #EmbracingChange #MidlifeMotivation #PodcastLife #MidlifeConversations #PodcastForChange  #ParentingChallenges #LettingGo #ParentingTeens #EmptyNestSyndrome #ParentingInMidlife #SelfDiscoveryJourney #PersonalGrowth #GrowthMindset #FindingPurpose #SelfReflection_____________________________________ABOUT SAMIA:Samia Bano is the #HappinessExpert, author, speaker, podcaster & coach for coaches and healers. Samia is most known for her book, 'Make Change Fun and Easy' and her #podcast of the same name. With the help of her signature Follow Your Heart Process™, a unique combination of #PositivePsychology and the #spiritual wisdom of our most effective #ChangeMakers, Samia helps you overcome #LimitingBeliefs, your chains of fear, to develop a #PositiveMindset and create the impact and income you desire with fun and ease…Samia's advanced signature programs include the Happiness 101 Class and the Transformative Action Training.Samia is also a Certified #ReikiHealer and Crisis Counselor working to promote #MentalHealthAwareness.  Samia models #HeartCenteredLeadership and business that is both #SociallyResponsible and #EnvironmentallyFriendly.Samia is a practicing #Muslim with an inter-spiritual approach. As someone who has a love and appreciation for diversity, she is a #BridgeBuilder between people of different faiths and cultures. Although Samia currently lives in California, USA, she has lived in 3 other countries and speaks Hindi, Urdu, and English fluently.  Want to learn even more about Samia? Visit www.academyofthriving.com :)To Book your Free HAPPINESS 101 EXPLORATION CALL with Samia, click: https://my.timetrade.com/book/JX9XJ

Dealing with major #lifetransitions or #midlifecrisis? Listen now to this interview with Melissa Murphy, Nutrition and Fitness Coach and host of the #NowWhatPodcast", to discover how you can navigate the twists and turns of your #MidLifeJourney with confidence and curiosity.Whether it's an #emptynest, a #careerpivot, or you're seeking to #ReinventYourself in other ways, we'll unpack the questions, fears, and opportunities that come with midlife transitions.Get the practical advice and inspiration you need to embrace life's surprises with humor, resilience, and love. :)Learn more and connect with Melissa now at:https://motivatewithmelis.com/ https://www.instagram.com/motivatewithmelis/#MotivateWithMelissa #midlifeawakening #midlifewellness #midlifemagic #EmbracingChange #MidlifeMotivation #PodcastLife #MidlifeConversations #PodcastForChange  #ParentingChallenges #LettingGo #ParentingTeens #EmptyNestSyndrome #ParentingInMidlife #SelfDiscoveryJourney #PersonalGrowth #GrowthMindset #FindingPurpose #SelfReflection_____________________________________ABOUT SAMIA:Samia Bano is the #HappinessExpert, author, speaker, podcaster & coach for coaches and healers. Samia is most known for her book, 'Make Change Fun and Easy' and her #podcast of the same name. With the help of her signature Follow Your Heart Process™, a unique combination of #PositivePsychology and the #spiritual wisdom of our most effective #ChangeMakers, Samia helps you overcome #LimitingBeliefs, your chains of fear, to develop a #PositiveMindset and create the impact and income you desire with fun and ease…Samia's advanced signature programs include the Happiness 101 Class and the Transformative Action Training.Samia is also a Certified #ReikiHealer and Crisis Counselor working to promote #MentalHealthAwareness.  Samia models #HeartCenteredLeadership and business that is both #SociallyResponsible and #EnvironmentallyFriendly.Samia is a practicing #Muslim with an inter-spiritual approach. As someone who has a love and appreciation for diversity, she is a #BridgeBuilder between people of different faiths and cultures. Although Samia currently lives in California, USA, she has lived in 3 other countries and speaks Hindi, Urdu, and English fluently.  Want to learn even more about Samia? Visit www.academyofthriving.com :)To Book your Free HAPPINESS 101 EXPLORATION CALL with Samia, click: https://my.timetrade.com/book/JX9XJ

March is Women's History Month! On this episode of Table Talks we will read the Nomination for our Heart award that was given to Teresa Weaver Nominated by Callia Ahlbeck, Jackie Hatch-Miller, Nancy Lewis, Kathy Luckmeier, Melissa Murphy, and Dawn Porter. Award Description: The Heart Award was born out of COVID19 and the need to acknowledge greater endeavors in support of our humanity with a focus on others over self. She is a woman with commitment and passion for service while making an impact and leading with purpose. This recipient is a woman who dedicates her life as a successful, front-line worker and has proven her endless dedication to her field. 

Episode description: In this episode of Agile Giants, we are joined by Melissa Murphy, a distinguished service professor at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. Melissa, a seasoned educator and dynamic force in business education, sits down with us to share her insights on "Pitching Generative AI to the C-Suite."  Melissa recently presented this canvas at our Corporate Entrepreneurship Forum, focusing on the intricacies of presenting Generative AI concepts to high-level executives. Today, she generously shares this wealth of knowledge with our podcast audience.   Show links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissamurphy16/ Email: mmurphy1@andrew.cmu.edu You can also watch the full workshop session here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVdDvLl3jxM

Good afternoon, and welcome. I'm Melissa Murphy with The Fund and I have the pleasure of hosting these Popup Webinars that we have from time to time. And we always strive to deal with issues that are of current concern to Fund Members and real estate practitioners. Sometimes it's breaking news. Sometimes we, revisit topics that we covered a year ago.But often those topics deserve a new look. So new legislation is always a great topic for these webinars and today is no exception.But before we get to my guest, a brief reminder that we push the audio from this webinar out on our podcast, which is also conveniently called Title Now. And you can get that wherever you get any of your podcasts to which you subscribe. So please go there and subscribe to Title Now. It's free just like these webinars. And it really is a great way for you to listen to the material again. And it's a really easy way for you to share this content with your colleagues.So what are we gonna talk about today? Mortgage payoffs.And despite the title to this webinar. This is really an exciting topic. We were sort of teasing each other before the webinar started that I don't know how sexy or exciting this topic is, but we have over two hundred people registered for it. So, obviously, there's some interest in it. Because there is a new law in Florida. It's not effective until October 1st, but it makes some pretty significant changes in the process for both requesting a payoff, how the lender sends it back to you, and it changes sort of the dynamics of whether you can rely on that payoff.And as we all know, dealing with mortgage payoffs is a daily task for closing agents.And over the past several years, it's become more and more difficult to rely on the payoff letter that you get from a lender because you close.You send them the money and they often send you that money back and say, "Oops, we made a mistake on our payoff.""You know, get us that additional money and we'll satisfy the mortgage."And in the meantime, interest is accruing against that full mortgage balance. So it's a big problem.So to address this issue, we took the legislative route and worked with various stakeholders to come up with a bill that we thought would provide some redress.And we, we're very, very lucky to have a legislator who's a real estate practitioner and a member of the fund. He supported our effort and he sponsored the bill. So Rep. Tom Fabricio is my guest today. Rep, thank you so much for talking with us today.Melissa, thank you so much for, inviting me on to the webinar. A long time fan, first time participant.And, and this is, you know, I gotta tell you getting a bill passed through the Florida legislature is it may not be as easy as, as one may think, and it took a lot of a lot of folks to help us get it done. You were one that really worked on crafting this idea, and working on getting it to work and and and whatnot. So you you you certainly are owed a a debt of gratitude on this. But also, Scott Merrick from the Florida Land Title Association was quite instrumental in helping us get this done. And we also have to thank our Senate sponsor, Senator Danny Burgess, who worked on it, also an attorney.Speaker Paul Renner, Speaker of the House, at the Florida legislature helped us quite a bit. As well as Senate President, Senator Passidomo, who did. And, of course, we can't forget Governor DeSantis for signing this bill into law. So a lot of hands, to get, to get the, 120 in the House and the 40 in the Senate to get this passed and then off across the Governor's desk. But it's good law, and we're really, really excited to see it become enacted now in October.Well, and the history of how this law came to be is is interesting to me. And I wanna share that with our listeners because not this past legislative session but the legislative session before that. So in 2022, so actually in the Fall of 2021, out of the blue, you gave me a call and introduced yourself to me.And I started chatting about the things I'm working on, and I mentioned something about mortgage payoff reform. And that is when you said "Melissa, I would be very interested in helping with that bill. I will see if I can sponsor it."That's right.So we we went through the effort of drafting the bill. And and that was kind of challenging that first go around. What were the kinds of things that we encountered that first time around?Sure. Yeah. Yeah. This this bill like many other bills, but this bill in particular, was a multi year process. Sometimes through the legislature, a bill is initially filed And, we get it to hearings, and we talk to, folks on the other side, and, and, you know, we hear from folks in the public and and other entities.And so one of the things that we worked on the first year the bill was run was engaging with the Florida Bankers Association and the members and the the members of that entity. And we worked with the bankers to make sure that all parties to these estoppel letters to these mortgage payoff letters that their rights would be preserved appropriately. And we worked quite extensively with them we for an entire legislative session. Unfortunately, that first year, like it happens oftentimes, the bill didn't make it all the way across the finish line.And it died before the end of session. But, to the credit of the Florida Bankers Association, in particular, my dear friend, Kenneth Pratt, we are able they agreed to certain terms during that first year, and they they complied with her, and they conform to that agreement and we came back this last legislative session exactly where we left off, and we were able to get that bill all the way across the finish line. So we work with a lot of different folks. We are lucky to work with, the correct folks, that had the industry knowledge and the exact technical knowledge know how to be able to craft this legislation so that it's good law across the board for all parties, involved in the mortgage payoffs.Exactly. And I think you've pretty much just said why you were so willing to back this bill because you felt like it appropriately adjusted the rights between the parties. So kudos to you for picking a great bill to attach your name to.So in addition to addressing, you know, the adjustment of those rights and the annoying way in which lenders were conditioning their payoffs and and certainly making them less and reliable.This bill really set out in detail.The requirements for both requesting a payoff and the sending of the payoff by the lender. And I wanna make sure that our listeners are aware of these new very technical requirements.So we're gonna include information about that in conversation today in addition to talking about the more important substantive issues of conditional language. And the lender's obligation to release the lien. So before we get into that, I want our listeners to know that if they have any questions, that they would, like to post to us. Just use the question bar over on the right hand side of your screen. We have Michael Rothman, behind the scenes with us today who's gonna be monitoring those questions and sharing those, with me and the Rep. at the end of our remarks. And we will try to answer your questions here live. If we run out of time, we'll respond afterwards.We've also included a copy of the new law in the handouts. And you can click on that and download it. It's over again on the right hand panel of your screen. And, the Rep. and I are following the order of the bill in our conversation today so that you can follow along if you want rather than pinging around from one topic to the next. So I am gonna start us off with, a summary of the new procedural requirements for ordering of mortgage payoff. Now, as you've already alluded, Tom, they are mortgage payoffs are referred to as a estoppel letters in the new law, which is a good thing because with these changes in the law, they now are truly a estoppel letters.But just because I'm old and used to referring to them as mortgage payoffs, I'm gonna call them mortgage payoffs.So one of the changes that we made this year is that the lender must send the mortgage payoff to the request or within 10 days of the request. We got that reduced from 14 days to 10 days because the reality is in today's environment, the lenders don't need 14 days to send you a payout. So we reduce that down to ten days and if the request comes from someone other than the mortgage or which is certainly the situation with closings. The request must include a copy of the instrument showing that person's title or other lawful authorization.Then the lender must notify the more you're sure that this third party has requested the payoff. I think those are great changes. The reduction in time and requiring the lender to notify their borrower that somebody has requested a payoff.I think you're gonna address the next issue.Yes.So the second issue that was addressed in the bill, touches on section 701.041c.And it's that a lender may not qualify and this is the heart of it. A lender may not qualify, reserve the right to change or condition or disclaim the reliance of others on the information provided in an estoppel letter. And any attempt to do so, is void and unenforceable. Of course, there's an exception for mortgages that are in foreclosure a lis penden is recorded or suggestion of bankruptcy filed.And, you know, this goes to the heart of making these mortgage payoff letters in effect estoppel letters as we all learned, estoppel letters would should be in law school. The lender has the right to correct a payoff provided in it, provided it is received by the requester by 3:00 PM in such person's time zone at least 1 business day before a payment is issued. In reliant on the previously issued estoppel letter. This was, a matter that was negotiated extensively with the bankers about what 3:00 pm is, which time zone it would be, and all those fun things that went back and forth.But the point here is, you know, broadly speaking, the point is that when the lender issues in an estoppel letter, they there can't be this conditional language in it, that gives them the right to wiggle out of this estoppel letter. You owe x dollars, but, hey, that may not be x dollars by the time you pay it off. It may be y dollars or x plus whatever. So it it can't be that way.You have to be able to rely on it. We did in fact put in the mechanism there for the lender to be able to correct that and the time frames, for that lender to be able to correct that. Corrected payoff must be sent in the same manner as used to respond to the original written request.A copy of the corrected payoff must be sent to the mortgagor.If, properly sent and received the corrected payoff supersedes all previous payoffs, as it should. If not properly sent and received. The lender must honor the original payoff, but the right to recover any additional sums properly owed is preserved. Again, that was a point that we worked out with the bankers because, if there is a debt, if there is a loan, there shouldn't necessarily be a windfall for any particular party.It should be a matter that the lender is able to collect. However, it shouldn't muck up the actual closing. The borrower/mortgagors right, to raise defenses to this collection effort is also preserved. So that was a big portion of, what was negotiated and worked out, and I think it's landed in their correct place.The next section 701.041e, states that the lender must apply payments received promptly to the unpaid balance of the loan, prohibited from sending the money back to the mortgagor or closing agent. I mean, that's that's critical. And that's that's one of the critical aspects of what we're trying to get done. We don't want a situation where the lender says, "Oops, I said a $100,000, but I really meant a $105,000. So here's all your money back. And by the way, in the meantime, interest is accruing on the entire amount, and you, title company, have to redo this closing."So that's a large portion of what we were seeking to get done and we were effectively able to get that done.I found it very interesting in the negotiations with the Bankers Association that they really have no heartburn with prohibiting conditional language as long as you could have the right to properly correct a payoff, but they also felt that sending the money back and continuing to accrue interest on the full mortgage balance was not an equitable solution because the discrepancy could be a small amount. It could be $500 and lenders would send the money back and continue accrue interest on that full mortgage balance. So they had no problem with a specific prohibition from the lender returning the money back to the mortgagor if they have to take money that is sent to them and apply that to pay down the mortgage.So that is the gist of this bill. That was the important stuff to you and me. Was to get that stuff in there. But there was also some clean up on the whole process.So I've talked about the response time that a lender has to send a payoff back, but let's talk about how you request a payoff. So the statute says that it has to be in writing written request is, a euphemism for just a valid communication.You can send it first-class mail. You can send it by common carrier delivery.But you can also send your request by email, facsimile, or other electronic means at the address made available by the lender or through an automated system provided by the lender for the requesting of an estoppel letter. So we try very hard to deal with all of the different ways in which a closing agent might be inclined to request a payoff also to deal with those automated systems because our sense was that that's how closing agents generally more often than not request pay off. So we wanted to make sure that that was a valid option.And that request is deemed received 5 business days after a first-class mail letter the day the request is delivered by the common carrier and the day the request is received through those electronic means, email, facsimile.The automated system that the lender might set up. We did build in allowance for weekends.And legal holidays. And I remember a lot of discussion about what's the proper list of holidays.You can really get in the weeds when you're doing legislation. Right?And then the payoff must be sent to the requestor, by first-class mail common carrier, email again, or an automated system. And remember that 10 days applies to, when the lender must send that payoff back.And note that this also relates back to those corrected payoffs because if the lender sua sponte just on their own goes "Oops. We made a mistake in that payoff." They have to send the corrected payoff to the closing agent.The same way that the original payoff was sent.So if they sent the original payoff first-class mail back to you, then they can't email you the corrected payoff and have that control. It's very important that the lenders pay attention to these requirements.And then let's talk about satisfying the lien of the mortgage because this was a really great provision in the bill that we were able to get through.Right. Thank you, Melissa. And this section, this, kind of brings it all together. And the idea here, of course, generally with a bill was that we wanted to make sure that if a lender were to send back certain monies or there was a discrepancy or whatnot or parties couldn't rely on that estoppel letter.It would slow down, and it would, you know, for lack of a better term muck up a closing. So what we what we're doing here is we've required statutorily, that we're we should be able to rely on the unstoppable letter. The parties have a properly issued and accepted accept it. Estoppel letter is not amended properly pursuant to the statute, then, under 701.042 Within 60 days after the unpaid balance of a loan secured by a mortgage, which has been fully paid or here's our new language or paid pursuant to an estoppel letter under subsection one above that we discussed.The, the satisfaction shall be issued. The it says, the mortgagee or mortgage servicer shall send the release to the clerk for recording and send a copy to the mortgagor or record title owner of the property. So that and that's the point we wanna be able to get these, closings done, get the, release of mortgage issued. However, as we spoke above, the actual lender's right to recuperate any and all amounts due in owing is preserved.So they're not losing their right to collect. But if they oops and sent a mortgage payoff letter that was improperly calculated, and payment was submitted and received by them correctly pursuant to that estoppel letter, they have to release, that lien on that property and let that the property owners, go forward. However, they're still able to go back to that, prior borrower and collect that amount. The attorneys fee, there will be in here an attorneys fee award, in the action to enforce this requirement.That is if the lender doesn't properly release, that mortgage, and it preserves the obligation of the mortgagor for any, like, what we discussed, for any balances due as otherwise provided by law.And I found the negotiations and discussions of this particular provision with the bankers but also with your colleagues in the house and the senate to be very interesting because people had different perspectives.Some of the legislators thought that if the lender sent a payoff and it was wrong, so sad, too bad.You can't even collect the balance from the borrower. You have to honor that a stop a letter. And yes, it's a windfall to the borrower, but we think that's the right way to adjust it. And then you had legislators that said, no. If they really owe the money, they should have to pay whatever the lender is owed. Yes. Let's require the lender to release the lien of the mortgage so that clear title is delivered to the purchaser.But if the lender made an honest mistake, and there is, you know, a couple of thousand dollars still due from the bar where then they should have the right to collect that. Now it's gonna be an unsecured debt.It's gonna be hopefully a small claims action.Hopefully the discrepancy is not that big. And hopefully it is something that the lender can fairly readily prove up.But we made sure in the law that the borrower has the right to raise whatever defenses are appropriate to the action by the lender to collect that shortfall. I think it will be really interesting to see how this plays out in the real world, in the world of litigation, as to how courts address these situations where the lender sent an estoppel letter. That's what it's called. And now is seeking and the borrower relies on that.So they're different. Yeah.Takes the net proceeds from the sale of the house.Uses it to buy the next house?It'll be really interesting to see how the courts address that.I can't wait to see how our language works out in the real world and whether or not it's beneficial.This this one in particular.This was contentious, like you mentioned with, some of my colleagues And I think we landed in the right place because as you mentioned, you know, if the bank oops and sends you a in inappropriate, incorrect number. They didn't calculate the interest correct or whatever it is that they did incorrectly.They are, you know, they're in a in a worse position by that error, because they now have an unsecured debt.So but they we did give them the extra bite at the apple by allowing them to amend it. They just have to amend it properly prior to payoff taking place. So we gave them several bites out of the apple to get this thing done correctly.And, but there is no windfall here. There's and I don't think that they're necessarily should be a windfall. And our information indicates that any amounts due after, an incorrect payoff letter, is issued, would be likely a de minimis amount. Like you mentioned, it would probably be in small claims.And I would hope that the parties would work it out. If a borrower knows they owe certain money and they, you know, we're benefiting from an a bank error, and they owe a couple hundred bucks. They should work it out with a bank and get that resolved. But then the bank, you know, if they need to file suit, in county court, to recuperate these the small amount of money, that's something between them and their borrower.Right.Now the final issue that we dealt with had to do with the question of retroactivity.And with this new law with these new adjustments of rights between the party. Would that apply to existing mortgages, mortgages already entered into, mortgages already of record, or would it apply, only to mortgages entered into after the effective date?Well, Golly Moses. If we had to wait to apply it to mortgages entered into after the effective date, we're really not adjusting the rights of the parties.So talk about that and how the legislature typically deals with that issue.So, that was, an important issue in this and in other bills that we've looked at. But in particular to this bill, retroactivity is generally disfavored by the legislature. We don't like to make, laws that go backwards in time. We only wanna make laws that go forward in time. However, there is we have the ability to do that in special circumstances such as, in this case, we, you know, and and whenever we have to do that, it's not an easy lift.But I believe we've landed in the right in in the right area because there are there are mortgages that, are being serviced currently, that are, you know, we're seeking payoffs on them on a daily basis.And those those should be subject to this new method. When the parties entered into, these mortgage agreements, they weren't necessarily relying on the fact that the mortgage payoff letter process was gonna include these, crazy estoppel letters that weren't really estoppel letters.So what we've done is we've done a correction to the law. We've put the law in a correct posture, in my view. And we've enacted this in a way when we're, it's gonna apply to all loans that are out there except to the loans that are currently in foreclosure.Or I believe where lis pendens are currently filed. Right. Right. Suggest of bankruptcy or foreclosure with the lis pendens.That's right. Which you know, we felt was appropriate. So I think that final issue was was really the key to making this bill, the very best that it could possibly be. So, I'm really glad that Governor DeSantis agreed with us.And put his John Hancock on this bill. So, Michael, do we have any questions from our audience? We do. We have a bunch of questions.And if we don't get to all of them, I'm sure Melissa and Tom will try to respond, privately afterwards. So,d oes this new law apply to what they call a mom and pop lenders private mortgages? How about to out of state lenders?Yes. Yes.Good. I would say yes. Yes.Yeah.All of the above.Excellent.10 days on the 701.041a. Is that business days or calendar days?Calendar days.What kind of teeth or enforcement remedies are available to more of the jurors if lenders failed to meet the requirement of providing the estoppel letter within the 10 day time frame.That's kind of a tough one. There was no way to easily deal with that in the language of the bill.I think that we're gonna have to see whether or not that is truly a challenge out there in the industry. And I think both the Rep. and I would love to hear from you all out there that are struggling with lenders not responding within the 10 day requirement. I would send them a copy of the bill technically.I guess you could file some kind of action against them and recover attorney's fees, but that's not a practical way to get that payoff from them. So maybe some baby teeth are in that provision.I'll add to it. When we were working on that provision, one of the things that I said, some of the silo staff and some of the folks that brought that question up originally was that I don't necessarily I personally when dealing with institutional lenders have never had a problem in getting these, in a timely response to requests for payoffs. I mean, I certainly have that problem with HOA's and condo associations, but those estoppels are a whole other problem that we're, considering otherwise. But, the institutional lenders for the most part haven't done so, but I would be interested in hearing proposed remedies for delays in providing these payoffs. Generally lenders in in my experience, have been happy to let us know how much money is owed and, are happy to take the money for the most part.It's a great question. How the lender's gonna know about this bill being passed in Florida so that they respond timely within the time frames? How is the word getting out to all these lenders around the country that we have this law? Who is it? Who's informing the lenders?So I'll jump in there.The, the Florida Bankers Association that obviously deals with Florida banks and several other banking associations were involved in the lobbying, and, following the process of this bill, which took 2 years to get past.Most lenders, which this will be shocking to all the lawyers on this webinar, but most lenders have legions of lawyers and these lenders who lend money in Florida have legions of lawyers both in Florida and throughout.So you know, we're confident that they will be apprised of the law by following webinars such as this excellent webinar that we're putting on today and other CLE products that will include legislative updates as to what lending laws have changed in the state of Florida.We have time for one one or two more. Where where are we at? Yeah. Sure. Yeah. One more, maybe.We've got a lot of good ones here. What about lenders? It will only send their payoffs to the borrowers directly. Can title companies rely on those to stop those issued to the borrowers and not to the title company?I I don't know, Tom. I would say that this law requires the lender to send it to the requestor as long as the requestor includes the appropriate authorization for the requesting of the payoff. I think they're obligated to send it to the closing agent. That's right.And and what what are the things that I would add, is that, it's my policy in within my title company that, we don't necessarily rely on payoffs that are not issued directly to the title company. I understand that that may be an issue that occurs in different in different companies, and they have different practices. But I always find that the best practice is for the title company to directly obtain the payoff letter which would have all the calculations so that we can rely on it directly, and we won't, you know, be playing third party, getting incorrect or inaccurate data.Well, and that additional risk of business email fraud, if things get emailed back and forth, you wanna reduce that as much as possible.Right. Well, oh, and last reminder, this bill is effective October 1st of this year. So we purposely scheduled this webinar early in September.So that you had time to read the bill, adjust your maybe your your processes internally in your office. Keep it fresh of mind so that we didn't do it too far in advance of October 1st. So We are out of time.Rep. Fabricio. Thank you so much for your time today.And a huge thank you for your role in making sure that this bill got over the finish line.Thanks to everybody that tended the webinar and listened in. We will try to respond to your questions, but please stay tuned for future webinars.And of course, as always, thank you for your support of The Fund.

In this episode we discussed how to improve your brand as a physician and get involved with ASPN. Our guest, Dr. Melissa Murphy, shared her journey coming out of fellowship to now being one of the key opinion leaders in the pain medicine field. She shared her experience with the ASPN poster to podium program. Dr. Murphy, Dr. Deer, and Dr. Buchanan gave their advice on how to get involved with ASPN and enhance your brand.  Takeaways from the episode: Dr. Murphy shared her experience with ASPN and the poster to podium program Dr. Murphy, Dr. Deer, and Dr. Buchanan shared their advice on professional development.   Host, Patrick Buchanan, MD: Dr. Buchanan is double board certified in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Pain Medicine. His goal is to help his patients get their life back by managing their pain and focus on things they love and enjoy. https://www.californiapaindoctors.com/patrick-buchanan-m-d/ https://www.instagram.com/patdbmd/?hl=en Host, Timothy Deer, MD: Dr. Deer is the president and CEO of the Spine and Nerve Centers of the Virginias. Dr. Deer has led a revolution in interventional spine and nerve care by teaching thousands of physicians an algorithmic approach to care including methods that are less invasive at a lower risk for complications. https://centerforpainrelief.com/about/tim-deer-md/ https://twitter.com/doctdeer?lang=en https://www.instagram.com/timdeer30a/?hl=en   Guest, Dr. Melissa Murphy, MD: Dr. Murphy is a fellowship-trained, double-board-certified interventional spine and pain specialist. She is dedicated to working with each patient individually to develop a personalized treatment plan to improve function and quality of life. https://www.ntxortho.com/doctors/melissa-z-murphy-md-mph   About ASPN: ASPN was created to bring the top minds in the fields of pain and neuroscience together. ASPN has a mission to improve education, highlight scientific curiosity, establish best practice, and elevate each other in a quest to improve the field of pain and neuroscience. All initiatives of ASPN are dedicated to improving patient outcomes, education, research, and innovation. ASPN's website and social links: https://aspnpain.com https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCixMNhEtOiRm1aQmDWtzxmg https://www.instagram.com/aspn_painneuro/ https://www.facebook.com/PainNeuro https://www.linkedin.com/in/aspn/ https://twitter.com/aspn_painneuro   Our sponsors: Mainstay Medical: The Only FDA Approved Restorative Therapy for Chronic Mechanical Low Back Pain caused by Multifidus Dysfunction. Restore Control, Restore Function, Restore Stability, ReActiv8 Life. https://mainstaymedical.com/   Vertos Medical: The company behind the mild Procedure. Move beyond palliative therapies and address a major root cause of LSS, without leaving any implants behind. https://www.vertosmed.com/  

Melissa Murphy Discusses Her Strategy for Continued Growth at Johnston Paint and Decorating by Floor Focus Magazine

Frustrated by the risks associated with wire transfers of buyer cash to close? What about the hassle of disbursing to realtors, HOAs, tax collectors and others? Are there options under Florida’s “good fund rules” for other forms of payment? Melissa Jay Murphy 0:00 Welcome to The Fund’s Title Now Pop-up webinar. I'm Melissa Murphy with The Fund and I have the pleasure to host these webinars from time to time on topics of interest to the real estate transaction world. We push this content out to our podcast also. So that way you have continuing access to the conversation. You can share it with interesting colleagues or friends. And coincidentally, our podcast is called Title Now also, and it's available wherever you get your podcasts, so please subscribe. We would love to share information with you, and I would love to get feedback about the topics that we talked about. So, one housekeeping item before we get started, you have the opportunity to pose questions to us in the chat function. Just pose your question there. And I have Bob Rohan from our Legal Education department who will be monitoring the chat and toward the end of our presentation. I'll ask Bob if there are any questions out there that you would like for us to answer. So, let's talk about money. Dealing with the funds in a real estate transaction is one of the most important responsibilities of a closing agent. It's your job to disperse the funds to cover closing costs, seller proceeds, real estate commissions mortgage payoffs, and it's obvious that the parties to the transaction rely on you to do that properly without a hitch. We also must consider what rules have to be followed. Both lawyers and licensed title agents are governed by what we commonly call the Good Funds Rule. Lawyers must adhere to the Good Funds Rule promulgated by the Florida Bar and licensed title agents have to comply with the Good Funds Rule. It's in our Florida Administrative Code. Now these rules are pretty similar, but they're not identical. But the similarity is pretty simple and is around that basic concept. You need to have money in the bank that you're pretty darn sure is real, secure, and irrevocable before you disperse that money. In the language of both the Florida Bar rule and the Florida Administrative Code refers to “collected funds” and they define that as deposited finally settled and credited to the trust account. Otherwise, you're using someone else's money (another client) to cover the check you've written and that's not good. So, the challenge is knowing when the money, however it's been delivered to you, is finally collected. It seems to me that banks have different rules around when monies are going to be available to you. Now, there are also exceptions, there's always an exception, to every rule right. Both title agents and attorneys are allowed to make exceptions for these strict rules. But the exception is based on an intangible thing. If they have a reasonable or prudent belief, that deposit will become collected funds within a reasonable time they can disperse. You know you might be uncomfortable taking that risk. So, is there a solution to this? Is there a better way for money to be sent to a closing agent? Is there a better way for a closing agent to be able to disperse the money that's been sent to them? There is some form of payment coming our way that many think is a great solution to these challenges, real time payments and with me today is Rick Bruhn from the US Bank to talk with us about real time payments. Rick is a senior vice president at US Bank, and he is head of commercial deposits and payments solutions there. So welcome Rick. Thanks for being here. And helping us understand this new form. Rick Bruhn 4:56 Thanks, Melissa. Happy to be here and love talking about RTP and payment innovations. Melissa Jay Murphy 4:58 Let’s start with what I hope is a softball question to you. Give us some high-level definition of a real time payment. Rick Bruhn 5:12 Yeah, great, great question. Right so real time payments are the very first payment rail lot new payment rail launched in the last 40 years within the United States. You know RTP while it's still new in the US it's not super new, right it launched in 2017, with the first payment actually being sent earlier that year between us, US Bank, and Bank of New York Mellon. Over time, you know that the participation within the RTP network has certainly expanded, and the utilization of that network has also expanded. You know there are a lot of positive things around real time payments. It's currently managed by the clearing house which is a consortium of 23 of the largest banks in the United States and internationally. It operates different payment infrastructures within the financial institution sector. And you know, RTP was built to compete with some real time payments platforms that are available and have been actually for as long as 20 plus years and other foreign countries such as Japan, China, other parts of the world. So, you know, our RTP is certainly a game changer. I've been involved in the Title and Escrow industry in the banking side for 15 plus years now and a multitude of different capacities within US Bank. Since the day it was launched in 2017 really thought and still believe you know RTP has the ability to really be a game changer for the title and escrow and settlement services industries. Melissa Jay Murphy 6:52 How is it different from a wire? How is it different from an ACH payment? Rick Bruhn 7:00 Yeah, I mean, fantastic question. Right. So, you know, today in the in the title world, right settlement world, we deal a lot with wire transfers, you know, there you have finality of payment, the revocable ultimately which you know, satisfies the Good Funds Rules that you're talking about at the top of the call Melissa. And, you know, with RTP you get those same features, right, you get irrevocability, finality of payment. It can't be called back. One of the main primary differentiators of RTP to wires are with wires, you're limited by the timeframe you can send them. So, you have from when the Fed window opens 8am to 5:30-5:45pm depending on your financial institution and how long they give you to complete that wire transfer process with them, with RTP it's open 24/7 365 days a year. You want to settle a transaction on Christmas Day at 5pm. Guess what you can do that? You know and then with ACH as most people probably on the call know, depending on the type of ACH payment it is who it's between whether, it's business to business, business to consumer, or consumer to business. There are different callback rules that apply to all those different payment types and the receiver or, if it's debiting funds for a consumer account, they can have up to 60-90 days in order to dispute that transaction. Whereas with RTP, like wires, you don't have that ability. I mean, it really takes an act of God and way to get those funds back. And so, there's that. Melissa Jay Murphy 8:39 I've also heard that ACH payments are not even real time. They can be called that but they're not even real time. There's some way that the bank kind of waits to send ACH payments out. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? Rick Bruhn 8:53 Yeah, absolutely. So you're exactly right. When you're sending or when you're debiting or crediting within the ACH network, you can either push a credit, in essence you're sending money to somebody, or you can initiate a debit transaction where you're actually pulling money from someone else's account. And then those types of transactions are ultimately batched and then each bank has different processing windows for their ACH batches, in which those operate. They generally are every hour, every two hours, something along those lines, but they certainly are not real time. So, if you initiate one now, you won't technically have funds. That process won't even start until maybe one or two o'clock somewhere depending on your institution. Depending on the type of ACH payment you initiate it could be same day which means you get the money at some point today but there's no guarantee as to timing. It can be a one day or two-day settlement as well. So, you may not even see the funds for another day or two and then you still have the dispute window as well to navigate. Melissa Jay Murphy 10:02 I thought there was a kind of quirky thing about ACH. So how does real time payment actually work? So, what are sort of the logistics? Rick Bruhn 10:17 Yeah, fantastic question. So, it works. RTP (real time payments) has a number of different functionalities that a wire transfer has and doesn't have. Ultimately, so like a wire transfer, you can initiate a payment outgoing with an RTP payment much like you would initiate a wire transfer today through your financial institution. So you're probably logging into your online banking system software through your financial institution putting in a name, account number routing number, dollar amounts and maybe additional information etc. in initiating that payment and then you have somebody else probably within your organization that approves that payment before it goes out. Then there's also another functionality of real time payments. It's called request for payment or RFP, which works kind of in reverse, so it's similar to ACH debit in the sense that you are in a way requesting funds from somebody but it's not it doesn't operate like ACH debit where it automatically debits their account. So an RFP within the RTP network, so yourself as a title agent would request payments from me so say “I'm purchasing a house” or “I have signed a contract” and you're trying to collect the earnest money deposit $10,000. So, the title agent could go into their banking software, initiate a request for payment, that will come to me and it's not an email. It's not a text message that I receive or any of that stuff will actually be a notification that I received on my banking app, on my telephone on my cell phone, iPhone, whatever Android. So, it will pop up on the home a US Bank app you have a “Request for Payment” from ABC title company. I open my app, go through the authentication process with my bank to access the app and review the details of the “Request for Payment”. If I accept that and agree to pay it, within the app, it'll automatically then send those funds from my account (Obviously, assuming they are there and available. It won't allow me to overdraft my account to send the money.) to be able to send those funds over to the title agent in real time. As soon as I click Accept or Approve those funds, immediately leave my account, and then would credit the Title Agency account. Melissa Jay Murphy 12:45 So, the only delay in payment would be if you're not paying attention to your phone and you don't get the notification that the request for payment has come to you. Rick Bruhn 12:55 Exactly, exactly. You're exactly right. Rick Bruhn 13:04 Yeah, and we are seeing use cases today within the industry space where it is being utilized to collect earnest money right now today in real time. Melissa Jay Murphy 13:16 So, when the closing agent since the RFP, the request for payment, to the buyer, do they need any information other than just the buyers name and cell phone number? Rick Bruhn 13:31 Great, a great question Melissa. So you know today much like with the existing process, they will need the clients name, full name, account number routing number in order to initiate an RFP today. So when you're collecting if you're putting that money outside of the client being in your office, right so you know, you still have to have a secure method for which to collect that data. ultimately. And then be able to populate that into your banking software. A future state, you could look at a situation in the future where you could actually be collecting that information at the closing table without ever having to request that information upfront if you're dispersing closing funds to a seller or like a cash out refinance. Melissa Jay Murphy 14:19 So that's the earnest money deposit scenario, but I'm kind of getting the impression that this could be a very cool tool to use at the closing table. So, I think you've given some thought to how great this could be at the closing table. So, tell us about that. Rick Bruhn 14:38 Absolutely. I've been sitting around thinking about this for a while and for a lot of the people on the call probably don't realize but the there's a limit for RTP payments today. It's a million dollars. When it was first launched in 2017, it was $10,000. So, there wasn't really a wide applicability for the real estate settlement services space at $10,000. Then it went to $100,000 and even then, for cash out refi or to pay brokers, real estate agents, stuff like that there was some common sense uses to be able to utilize RTP. At a $1,000,000, you cover 95% probably of residential resales nationwide, somewhere in that ballpark. Obviously, wire fraud is pertinent and on the top of everybody's minds within the industry space without a doubt. We see instances where business email compromise or other avenues are utilized to gain access to escrow accounts or to dupe consumers into sending information to a fraudster or sending wires to a fraudster inadvertently. In an RTP world in the future state, you can imagine a situation whereas a title agent you can articulate to your real estate agents, consumers, builders, whomever you're working with, “no, we will never send wiring instructions to a consumer, ever, period.” You're never gonna have to do that. So, there's no business email to compromise ultimately, at the end of the day, right. In that scenario, you show up to the closing table, your consumer comes to the closing table, whether it's a refinance or a purchase sale etc. So, I know your documents and know if there's cash to collect for closing from the buyer. Your escrow agent, or closer or whomever and you would designate in your agency and initiate a request for payment to the consumer. They're at the closing table, from an iPad, from a laptop, whatever that notification shows up on the consumers’ phone. The consumer is able to go in and respond to that RFP, “ABC title agency needs $50,000 for cash to close on a transaction 1234 for XYZ property”, they accept/approve that transaction. The funds immediately leave their checking account, savings account, money market account, whichever and automatically populate into the title companies escrow account. Right there at the closing table, all done, with all parties present. Melissa Jay Murphy 17:35 And that money is finally so. Right then and there. Rick Bruhn 17:37 Absolutely, can't be called back just like a wire transfer. Melissa Jay Murphy 17:42 And I think that this just brings up a really cool images in my mind of how great this would be sitting at a closing table. All the documents are signed, closing agent says “Okay, buyer, are you happy?” “Yes.” “Okay, seller are you happy?” “Yes.” You send the request for payment to the buyer and in a minute or two they get that request for payment on their phone. They open it up. They hit Accept, boom, the money is there. And it sounds like the closing agent could turn to the seller and say “I'm sending you your net proceeds. Boom, here they go.” And they could also do that with the real estate commission? Rick Bruhn 18:34 Yeah, you're exactly right. Melissa Jay Murphy 18:41 How much would a Realtor like that! Rick Bruhn 18:43 We can even go back to the dates when the real time payment transaction limits were $10,000 per payment. We had clients within our Title and Escrow industry vertical portfolio that were actually utilizing that five years to go to pay real estate agents and brokers because for their purposes, it was a competitive advantage because they can pay realtors in real time. There was no fee for the realtor to receive a real time payment unlike with a wire transfer where they get dinged by their bank for $20, $30, $40 fee, depending on the institution, right. The realtor did want to come to the closing and collect the check and then have to go to their bank and deposit the check. They don't have to to get the funds in real time immediately, available to them, and free of charge to receive. Melissa Jay Murphy 19:34 All right this sounds too good to be true, Rick. So, what are the challenges? What are the challenges that we're facing right now? Rick Bruhn 19:38 Like with all new technology, right, it's adoption ultimately is the number one challenge. So roughly 60-65% of all DDA accounts nationwide are covered by RTP participating banks. So, a bank has to be a participating institution on the RTP network in order to initiate or receive a payment and they can participate in a lot of different ways. They can participate in the clearing house and the RTP network can just be a receiving bank where they can receive RTP payments or RFPs, etc. Or they can be an initiation bank. So, you know, smaller institutions will participate in receiving payments where a lot of larger banks like US Bank are full participants within the RTP network. All the major banks are a lot of the regional banks if not all of them are today, I know and talking directly with the clearing house, you know, they could add the next 10 largest banks that are not participants, and it really would not move the dial more than one or two percentage points, ultimately. So it's mostly smaller institutions today that are not participating on the RTP network. And then on the RFP side, that's a new functionality within the RTP network. That's really only been up and running for gosh, basically 2022. All participants within the RTP network today, all of their clients can read all their commercial or corporate banking clients, business clients can respond to an RFP. However, the limitation really right now on that aspect is only two banks, US Bank and City, currently allow consumers to receive and process an RFP request. By the end of this year. We anticipate a couple of the other larger banks Wells Fargo, Bank of America to also be included in that and we anticipate you know, a much larger amount to onboard in 2023 as well. Melissa Jay Murphy 21:44 So, it sounds like the big challenge right now is that only a very few banks allow consumer clients, consumers when they encounter that bank to receive an RFP. So that clearly is a limitation on the population that can take advantage of this currently. So is the resistance because there's a huge cost to obey to build a technology environment that will support this? Is that the reason why the smaller regionals are lagging? Rick Bruhn 22:24 Yeah, I mean, there's certainly a technological cost to it. So I mean, being in a very brand new payment rail, they have to code their systems to that that payment infrastructure and FedNow is coming as well, and a lot of people think that FedNow will jumpstart adoption around RTP and more banks will be on FedNow. Like RTP any bank that currently obviously is tied to the Fed network directly, will have the option to utilize FedNow and a lot of banks will use both FedNow and the RTP networks. What people don't realize is there's still going to be a coding infrastructure challenge with FedNow when it comes out because it as well as a new is a new payment rail, ultimately from the Fed so it's not going to run over the old wire fed wire rails. So, there's still going to be some uplift on institutions to code to that. We would anticipate that institutions would ultimately code the Fed Now will probably (that are not on RTP today) will probably go to both at the same time, as opposed to picking one or the other. It's new There certainly is a lift on cost associated with that. Even with smaller institutions today, what a lot of people may or may not realize, smaller financial institutions in a lot of ways will use the balance sheets or infrastructure of larger institutions like a US Bank, Bank of America or Wells through their correspondent banking groups that ultimately utilize some of the payment infrastructures that they have in place they are to credit accounts for those smaller institutions. So, we've seen you know even some smaller institutions come through us and like to utilize RTP through US Bank’s channels on the network versus coding themselves. Melissa Jay Murphy 24:14 So, they just kind of lease space on your network? Rick Bruhn 24:17 They give it like a click fee. Right. Like from a technology company. Melissa Jay Murphy 24:20 Well, one of the goals I have of hosting this webinar and pushing this out on the podcast is that it'll reach a whole lot of consumers that have consumer accounts that will start pressuring their banks to make this a reality. Certainly, attorneys and title agents have business accounts with their lenders and hopefully this will drive awareness which will put some pressure on banks to get on this train so that we can make payments a lot more efficient. What's the cost of sending and receiving payments through RTP? Are they comparable to wire transfer fees? Rick Bruhn 25:08 Actually, they're a lot cheaper than sending a wire transfer. So, I can't speak for all institutions, I can tell you from US Bank’s perspective, for title companies wires started for dollars incoming and or outgoing for wire transfers. For RTP based on volume, they start at roughly 50 cents and go down from there depending on the amount that you initiate. And it's for real time payment transactions they're free to receive, like an ACH. So, if you're a title company receiving an RTP from another title company, it's free for you to receive that. And if you're initiating it, you'll probably pay somewhere in the neighborhood of it should be roughly be pennies compared to what you're paying for wires today. And interestingly enough to a consumer or as we talked about earlier, a real estate agent or broker, it's free for them to receive those funds. Melissa Jay Murphy 26:04 Another benefit now the reason why we need to lobby our banks to make this happen. So, my last question is really around those darn fraudsters. Fraudsters are the thing that keep closing agents up at night and wire instructions sending receiving wire instructions, you know, is just right for fraudsters to intervention. So, how could a fraudster infiltrate this RTP system? Are there some weak links in there that we need to be aware of? Rick Bruhn 26:45 No, I mean, nothing different than what you would have with the existing wire network today. In the sense if you are just pushing payments out to consumers as you are with wire transfers today and you're having to collect the consumer information, right you're not utilizing RFP or any of that you're still going to have you're still gonna have to have ways to securely communicate with the consumer, educate the consumer and receive that information back from the consumer right related to their account number and routing number to be able to push those payments out. For a fraudster to gain access to the RTP network and initiates RFPs to consumer accounts fraudulently would be highly difficult. Ultimately, they would have to get through a bank's KYC (Know Your Customer) process. They would all they have to go through the challenges of setting up the accounts then opening, gaining access to a commercial banking software system, which is vastly different than online banking systems that consumers use, and go through the process of setting up users and verifying their identity so on and so forth, and then initiate RFPs. So the ability to do that is very low. Ultimately, I think there's a higher risk of rogue actors within institutions utilizing RFP to gain access to consumer accounts, but even then the money would have to would come out of the consumer account back into the title company's account and then they would have to move the money out of the title company into another account to get access to the funds. Melissa Jay Murphy 28:21 So there is some risks there but that sounds like a lot more trouble than just monitoring social media and hacking into somebody's Yahoo email phished out. So it'd be harder. Yeah, this has been great information. We're getting close to the end of our allotted 30 minutes. So Bob can you turn on your mic and let us know we have any questions. Bob Rohan 28:48 Quite a few of them came in. I'm trying to digest them right now. But the first one is how does this compare to Venmo? And Zelle? Rick Bruhn 28:49 Yeah, great question. So Venmo, and Zelle, are primarily P2P platforms, or could be called peer-to-peer, right? So we're consumer-to-consumer consumer-to-business. You're seeing some use cases for Zelle that are business-to-business or business-to-consumer but on a smaller scale. Venmo and Zelle also have much lower transaction limits associated with them. And those while it was Zelle you have finality of payment there you technically don't have real settled funds ultimately into your account. At the time that you received this Zelle payment while there's some funds may show there. That's your bank just showing that you know, you have funds that have shown up that those funds haven't technically been settled, most of that's been done overseeing ACH platforms, etc. In addition to that, you know, Zelle is starting to utilize RTP to move money, but that's not necessarily the consumer using RTP to send you funds, that's the bank that they're banking with RTPing and those funds from their institution to your depository institution, and then your institution in essence taking them out of their house account and putting them into your account. Bob Rohan 30:23 One of the questions is they get a lot of clients in Canada. What about foreign transaction issues? Rick Bruhn 30:29 RPT is just a domestic payment rail. There’s been talks of opening it up to some other countries but those are still in their infancy at this point. Melissa Jay Murphy 30:42 Let’s get consumers more involved in it first then we can deal with other countries. Bob Rohan 30:49 Next question, does the bank have to honor real time payments? Rick Bruhn 30:54 I will answer the question in the sense that if you are initiating the payment to a financial, I am assuming that you are meaning… You are sending a payment to a bank do they have to receive, accept, and deposit those funds? They have to be a RTP participating bank to be able to receive those funds. If they are not then that payment would be rejected by your financial institution. It would never actually leave. Bob Rohan 31:20 Is the only ability to initiate this electronically? They are used to calling in their wire instructions. Is that possible with RTP? Rick Bruhn 31:29 It is not possible with RTP. It is all done through digital rails with all participating banks to my knowledge. Bob Rohan 31:44 What are the bad actors impersonating a title company with an RFP? Rick Bruhn 31:52 They would have to gain access to the title companies online commercial banking software. They would have to initiate the RFP which would have dual authority so technically they would need two logins to be able to enable that. So, an initiator and an approver to create a RFP to go out to the consumer. Even if they pulled that off the funds would still come back into the title company account. They could change the account number that that would credit for the account which would request the RFP, ultimately. So, it would come back into your escrow account. Then the bad actors would have to turnaround and initiate an approval payment going out of the escrow account to in essence a third account to be able to move the funds outside the company. Melissa Jay Murph 32:46 Well Rick, we are out of time, and I want to thank you again for taking the time out of your schedule to share all of this information with us. Even though it is not something that is ubiquitous today in a perfect world it will be, and we can invite you back. We can celebrate with me about announcing new banks and new consumers and new rules that are available for RTPs. Here is a link to a summary of the many questions asked, with some answers! https://www.thefund.com/real-time-payments-faqs.pdf​​​​​​​

Melissa Murphy is not only a children's author, Executive Director of the Bryan Museum, but also the founder of the iWRITE Literacy Organization! Melissa is passionate not only about childhood literacy but also about igniting a passion for children to become published authors! This year they are setting a world record!! Tune in to hear how iWRITE is changing lives of children.

Find out about the risks, advantages, and how this may affect YOU in your practice. Melissa Jay Murphy 0:06 Hello everyone and welcome to The Fund's Title Now Pop-up Webinar. I'm Melissa Murphy. And we host these webinars from time to time for the purpose of bringing you a quick update on a topic or maybe even a new topic. But we want to do this in relation to real estate transactions so that you can keep up to date with what's going on out there in the real estate world. We try to keep these simple, no PowerPoints, just a conversation. And then we push the audio out to our podcast, which is also called Title Now so that you can easily access the information again and share it with your friends and colleagues. It's really easy to subscribe, you can get it wherever you get any of your podcasts and it's free, of course, another benefit of Fund membership. Melissa Jay Murphy 1:02 So, what are we talking about today? Well, it has been several years since blockchain, and cryptocurrency first surfaced in the real estate transaction world. It was met with confusion and a fair amount of suspicion, I believe. Cryptocurrency continues to gain traction and we are hearing about it quite often in the news and in the media. You now see celebrities promoting the investment in cryptocurrency in fancy magazine ads, and in primetime television commercials. I guess the message is “Be like Matt Damon and invest in cryptocurrency.” But apart from what we are seeing in the media, we are seeing the use of cryptocurrency and blockchain coming back up again in the world of real estate transactions and real estate records. So, I thought it was time to get an update for Fund Members. We are fortunate that one of our very own underwriting attorneys is very knowledgeable about this topic and serves on the Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Subcommittee of the Commercial Real Estate Committee of the RPPTL section of The Florida Bar. The Business Law Section has a comparable committee on which she also serves. So, my guest today is Colleen Sachs, Senior Underwriting Attorney with The Fund. So, before I invite Colleen into this conversation, I want to make sure that all of you watching and listening today know how to post questions on the chat. One of our other Underwriting Attorneys, Caleb Hinton is monitoring the chat for us and so he'll come in at the end of our remarks and read off any questions that you might have asked but go over to the right-hand side of your screen and in that white box, go down to where it says chat. That's where you can insert your question and then under the drop-down box next to the word to pick Caleb Hinton as the person to whom you are sending your question that way it gets directly to Caleb, and there won't be any confusion. So hopefully that will work. We would love to get some questions. So, Colleen, welcome. Thanks for being with me today. And I want to start with some basics just to make sure we are all reminded of what we are talking about. So, tell us, what is crypto? Colleen Sachs 4:00 Okay, well, crypto is a form of a digital asset. And it's based on blockchain, which is a network that's distributed across a large number of computers. So, cryptocurrency is simply a blockchain token. But keep in mind that crypto is just part of how blockchain can be used and the best-known cryptocurrency is Bitcoin. But there are about 12,000 cryptocurrencies, and that's double the number in the last quarter of 2021. We have about 1000 cryptocurrencies are being added each month. Melissa Jay Murphy 4:35 I was really surprised when you told me that when we were getting ready to do this webinar. I had no idea there were that many cryptocurrencies and I think that adds to the confusion. But there have to be advantages to using cryptocurrency. So, what are people that are in favor of cryptocurrency saying are the reasons to use it? What are the advantages? Colleen Sachs 5:01 Well, it's got a number of advantages. It's a fast money transfer without fees. It is a decentralized system that doesn't involve banks and a lot of people like that. It has the benefit of privacy, and it is much easier on international and on overseas transactions. Melissa Jay Murphy 5:23 Those sound-like great advantages if they are in fact real. But I'll bet there are some disadvantages too. Otherwise, this wouldn't have, or this wouldn't have lagged in its incorporation into real estate transaction. So, what are the disadvantages? Colleen Sachs 5:42 Sure, possibly the greatest perceived disadvantage in the use of cryptocurrency is the fluctuation of volatility. It's extraordinarily volatile. But some other disadvantages historically been the high consumption of energy involved in mining. All of that is changing. There are some more energy efficient means of mining nowadays, but also the use of cryptocurrency in criminal activities, such as purchases made on the dark web have given it a bad name, and they can have real consequences. There were recent fraud and Ponzi style cases that have involved many millions of dollars. One of them involved a $1.7 billion transaction in misappropriated funds, so they can have a very real downside. Melissa Jay Murphy 6:31 Well, it seems to me it doesn't matter what type of currency you're dealing in. There are going to be fraudsters that try to jump people out of their money. But certainly, the lack of understanding of cryptocurrency combined with instances of fraud just makes people even more nervous. So, are governments starting to pay attention to this? Are there any regulations or laws out there that govern the use of cryptocurrency? Colleen Sachs 7:01 Yeah, that's actually considered to be one of the downsides because there's some uncertainty in what the future holds regarding regulation. And we see this coming from regulatory agencies from legislation and from litigation. For example, there was a 2021 case from the United States District Court in the Northern District of Georgia. And it was in affect specific situation, but they found that the transaction for the sale of a house then included a portion of the payment in the form of cryptocurrency was an unlawful sale of unregistered securities. The various Attorneys General in states are monitoring crypto closely. Fannie Mae has new crypto requirements, and then you're going to see rules that are dealing with what they call KYC or “Know Your Customer” and AML which are “Anti-Money Laundering” rules to try to deal with security and FinCEN also comes into play. And then also in the title industry, a title company has to receive payment in fiat or US dollars. So, that can become problematic. Melissa Jay Murphy 8:07 Certainly, a regulatory restriction on the use of cryptocurrency and I know that Florida, the legislature created and appointed a blockchain task force but that was with a pretty narrow focus, and not so much on regulating the use of cryptocurrency here in Florida. So, it'll be interesting to see if our state government gets involved in this in any way, but I do want to circle back with you about your comment about Fannie Mae requirements. Fannie Mae obviously plays a big role in the world of real estate transactions. So, give us some more information about these Fannie Mae guidelines. Colleen Sachs 8:55 Okay, well, in fact, the Fannie Mae guidelines say that virtual currency that has been exchanged into US dollars is acceptable for down payment, closing costs, and financial reserves. If there's been documented evidence that the virtual currency has been exchanged into US dollars and held in a US or state regulated financial institution, and the funds are verified in US dollars prior to the loan closing. A large deposit may be made from virtual currency that was exchanged into US dollars. The lender also has to obtain sufficient documentation to verify that those funds originated from the borrower's virtual currency account. The virtual currency may not be used for the deposit on a sales contract for the purchase of the subject property. Once again, it will always have to be exchanged into fiat. If it's a large deposit, then they're going to have to see that this came from the borrower's virtual currency account. Melissa Jay Murphy 10:04 Those guidelines don't seem terribly inconsistent with current lender guidelines for proof of source of funds. It just makes it very clear that we're not going to verify your crypto currency balance or value. We're going to want you to convert that first but you're going to have to show the chain of custody of your cryptocurrency being converted into US dollars and proving all of that. So those don't seem contradictory or conflicting with sort of the way things have been done in the past. But also, doesn't seem to conflict with our underwriting guidelines. So, it seems like we're going to be fine with Fannie Mae when it comes to cryptocurrency, right. So, let's move to the world of real estate. So why are these topics again something of interest to the title industry? Colleen Sachs 11:03 That's because it's actually affecting the market now. There was a survey that was conducted by the real estate brokerage firm, Redfin. It showed in the fourth quarter of 2021 nearly 12% or one in nine of first time us homebuyers sold cryptocurrency for either part or all of their down payment. Millennials made up a large part of this number because they’re so many first-time homebuyers in that range. Another interesting point is that there's some speculation that some of this is tied to the pandemic. There was an increased interest in crypto by people who had jobs during the pandemic. They had extra money because they weren't traveling, they weren't going out to eat as much and they started dabbling in crypto in their abundant spare time. But you have to keep in mind that fiat and in our case, US dollars are still going to be needed for things such as recording and other closing costs. So, contracts that involve crypto need to address that fact. You're going to have to have US dollars at some point and they're going to need to address who takes on that conversion risk. There are some also some new areas in the industry, new companies that are popping up to serve this industry. Companies that verify that the currency that's being transferred and companies and payment processors who coordinate the transfer of the currency. All of those things are going to make the transaction much safer than a pure wallet to wallet transfer. We don't have this in Florida yet. But Wyoming and Nebraska have both authorized digital banks. Melissa Jay Murphy 12:38 Oh, yeah. Well, that will be an interesting change if that comes to Florida. But all these things that you mentioned, sound to me like the market is being affected by the consumers desire to utilize their cryptocurrency value to buy a house. So, they are required by various regulators to convert that to US dollars in order to operate in our world. But it seems like that is a factor now because when the buyer is asked “Where are you getting your money?” They say, “Well, it's in my cryptocurrency account.” So, everyone involved in real estate transactions needs to understand what the process is to take that cryptocurrency value and turn it into US dollars. So that we can get a contract written, we can comply with the lenders requirements who wants to comply with Fannie Mae requirements, we have to comply with our title insurance regulations. So, I love seeing changes in the industry coming from the consumer because usually it's from the government down and this is something that's coming from the consumer and bubbling up. I like it. So those are general things that are happening, but what's I mean, are there examples of cryptocurrency being used in Florida transactions? Colleen Sachs 14:20 Yeah, there are and while Florida doesn't have all the regulation and things that some of the other states do, Florida is on the leading edge of transactions that are involving blockchain and cryptocurrency. There are different ways to use it. You can use it by selling crypto to get US dollars for closing as we've been talking about. You can transact directly in cryptocurrency, or you can create a non-fungible token that is used to document the transaction. So, for the first one, selling the crypto to get the US dollars, that's basically the same type of real estate transaction we're doing now. With the other two. We've got two really good examples. They've got the sale of a four-bedroom penthouse in the art building in Surfside that set in Miami Beach price per square foot record of $4,440.50 a square foot. The sale price was $22.5 million dollars. That transaction was completed in cryptocurrency which makes it the largest known crypto real estate transaction. In this case the conversion risk was on the buyer. So that was directly transacting it in cryptocurrency. Melissa Jay Murphy 15:28 So, when you say the conversion risk was on the buyer, the buyer took the risk that the Ethereum value could go up, but they were still obligated to pay the seller at the same number of Ethereum. Colleen Sachs 15:50 Correct Melissa Jay Murphy 15:59 How do they refer to the cryptocurrency in a contract? Because you know, when you say $250. How do they refer to it in contracts? Colleen Sachs 16:12 They're actually just referred to by the number of the item just like we do in dollars. So, we would talk about it in however many Ethereum. Another case that we have was dealing with the sale of a residence in Gulfport Florida. In that case, the sale price was 210 Ethereum. At the time that represented about $653,000 in US dollars. That was an interesting one because the home's ownership was by the award of an NFT or a non-fungible token. The home was titled in an LLC, and then the transfer of the LLC interest to the purchaser was represented by an NFT that was documented on the blockchain. So, it was kind of interesting. You won't see a deed. You'll see a deed into the LLC. But then the actual transfer was done by the transfer of the interest in the LLC, and it's documented by the award of an NFT. Melissa Jay Murphy 17:20 Wow, so this adds yet another aspect of these cryptocurrency slash blockchain transactions that Fund Members need to know about. So, talk to us about how NFTs work non-fungible tokens. Collee Sachs 17:36 Sure, an NFT, a non-fungible token, by their name or they are limited in number which creates scarcity. In the hope of the creator of the NFT it also creates value. So, an NFT has a unique identifying code. It’s not interchangeable hence it being non-fungible, it can be authenticated. The authenticity is very secure, because the NFT is on the blockchain. So that transaction is going to be encrypted. The network can then decrypt it for the transaction, it verifies it, it authenticates it, and then it records it in an unmodifiable environment. This has gained a lot of popularity. You see NFTs talked about a lot in the sale of digital art and sports related videos. As seen in the Gulf port transaction, it's now part of the real estate world. Melissa Jay Murphy 18:40 When you say that NFTs are limited in number, explain that, who controls setting that limit? Colleen Sachs 18:50 The creator of the NFT sets the limit. In the case of a sale of a piece of real estate, if you've got one purchaser that's buying the real estate, the number of NFTs are going to be one. You may have some kind of digital art that they may want to say, “Okay, I'd like to be able to sell this to 100 people or 1000 people,” sort of like you would see like a numbered print. The NFTs can be any number, but the fewer would tend to be the more valuable and in the case of real estate, generally it would just be one. Melissa Jay Murphy 19:28 Can the owner of an NFT for example, the sole member of this LLC, that owns this house? Can they create undivided interests in an NFT? Colleen Sachs 19:47 Sure, they can. It's just like you would own any other asset you can create interests in it. Right. Melissa Jay Murphy 20:00 Well, that may be a topic for a whole separate webinar when Members start asking questions about that. All right, so we've talked about cryptocurrency. We've talked about NFTs and how they're playing a role in real estate transactions, but we haven't really talked much about blockchain. So again, back to basics. Tell us again what blockchain is. Colleen Sachs 20:26 Sure. So blockchain, it's an unchangeable, distributed digital ledger. It's going to be a ledger that shows ownership and everything just like any other ledger would. It's not changeable. It's going to be stored in multiple places on a peer-to-peer computer network. So, you've got computers all over the place that are going to be storing this information, and that makes it secure because if it's changed on one computer in the network, that will show that it's been changed on the other computers. So, it makes it a lot more secure because you are automatically alerted that there's been a change on the blockchain. Melissa Jay Murphy 21:10 So that's how you can know that this NFT hat represent your interests in this LLC is not going to be transferred inappropriately or fraudulently because it shows up on all these different computers. And they would say, wait a minute, that's not supposed to be messed with. Colleen Sachs 21:30 Exactly. Melissa Jay Murphy 21:31 How is blockchain now being used in the real estate industry? What are the new things that you're seeing out there on that? Colleen Sachs 21:45 Oh, it's got some really excellent applications in real estate, I think it's going to be much more widely accepted much more quickly than the use of crypto, while crypto has a fair amount of downside because of volatility, and bad actors, blockchain doesn't. It has the advantage of being very secure. We're seeing timeshare developers documenting ownership interests on blockchain that creates NFTs that represent that interest. The same goes for commercial real estate leases. It's already being used in recording real estate records in some states. Not in Florida yet, but in other states. The benefit is there's greater efficiency due to the digitization of the process and it's an accurate record of ownership that updates in real time. Melissa Jay Murphy 22:38 But let me ask you about the use of blockchain and real estate records because in Florida, of course, we have a very broad public records law. And we're very protective of that and of the public's right to access public records. So how would a citizen be able to access real estate records on blockchain? Colleen Sachs 23:10 Well, they will have the same access as they have now. Looking at the computer and actually in some areas, where they're recording documents, deeds and things like that on blockchain, you will see a deed that will be stamped with a QR code. You can then put your phone camera over that QR code, and it will bring up the copy of that deed. So, it is something that can be set up. It can be very private, particularly when you're dealing with NFTs but you can have the blockchain be open, very open to the public as well. It’s tamper proof and disaster resistant since it's this decentralized ledger. If something goes down, if we have a storm and it takes out a courthouse, that has the server in the courthouse, instead of the records just being destroyed and losing them. It would be accessible through one of these other computers on that peer-to-peer decentralized ledger. We've got some areas are actually recording things on blockchain right now. South Burlington, Vermont has partnered with Propy, who was the company that did the Gulfport Florida transaction, to develop a blockchain based deed registration system that's going to store deeds on the Ethereum blockchain. Cook County Illinois has a blockchain pilot program in their office of the recorder of deeds. In what is the most blockchain friendly state, Wyoming. Teton county is putting all of its land transaction records on blockchain. That doesn't mean it's going to make title searches unnecessary, but it is going to make the searches more efficient and more reliable. It gets rid of the ability of someone to alter records in the courthouse so it's just very, very secure. Melissa Jay Murphy 25:05 Interesting. Well, it'd be very interesting to keep an eye on this trend of utilizing blockchain, for the recording of public records. That's something that the industry is going to have to pay a lot of attention to. Lots of great information, certainly new stuff going on new ways that these new types of currency and representations of ownership are being used. What would you say are the five takeaways for a Fund Member from this conversation? Colleen Sachs 25:47 Well, Fund Members need to have some level of awareness of this trend than the industry because things are happening now. They need at least a very basic knowledge of the fundamentals when they're dealing with contracts. If your client is involved in a transaction involving cryptocurrency, you need to understand who was going to take the risk of volatility of the currency and you're going to also have to determine who is going to have to fund the closing cost with US dollars. Keep in mind that our underwriting position has not changed, we are not able to ensure wallet to wallet transactions. So said another way crypto has to be converted into US dollars, simultaneous with or before the closing for the entire transaction. But be aware that if you're dealing with Fannie Mae you may have to prove that source of funds. Then be aware that this concept of an NFT has been used to document ownership and an LLC. And just stay alert for any aspect of this that's coming to Florida because it's not a matter of “if” but a matter of “when.” Melissa Jay Murphy 27:00 Well, I would agree with all of those takeaways. I would also be so bold as to say that as things change and any aspect of this comes to Florida, you will hear it from us here at The Fund as soon as we hear about it, so we will keep you up to date. Caleb, are there any questions out there from the attendees? Caleb Hinton 27:22 Yeah, we actually got quite a few. The first one was with relation to NFTs and using NFTs instead of a deed. What is the trend? Because you were talking about at the end some of the advantages related to the security of using NFT on the blockchain to record and follow the chain of title. Do we see it going towards using NFTs in lieu of deeds in the traditional sense, or is it just kind of this niche thing right now that people are kind of playing with? Colleen Sachs 27:55 There isn't really a trend because there are different ways of doing it. If there is a trend, it is mostly in people converting their crypto into fiat before a transaction, so having a very traditional transaction because they want to be able to get title insurance. They're purchasing property from someone they don't know. They want to have title insurance. If you are just transferring the ownership interest in the LLC, you don't have all of the same things you would have with a traditional closing. We are seeing that it was used more or less to make it possible to have this auction and the payment actually happened in crypto, the house in Gulfport. I also see that as being kind of a something that was a good marketing for property, the company that handled it, so it definitely got it into the media and got people talking about it. I don't see that as a trend at this point. I think we're going to see more conventional closings, but with money coming from crypto that's been converted. Caleb Hinton 29:06 And then broadly just back to the Gulfport deal. One of the questions was, they didn't trade an NFT for the house. The NFT was how they were. In other words, how they documented the deal, right? Colleen Sachs 29:20 That's exactly right. That's how they documented it. They had an auction so the money actually did come from a cryptocurrency wallet. They had the auction, and the payment was for the interest in an LLC that held title to the house. Then the transfer of that interest in the LLC was documented on blockchain for security purposes, instead of having a deed recorded, transferring the interest in property. So, the deed that is recorded on that house is actually still the deed into the LLC. The LLC interest just transferred and instead of having it not be something that people could see in public, they transferred it on blockchain to keep it secure and safe from anybody coming in and making a change do it that shouldn't. Caleb Hinton 34:45 The next question, I guess that logically follows from there. Okay, now you've done this deal on blockchain and you have this NFT that is the ledger, if you will, for that deal being done. How do you do the next deal, but based on what you just said, basically, you can still do a good old-fashioned deed out of the LLC into a new buyer it’s just the NFT that kept the ledger. Colleen Sachs 30:39 Yeah, you absolutely can. You can and for purposes of that, if it's a transfer from that LLC into a third party, then you're going to have a deed out, you're still going to have an LLC that is that the interest in the LLC is represented on blockchain, but it no longer holds title to that property. If it has anything else in it, then it may have some value, but the property just comes out. The other way that they could handle it is they could actually transfer the interest in the LLC and record that transferred to the blockchain as well. So that would show that chain of interest in the LLC. Caleb Hinton 31:21 Okay. And then, and I've seen some of this in the news. So, I'm actually curious on your answer on this as well, who is the regulatory body on crypto? Colleen Sachs 31:30 Well, it depends. I mean, right now, there is not a lot of regulation. We're getting more and more than the State's Attorney Generals are coming into play some. We're seeing some states that have a separate for example, Wyoming is extremely blockchain friendly, and we're seeing that regulation through statute in that state, and they have set up regulatory agencies within the state to deal with it. In Florida right now, we're still looking basically at the Attorneys General. And then we see regulation, of course through entities like Fannie Mae, that they have said, if you want to deal with us and you want to use blockchain, these are our criteria. It's very decentralized at this point. Caleb Hinton 32:15 Right, all over the place. And then with relation to Fannie one of the questions was, are they actually asking that you prove up your ownership of the tokens before you are to do a deal? In other words, wallet to wallet as you put it? Colleen Sachs 32:32 Well, they don't allow a wallet-to-wallet transfer. Fannie Mae will not allow that they will allow virtual currency if you have converted it to US dollars. If you have a large deposit and this is sort of like if you know it's a source of funds matter for them when if they want to know if you've gotten a gift or if you've gotten money from somebody else, same type of thing. If you're going to have a large deposit, they're going to want you to verify that those funds originated in your own virtual currency account. So, you've got to show that those funds came from you. Just like you might have to show that money came from a bank account when you're doing a closing. Caleb Hinton 33:08 One last question. Ethereum, are there any other digital, any other blockchains that are being used as a ledger, or is it just Ethereum that seems to be taking point with real property transaction? Colleen Sachs 33:27 Ethereum is definitely the leading edge in real estate transactions. You’re seeing Ethereum used as the ledger, and then you're seeing the Ethereum tokens used to determine the price like the transaction in Florida was 210 Ethereum. So, you're seeing that for the price. That's really the primary one. You do not see transactions happening really in Bitcoin, very often. They can but they're not really happening in Bitcoin. Melissa Jay Murphy 34:07 Thanks, Caleb, and thanks for all of those really great questions. And thank you for attending today. I think we've wrapped up our conversation. I hope it's been interesting. I hope it's been valuable. And again, look for us to push this out on our podcast, Title Now, so that if you want to listen to this again, or share it with your colleagues as the easiest way for them to get it, and send me your suggestions for future pop-up webinar topics, I would love to hear from you. And of course, as always, thank you for your support of The Fund. Real estate transactions involving cryptocurrency may expose the parties to the transaction, the title agency and the underwriter to several unique risks. These transactions may not be insured without a thorough underwriting evaluation and written authorization. Significant considerations include liability related to dealing with unknown parties in real estate investment, unknown sources and payees of funds and valuation concerns. Fund Members who encounter requests to insure a transaction involving cryptocurrency must contact their underwriting counsel for evaluation and authorization. Due to these unique risks, Fund Members are cautioned to refrain from advertising the ability to close transactions involving cryptocurrency. Additionally, closing protection letters will not be issued for these transactions.

Buying in Baja E9 Have you ever dreamed of owning an exotic Mexican Villa? Or even just a small beach shack? It’s possible!! Melissa Murphy of Harcourts Baja grabs her mug and joins Carla to chat Cabo San Lucas life and how she helps Americans achieve home ownership in a foreign country. Melissa and her […] The post Buying in Baja E9 appeared first on Business RadioX ®.

Buying in Baja E9 Have you ever dreamed of owning an exotic Mexican Villa? Or even just a small beach shack? It’s possible!! Melissa Murphy of Harcourts Baja grabs her mug and joins Carla to chat Cabo San Lucas life and how she helps Americans achieve home ownership in a foreign country. Melissa and her […] The post Buying in Baja E9 appeared first on Business RadioX ®.

These Agreements obligate an owner to pay a real estate commission, contain covenants running with the land, and potentially create a lien against the property that could be adverse to a buyer. Don’t be caught off guard if one of these appears in your title search. Melissa Jay Murphy 0:05 Welcome to The Fund's Title Now Pop-up webinar. I'm Melissa Murphy with The Fund and we do these webinars from time to time, on relevant or developing topics. They're free. So we don't offer CLE because we want them to be as spontaneous and conversational as much as possible rather than instructional. That's why we discourage PowerPoints because we really want there to be a conversation between the speakers and we also have a an ulterior motive, which is to push the audio out to our podcast, which is also called Title Now. You can get the podcast wherever you subscribe to other podcasts. So sign up now. We are going to take questions at the end of our prepared remarks. So if you have a question about any of the information that we talked about, just put something in the chat, and we have John Benson, who is very overqualified to monitor the chat, but he offered to do it, so I took him up on it. And then at the end of our prepared remarks, we'll see what questions you might have. Joining me today is Brian Stringer. Brian is one of our Fund underwriting counsels. We are here to talk about memorandums of agreement that are popping up in the public records around the state, in fact, around the country. And these agreements create what many people feel are surprising obligations on the part of an owner of property who might become a seller of that property in the future. And some of these obligations may bleed over to the buyer also. So Brian, tell us what these agreements are all about. Brian Stringer 2:06 Well, these agreements basically what they provide us is in exchange for an up front payment of money, which can be anywhere from a few $100 to several $1,000. The owner obligates themselves to list their home with a specific broker if they decide to sell because on provide that the owner role of commission typically 6% upon the sale. Melissa Jay Murphy 2:23 Well, how long did these obligations typically run? Brian Stringer 2:28 Well, that's the thing that makes things a bit unique. The typical listing agreement may last for a few months or up to a year, but we've seen these agreements with terms for as long as 40 years Melissa Jay Murphy 2:37 40 years. Does it apply only if the owner wants to list a property with a broker? What I'm getting at is the owner allowed to sell their home on their own a FSBO? Brian Stringer 2:53 Well, that's a great question and unlike a typical agreement the owner can't sell their home on their own. These agreements, again, it's gonna depend on the individual agreements, because there's a few that are out there, but the commission is likely due even if they sell without the use of any broker at all. Even if the commission is not due, for some reason, many of the agreements that we've seen have a fee that's triggered by any transfer of the property, even a gift or a conveyance with no consideration. Melissa Jay Murphy 3:17 Well, I would, I would hope that it only covers a voluntary sale or conveyance, but do the typical agreements that you've seen cover any type of transfer of ownership? I mean, what if the owner dies? Brian Stringer 3:34 Well, yes or no. That's an interesting wrinkle with these agreements as well. If the owner dies and title transfers to an heir beneficiary there's no fee due, but only if the heir beneficiary agrees to assume the obligations under the current agreement. Melissa Jay Murphy 3:49 So these agreements that you've seen would cover a transfer resulting from death if the heirs don't agree to assume the obligations that would obligate them upon the future sale of a property. Brian Stringer 4:03 That's correct. Melissa Jay Murphy 4:05 What about other types of involuntary conveyances like a foreclosure or something of that nature? Are those transfers also covered? Brian Stringer 4:17 So they are and so some of those are specifically outlined in the agreements that say a transfer and foreclosure voluntary/involuntary transfer are often listed as what they call the triggering events which requires a payment, not typically the full 6%, but some other amount is calculated based upon the value of the property. Melissa Jay Murphy 4:35 So it sounds as if the exact terms of these agreements are dependent upon the wording of the agreement, which of course is true of any contract. And these vary depending upon who the broker is and what iteration of their contract they happen to be using at that time. But what are other types of provisions that you are commonly seeing in these agreements? Is there any way for the owner to opt out of this obligation? Brian Stringer 5:11 There is. Once they've agreed to list with the broker, they're sending these agreements most of the agreements have come from an early termination or cancellation provision, and they usually provide that the owner can opt out by paying an early termination fee, which is typically equal to a certain percent of the fair market value of the property as determined by the broker or the other party to the agreement. So that's the difference is that the broker is the one that's going to calculate the early termination fee at the time the other seats determine. Melissa Jay Murphy 5:38 Is there any provision for the owner to challenge or arbitrate or negotiate that value that the broker determines? Have you seen anything like that in these agreements? Brian Stringer 5:51 I have in respect to arbitration. I have seen that there is a requirement to arbitrate disputes or new agreements but specifically with respect to the calculation, that early termination fee and fair market value, which you would typically see in a contract where an each party would say, "I think this is a fair market value," and other people would say "I don't think that's the fair market value" and a third arbitrator would come in and say "This is a fair market value." The ones that I've seen just provide that the broker is going to determine the fair market value. Melissa Jay Murphy 6:17 Well, I can see where that would be a possible point of contention. But let's move away from the provisions of the agreement and talk about what you've seen happen out in the real world. What have you seen happen if the home is sold, and the broker that was a party to these agreements is not "Hey, what's happening?" Brian Stringer 6:44 We've seen that and the odd thing about these is they don't make a demand for payment from the party. We enter into the brokerage agreement. They're making demands for payment from the buyer, subsequent owner, not the seller of the product. Melissa Jay Murphy 6:57 On the buyer? how can they leverage the buyer to pay this fee when they weren't even a party to the agreement to start with? Brian Stringer 7:08 As we've seen from these agreements, the brokers have hired very competent and clever attorneys and the obligations that they create in these agreements, they purport to be covenant with the land. So that's how they get the buyer or any other successor an interest obligated is that these obligations attached to the property and they're not independent contractors. Melissa Jay Murphy 7:27 So the obligation to list with this particular broker is an ongoing obligation for every future owner of the property? Brian Stringer 7:41 It appears the plain reading of these agreements is that they are going to be obligating every future owner of the home for up to four decades versus they could expire on their terms for the passage of time, but in the intervening term, they obligate everyone who owns that property. Melissa Jay Murphy 7:55 Well, I have read some of these agreements and the ones that I have read, contain language to the effect that the broker has a lien against the property, if title transfers and they aren't paid their commission, so it's a springing lane, or lane that will come into existence. And so is that part of the demand that's made on the buyer? You know, something to the effect that foreclosure of that lane will begin if they don't pay this fee? Brian Stringer 8:32 That's exactly what we've seen. So we've seen demands for payment on a subsequent owner, and they're not used to demand for payment. They've been accompanied oftentimes by a draft foreclosure complaint. This way the owner knows that they don't fulfill the demand that the broker is ready, willing and able to go to court or close their lien interest. Melissa Jay Murphy 8:50 Well, this seems to be the real heart of the problem from The Fund's perspective. I mean, certainly we want to make Members aware of these agreements, they are out there in the practice. But what we are focused on and most concerned about is delivering clear title to our proposed insured. So how are we dealing with a potential assertion of this lien when one of these agreements show up in a title chain? And, and by the way, what exactly shows up in the public records? Brian Stringer 9:31 Good point, what we're seeing in the public record typically, we're not seeing, at least I have not seen that full agreement. What we're seeing is either a memorandum of agreement or a memorandum of interest, which is signed witnessed notarized in part by the owner. So it can be recorded. And it's very similar, to what you see with a memorandum of lease. It's just putting the public on notice that this agreement exists and here are the basic terms. You can contact this party in order to proceed. Melissa Jay Murphy 9:58 So are we addressing these things in our commitments? Brian Stringer 10:05 We are and just started with creating a new Schedule B-1 requirement. It's going to be included in the commitments on the properties where we find these memorandum of agreement because the we've drafted requires that the period be terminated in any lien released. This is a new clause that Members likely have not seen yet. From what we have gathered, we're going to begin seeing these quite frequntly. So the Members should pay really close attention to the commitments when they come in and see where this requirement is called. Melissa Jay Murphy 10:33 And you you mentioned the word "They will start seeing these frequently." I have heard anecdotally, I can't say I've done any kind of independent verification, but I have heard anecdotally that there are 1000s of these memorandum of agreement are recorded in the public records just in Florida, just in Florida. So it does seem as though this will be something that Members will see. So it's going to be a Schedule B-1 requirement. That they get a termination and release. So how do they go about getting that? Brian Stringer 11:12 Well, as you can imagine, there's contact information for the broker in these memorandums of agreement. They they've made it quite straightforward to obtain and release the agreement. What they're going to do the the owner, the seller is going to have to contact the broker and confirm either confirm the amount for the release or negotiated release the payment in exchange for the release and termination. And because these things are so new, and we've not seen many of them satisfactions and releases we're going to underwriting review any proposed release termination. So if a Member does see this on the Schedule B-1, the owner wants to get through release termination, Members should send it to underwriting. So we can review the terms and make sure that it adequately releases the property not just the lien for the commission, but the covenant running with the land. Melissa Jay Murphy 11:56 Yeah, I was gonna make that point. Our position is we not only want to terminate or release the lien, but we want to terminate the agreement so it's no longer a covenant running with the land. Brian Stringer 12:12 Absolutely, because it's not clear from from my analysis, whether once you listed with the broker and paid a commission that you've satisfied the agreement from the plain terms of the agreement is going to continue for every subsequent sale. Melissa Jay Murphy 12:23 Got it. So I may have missed this in your comments, but is there a contact information in the agreement so that the Member knows where to go to talk about getting this termination and release? Brian Stringer 12:41 So that's a great question. In the memorandums of interest there we've seen do have a contact information for the broker, because they've actually made it quite easy to contact them and get the release and they tell you how they're going to give it to you. So these problems are not insurmountable title problems that we're going to see that are going to be completely derail a transaction. They are solvable. There's contact information in the Memorandum of Agreement and there's a mechanism for determining. Melissa Jay Murphy 13:07 So, Brian, if you're going to sum this situation up for a Fund Member, what points would you make? Brian Stringer 13:17 Well, I would reiterate one of our primary points that we always tell our Members and that's first of all, review your commitments very carefully to see what are your requirements, what are the exceptions, see if one of these things does in fact affect your property and if you have a commitment that was delivered prior to this webinar, or prior to The Fund, to the your general counsel blog. Look at your B-2s because sometimes these exceptions were showing up on the B-2s and some Members were looking at it very similar to the declaration of condominium or CCR is to just keep it on B-2 moving forward because the property is subject to so if you do have a commitment that was delivered some weeks ago, I advise that they look at the B-2 exception very carefully. Melissa Jay Murphy 13:56 Very good point because we are undertaking to train our examiner's on what these agreements are and the requirement that they be treated such that there's a B-1 requirement, but just to be sure Members ought to also check the B-2 exceptions agreed. And if there's nothing there at all, do you have any advice for a Member? Brian Stringer 14:23 I suggest that even there's nothing there, you know, ask your seller if you sign any sort of a listing agreement, do you have any outstanding agreements with respect to listing or selling your property? And if there is an agreement of record, talk this seller about what needs to be done just as an explained to them there is a mechanism to release them. There is a way to terminate the covenant running with the land and does this needs to be counseled with the seller and they can satisfy the requirement. If you do if the seller is going to satisfy be sure to get a proper release and termination, and we would advise the Member to obtain the release and termination record of themselves. Melissa Jay Murphy 14:57 I would agree with that. Particularly if it's a B-1 requirement. And it's interesting that you make the comment that you should talk to the seller and explain to them what needs to be done. I agree with that 100%. Because if in fact the Member has been sent a transaction and there's no listing agreement or a broker involved, or a listing agent involved in the transaction, but you then see one of these agreements shown on your commitment, and it may very well be that the seller does not understand clearly or has ignored their obligation under this agreement to list with that particular broker. So it would be important for you to reach out to to the seller and ask them questions and explain to them that this agreement is there and we need to arrange for a release. Very good point. John Benson. Are there any questions in the chat so far? John Benson 16:05 I just got unmuted by the master. No Melissa, there are no questions being asked at this point. Melissa Jay Murphy 16:13 Perfect. Then we will wrap this up here by first thanking Brian for his time and energy and putting together all this information but I also want to offer some comments. These agreements are new, and to some people really a bit shocking. And I want to be clear that we are not expressing any opinion on their legality or their fairness or the business practices of any of the companies involved in this. The sole purpose of the webinar today is to make Fund Members aware that these agreements exist. Explain to them how they affect title and and how you can address the issue in connection with your particular closing. So Brian, and I hope that this has been useful information to you. Melissa Jay Murphy 17:17 And this is a perfect example of what we're trying to do with these pop up webinars. Just sort of in and out quick information, new issues out there for you to deal with. So thank you so much for attending. And don't forget, we're gonna push this audio out to our podcast which is also called Title Now and keep an eye out for future podcasts that we are putting together because we're trying to sort of reinvigorate these things and offer them a bit more regularly. And as always, thank you for your support of The Fund. Thank you

Learn the latest on sophisticated schemes targeting businesses like yours and what you can do to protect yourself. Melissa Jay Murphy 00:06 Hello, everyone, welcome to the Title Now Pop-up webinar. I'm Melissa Murphy with The Fund and I am relaunching these webinars after taking a fairly significant break. So, thank you for tuning in. Because it's been several months since I hosted a webinar, I thought that I would make sure that all of you know we also have a podcast I feel very modern and with it. The podcast is also called Title Now and I generally push the audio from these webinars to the podcast and will be doing that with today's presentation. The podcast is available through all of the typical channels so sign up and take advantage of all the great content that we have in the podcast. So, what are we talking about today? We're talking about cyber fraud and why cyber fraud because it is the number one threat to our industry. It's the number one threat to your business. Despite that reality I fear that so many people in the closing business have heard about cyber fraud over and over and over again and I know I nag about cyber fraud over and over again. You've become sort of resigned to it. You've made minimal gestures toward protecting yourself perhaps setting up some procedures you've made minimal efforts to really keep up to date with what's going on out there in the world of cyber fraud. You're basically rolling the dice on whether you will be the next victim and honestly in today's market, unless you have $400,000 or $500,000 set aside in your rainy-day fund, you are really taking a chance. So, I feel like because this threat to our industry has evolved over the past year. Things have changed and in who's behind this and how they're, what their business plan is, what their workflow model is. And those changes are not good for us. The criminals have figured out that preying on our industry is pretty darn lucrative and apparently not that hard. So, I thought it was a great time to revisit this topic give you an opportunity to learn more about who is behind this crime, how they view our industry and how they have identified our weak points and how they can get in. We have two gentlemen with us today that are on the frontlines of this war and yes, it's a war. They're going to share their knowledge, expertise, and advice on what the industry and you need to understand and what you need to do to address this threat. So first, I have with me, Tom Cronkright. Tom's an attorney in Michigan, but much more importantly than that Tom is in a closing business. He has a title agency Sun Title, it's a high-volume agency, and he also has a company CertifID, that's in the business of safeguarding money in real estate deals and through this process through this life experience, Tom has become one of the real estate industry's leading experts on cyber fraud and he is committed to solving the largest problem in real estate. And he's so good at this, that the Secret Service has partnered with him. We have Steven Dougherty here from the Secret Service. And as you can see from his impressive background, he's with the Global Investigations Operation Center for the Secret Service. Tom and Steven, let's get started. What's happening in the world of cyber fraud, business email fraud? What do we need to know? Tom Cronkright 4:28 Steven, I'll let you take this but Melissa, thanks for taking the time and just spreading more and more awareness on this topic. You do such a nice job, appreciate the tee up. But Steven, why don't we read you in we've had a very very active year and a half together and as far as combating BEC, or business email compromise and wire fraud. But as Melissa mentioned, a little bit more background but I'm a wire fraud victim as well. So as an attorney, title agent, I've been through this process. Unfortunately, in 2015, it cost me nearly $200,000 and ended up in a high-profile federal trial down in Tampa. So, when Melissa mentioned that I've become a subject matter expert, I just paid a lot of tuition in this realm that these are courses I did not want to take. As a title agent or lawyer, I don't remember a cyber fraud and money laundering class in law school. I remember tax and corporations secure transactions, but that's it. Steven, you could be read the group into what we're seeing at a high level and how that starts to work its way down into the real estate. Steven Dougherty 05:40 Yes, where I sit in a very unique position here. I'm at Secret Service headquarters in Washington DC. I'm in a desk here called our business email compromised mission desk, in which my unit gets in pretty much real time aggregative incidences cyber enabled financial fraud affecting every industry. These guys are threat actors are targeting every industry out there where financial transactions are taking place. You know, every industry has it, but where's it most visible? It's most visible in the real estate sector. So, they've really turned their sights on the real estate sector for the past several years and they continue to focus on it because there's so many different transactions involved in real estate transactions. You have your closing, you have your mortgage payoff, you have your earnest money deposit. All of these things are being targeted by our threat actors, and it is driven by one thing. The intersection of what I call contemporaneous and privileged information between your buyer and seller, your real estate and closing attorney they will be the only the ones you would think would have the information like the Closing Disclosure, mortgage payoff documents, anything involving the transaction, but that gets intercepted by our bad actors. And then they weaponize that against you. To get you to redirect transfers of funds, send a payment somewhere you shouldn't stuff like that. Tom Cronkright 7:03 Steven when you say that they're visible. What do you mean that real estate transactions are uniquely visible? Steven Dougherty 07:10 Just the information is out there, due to the real estate sector types of reporting information. Tom, you know, you and I have talked about this a lot about how much of open-source information is available for us to go get or for our threat actors to go find. They can use that, piece it together and then uses that to do a very, very targeted attack. That's so specific that fools even the most complex or educated individuals to spend their money. Tom Cronkright 7:38 Yeah, what we've seen I want to layer on it mostly, if you don't mind. I went two minutes on this because I think the framework of where we are right now creates unique vulnerabilities than when I was hit in 2015 as an agent. So, if we think about the multiple listing service, all of our real estate partners that feed us deals that we're codependent on have an obligation to post up activity on the MLS. That MLS has contracts with Zillow and Trulia and a realtor typically for money to syndicate or buy that data in real time. So, what's interesting is real estate, being now the largest asset of people's lives, and there's not a close second given appreciation. I don't know if you guys saw the NICU from ALTA this morning, but home prices went up another 15% last year. That not only is that the largest asset of people's lives, it's the most visible transaction that we have in the United States. Car purchasing and other high value assets those are happening between, you know, kind of behind the curtain but not real estate. Because of the open market process that a listing agent has to conduct to get highest best use or highest best value for a property and then the fraudster just mine these deal boards. Say “Oh, looks like Norma is listing her house” and “Steve is listing his house” and listing you know, my whatever it happens to be. And then through phishing strategies, these real estate agents have the security of a dumpster essentially, on a super warm day. And they're just exposing us and I'm just going to say it because look, not every time but let's just say in most cases, and then we don't know that all the information that Steven is saying contemporaneous and privileged is being scraped and analyzed overseas, to then trick a homebuyer. And again, let's talk about homeownership right now. There is no inventory. We fell below 1 million listings last month there are more licensed real estate agents in the country than there are homes for sale for the first time that they've been tracking inventory levels. Run the math. By about a few 100,000, we have 3,800 licensed real estate agents in Greater Grand Rapids. This morning we had 900 listings. So, what does it take to buy a parked property? I've got an employee right now at CertifID. She missed out on three offers. She's been through 12 homes she was high fiving me last night almost crying in a text. “Oh my gosh, we got one right.” They’re going to do anything they can to close that. When they get to the end three weeks from now and are asked to transfer money, if they're not set up for success, that buyer anxiety and that buyer fatigue, at a time when we need them more protected, I would argue creates more vulnerability because look I'm not going through that process again. So, I'm going to do whatever you need. If you're saying I don't need to bring a check anymore and I’ve got a wire funds. Tell me where to send that wire. Steven, I think you'll agree we saw that over and over and over and continue to every week that we're involved in recovery efforts. Steven Dougherty 10:56 Yes. Talking to you touch on some really good points. So, let's talk about how these compromises are actually occurring. How are they actually getting in and getting this information out? What they do is through multiple different means either through already having your password for your email account that's already on the dark web through a data breach compromise. You guys actually go to a website Have I been pwned? https://haveibeenpwned.com They've been your email address and see if that email address was involved in any of the large-scale data breach compromises. They'll take that information, find your old password, try to use that to log into your account. That's one way to do it. Another way they'll attack is through a targeted phishing email, where they'll send you an email with a document to click on for some reason. You click on it because you think you're supposed it brings you to a web page. You type in your email address and password and boom are bad actors now your email address and password. And once they have that information, they go in and they log into your email account. They only log in one time. Generally, what they do is they'll go to your settings, and they'll set up an email rule to auto forward out any email you receive. So, you get an email from your client or homebuyer saying, “Hey, I've been told to close yeah, these are the details I have. What do you have?” Now our threat actor has all that information. That's how they get it. They only log in once, they setup the email rule, and the emails are built around that. Melissa Jay Murphy 12:29 Steven, I'd had a question on the chat for you. Oh, Tom already responded to the question. He is spot on. So, we have put in the chat the website that you go to see whether or not your email has been compromised and is out there on the dark web. https://haveibeenpwned.com So that's all. Steven Dougherty 12:50 Yeah, essentially, essentially, it's a website that conglomerates a bunch of different data breaches, and you know, going back for years, so your email address was involved in one of these. It will ping that and show you. That's why it's important to really keep your passwords updated, use new passwords, and don't repeat passwords. These threat actors, they just see that information, and they just start trying it in different places and they get lucky. Tom Cronkright 13:20 Steven let's stay on email accounts because they just seem to be the genesis of all things bad when they're compromised. Not only complex password, but can you speak a little bit about the importance of email settings and analyzing email settings. I think if this industry is ever going to set up Lunch and Learns this year is training our referral partners to identify whether their email accounts have been breached. This is one way but within the email account have rules been set up where their email account is being monitored in real time. They just don't know it and how you prevent it. Steven Dougherty 13:58 So essentially, like I said, these guys log into your email account just once, they go into your settings and they set up a setting or filter to auto forward out of all your emails that way and it’s not only that, they're deleting everything that gets auto forwarded out. They can tailor it to be very specific that you'd have it say you know, any email that uses the word “wire” or “account” or “payment”. I want you to filter that out to another email account and then delete it. So, it is very targeted with that. What we recommend and what you really should be doing along with changing your passwords very regularly, as you change your password every time go in and check those settings and make sure no unauthorized settings have been set up. You can also actually automate that through different your IT groups if you have them. Your IT groups can even, especially if you're using suite like Office 365, can be set up a way to monitor all email rules that are set up on your system to prevent unauthorized roles being set up. So that's one thing is very important. You guys got to check on that just as much as you can get your password. If you do review your rules, you will be able to see the rules set up. Most of the time, these are set out as user generated rules that you can see in those settings. Pretty easy to do. Particularly in Outlook go up to the gear on the right, click that drop it down, go to Settings, go to rules and alerts if anything's been set up there. Tom Cronkright 15:56 Yeah, I mean specifically any forwarding rules, any autodelete rules, any rules that scan for keywords in emails, all of those you can see either in Outlook 365 version or a desktop or native environment. Also in Google, Yahoo. All the different platforms have essentially these rule settings. The challenge is if the rule is set up, you could change your password every single day. The fraudster is still moving that communication into other accounts. So, you just got to make sure you kick him out of that. Then you reset the password and then you enable two factor or what's called multifactor authentication. Multifactor authentication is an additional security setting. So, you have your username, you have your password. We use a complex password manager here at our all of our organizations. That is LastPass. (https://www.lastpass.com) In a complex password manager you create this super secure master password and then for every site that you link for your email accounts, they create some ridiculous password that like you'd never know it. When you enable multifactor, multifactor is one more layer of security that provides a unique code each and every time that you send in a request to access the account. This adds a little bit more friction. But again, we're balancing friction with user security and data security. As attorneys the bar for us is always higher. There's no difference in court when we're standing up and someone's on the other side saying “Let me get this straight. You didn't check a box of multifactor that could have prevented this whole thing because this seems to be the proximate cause of where we're landing here.” Either your IOLTA account or escrow account was drained. Or I've got a consumer facing the loss of life savings. So that's just the brutal truth of it guys. Then using secure email, judges really don't understand secure email, but secure email is essentially a rail that provides security layer between one server and another server. So, you're sending the email on more secure basis. What we're talking about is making sure that that destination point isn't compromised. Because if the destination point is compromised, secured email doesn't do any good at all. Okay, the secure email secures it in transit, not what they call “at rest.” So, you got to do both. Melissa Jay Murphy 18:03 So, it seems to me that these additional safeguards and procedures are all a result of the increasing sophistication and increasing numbers of attempts. So, you know, I just don't think this is somebody in a gray hoodie in a Starbucks anymore. So, who is it that's behind this now because hasn't that change? Steven Dougherty 19:13 She's stole my line or she stole our favorite line. The line is that these are not your lone wolf hackers sitting in their grandma's basement drinking Mountain Dew and eating Cheetos, their favorite lives. That's what people think when they think you know, computer hackers, cyber fraud. But no, it's definitely not these guys operate what I refer to as the enterprise business model. It's a top-down business with a C suite and all set up with people below them to work these very complex organizations. They are transnational organized crime organizations. With the C suite you have your CEOs, then they call themselves that Mr. CEO, Mr. Chairman, and they're the ones that are kind of dictate how they want to do their attacks. Then they realize okay, I need somebody to pull off my phishing attack. So, they'll go hire somebody to do that. Then they're gonna be like, “Alright, cool, the phishing attacks good. I have the good information. I know when this transaction is going to be done, and I'm going to redirect it.” So now it's redirecting to another bank account. So now they need the launder that money. They need to get that money to themselves to do that they go and set up a sort of financial director wing. That is this expansive network of global money mules that just constantly are transmitting money back and forth. This problem has gotten really bad. We're seeing a lot of money mules actually be picked from some romance scams prior. So, they are unwitting money mules. They don't know what they're doing. They're just told by someone they met online, that they're going to receive money and help them for construction project or something like that. Then afford those funds on. It is a sprawling network of money mules here. It gets even more granular you have sort of an admin team that helps maintain spoof domains that they need to carry out their attacks or monitor, maintain email addresses or pull off other types of fraud such as unemployment, insurance fraud, even ransomware is tied into this now to kind of bolster up the organization. So, you really have a robust organization you're dealing with here, and they're very complex. They're very efficient, and as they make more money from these frauds, they only get better. Now they can afford more money mules. They get afford better malware. So, it's just momentum that they've developed and it's a momentous problem. Melissa Jay Murphy 20:51 I know that they're targeting title agents because title agents are receiving and sending money, but the source of most wire diversions and claims that I am seeing amongst Fund Members involve that mortgage payoff and they're intercepting the mortgage payoff when it's being sent to the title agent? Are they sort of hoping that there's an easier way that they can get to that mortgage information and scale it up? Do you think that that's on the horizon? Steven Dougherty 21:37 Yes. Or it may have already happened, in some instances where they're getting in and they're getting pure information fed to them before it reaches its destination. Tom and I are seeing something very similar. We can't speak about specifics, but Tom if you want to touch on it. Tom Cronkright 21:55 You're exactly right. Melissa, I ran a statistic. The average open mortgage balance at the beginning of this month was just over $299,000 across the country. Okay, we haven't seen those levels ever. Again, that's because of the accelerated increase in home prices. So, a few years ago, mortgage payoff fraud really was I'm sitting in the real estate agent’s account. I'm seeing the closing attorney send over the mortgage payoff between the client they're sitting somewhere and they're obtaining the original copy of the mortgage payoff. They're taking that PDF, they're using software to doctor that up and then spoofing typically, the loan servicer or the lender saying, “Hey, we had to make a correction. Here's an updated payoff.” So, they're we're using it as kind of an updated payoff scam. But what they're realizing now is to say, “Wait a second, what if we could distribute your original payoff into the email system of the party requesting it, and it's fraudulent from the beginning, like the first one has been tampered with?” So, we saw this early on in the Nashville area mid-summer. And then we just saw in the state of Texas, where the fraudsters again appear to have compromised the electronic fax account of the title company or title companies using the fax to receive mortgage paths. Look, I'm in the industry, 98% of these come over by “fax”, but it's not the fax of days passed because that was a machine that telephonically printed out something on a piece of paper. We said we can't do that anymore. We need the fax to be converted to a PDF and an email and then have that sent into our general stream of communication. So, they figured out I call it the note of distribution. They figured out that to your point well that's that's a great phrasing. We can compromise these at scale. If we could get access to the eFax, GFI FaxMaker. It doesn't matter guys, but if they get in there, they can reroute traffic from the originating servicer where the payoffs being sent from, doctor that up, and push it right through the same rail down in the email. Fascinating scam, and we've seen them do it unfortunately at scale as recently as a couple of weeks ago. Melissa Jay Murphy 24:44 What I hear you saying is that in those situations, it doesn't matter if the criminal has put email forwarding rules in my account, or not, because they're in there before it even gets to me. So, they're not even diverting any information from my account. They, you know, they've moved on to a much more sophisticated scheme. Tom Cronkright 25:16 That's 100%, right. If you look at what 80% by definition of our disbursement obligations, sit at the mortgage payoff. We can't adequately insure it. The most insurance you're going to get is 250,000 per and that's assuming you did 15 things and a COVID test and a blood test to show them that you did everything to mitigate the insurance company's risk, which if you did that, you wouldn't have the fraud. And I think the other thing that we're seeing is, you just simply can't trust mortgage payoffs that are coming from in either direction from the fax right now, from a closing attorney that you relied upon to gather that because you're the dispersing agent, not the rep representing the seller. And if you don't mind, I'll touch on this. It comes down to essentially three things. One you have codified somewhere a trusted list of mortgage payoff information. Treasury templates are the best way to do it. That's stored on your bank server wall. So, you start to set up the wire. You type in Bank of America and all of a sudden, a bunch of known trusted accounts pop up, you compare it to what you have, you release the wire. Some people do that on spreadsheets. I've seen people that have had folders of PDFs that check, check and date. However, you do it, history can be a very, very good guide on what is true versus things that are not true. When it comes to mortgage payoffs. Calling to verify any new account information is even harder than it was before. It’s hard enough to get them to initiate the payoff. It's even harder right now to confirm just general bank account information for a wire but you have to do it or you just send a check, add some per diem, send a check but that's why it's important to get the mortgage payoff early in the process. Let's just think about mortgage payoff risk. Unless I'm sorry, this is going to breach some underwriting standard. The risk only goes down because the worst case is they made another payment. So, let's just get it out in the open. Let's get it before the fraudster has visibility to it. We can always ask for an update or they'll settle that out with the borrower at the end if for some reason they're radio silent on the verification. Know that we're in the process and we will be launching at CertifID an insured mortgage payoff database for spring market. So, we're in the process of analyzing over 300,000 trusted mortgage payoff records right now. We'll be piloting this in the next two weeks with a group and then we'll be launching this out. This is the number one threat. This is the threat guy that keeps me up at night. Because I know that any loan, commercial, there the table stakes could get large very quick where I'm out of business as a Title Agency in one single wire. We were involved last year in a 22 and a half million dollar, about $21 million commercial payoff wire recovery that landed in the money mule’s account. One wire that would have been lights out. Steven Dougherty 28:28 So, if these do happen to you, and there's a very good chance that it may just due to the threat landscape that's out there. The one thing that's extremely important here, time is money. If you discover this, you need to report it as quickly as you possibly can. There are numerous ways to report it. You can report it through any secret service field office, you can just Google “secretservice.gov and field offices.” You guys I believe are all in Florida, right for the most part. So, while our Orlando Tampa and Miami offices are all very active, very good offices, you can reach out directly to them. Or you can also go to FBI’s IC3, the IC3.gov. www.ic3.gov It’s the Internet Crime Complaint Center. You can also report it there. I'll put the link to the Secret Service field offices in the chat here in a second. But time is money, Tom, I mean, you know you get live streams of victims to you, and you get them to me and how fast have you seen money move within hours. So, we need to stress that time is money. Tom Cronkright 29:27 Yeah, what used to be touted as you know, 72 to 96 hours with the advent of cryptocurrency and just the sophistication. So, what happens in most cases is that when fraudulent wiring instructions are sent, they are typically sent from somewhere overseas. They're sent from the syndicate running the fraud play, but domestically, they have a series of money mules that either know what they're doing or wrapped up in something they're not even aware of that take money in and then quickly move it out. They can withdraw it in cashier's checks. They can withdraw it in cash. They can buy gift cards. Most insidious is that they move into crypto wallets. Then those wallets move and then they move out into other fiat currencies in different countries, and they can move those funds while the Federal Reserve is closed. So, as we're trying to digitize and make it more convenient, these rails of moving money, that are we would look at as kind of nontraditional, it's just a superhighway for them to launder funds and almost completely avoid detection. So, if you're two or three days in, and you haven't triggered a response from federal law enforcement and notified the banks, I mean the to your points Steven we've seen money move within hours. But we've also had instances where the money was in the bank branch. We notified the bank through our efforts, and they were stopped cold. I love stories like that. But it's harder. It's harder to reclaim the money after it's been stolen because they understand the gravity of how quickly they have to move the funds. Melissa Jay Murphy 31:13 So let me go back and let's try to make this really clear to our audience. The moment that you realize that either a mortgage payoff has been diverted or perhaps the sellers’ proceeds have been diverted. You contact a secret service field office, you email the IC3 website and file a notification. You must I assume contact your sending bank and the receiving bank and who do you ask to speak to at both the sending bank and the receiving bank? Tom Cronkright 31:59 So, before you answer, Steven, here's the point of this. What he's about to say needs to be done in advance. These relationships in this pathway needs to be groomed before you have an incident because what we found is that when crisis hits, people freeze and you're burning daylight, that could mean the difference between something coming back and everything being lost. So, I didn't need to step on you there Steven, but what we're about to say is do not wait. This playbook should be set in the organization before there's an incident. Steven Dougherty 32:41 The way I prioritize it is first you should actually contact your financial institution that sent the wire. They generally will on your behalf send a wire recall or a swift message that it was due to a fraudulent means or compromise. If you contact the receiving bank directly if you're not a client for them, oftentimes they won't help you because you're not their client or customer. That's just a caveat. But immediately contact your financial institution and tell them what happens and see if they can put a wire recall in. The next step is to contact federal law enforcement or local law enforcement really whatever you're comfortable with. But what Tom's point was great is you need to have an incident response plan in place before these happen. You need to know who to call to help you. Local law enforcement can help with this. State law enforcement to help and federal law enforcement. So, it's whoever you're comfortable with who you developed a relationship with. You can just Google obviously I provide the Secret Service field offices link you can also Google FBI field offices. HSI Homeland Security also plays in this space. IC3.gov is just a place to report that these happened. Even if there's an attempt, report and attempt. Even if you stop it, please report it to the IC3.gov because what that does is it now gives us meat to go after because there's still the bank account that was used to divert the funds, or the spoofed emails used to send the attack email. We can go add to that as well. So please, the biggest steps are to have an instant response plan in place where you know who to contact and how, and two report everything you can wherever you see because not only does it protect yourself it protects the entire community. Tom Cronkright 34:24 Yeah, well, what I've what I've been most surprised by when I'm most surprised, but one of the surprising things Steven I've involved in well over 100 recoveries last year for 35 to 36 million victims. And I say that because each one has a little uniqueness to it. One thing that seems to be bubbling up is if you're banking with a credit union or a community bank, maybe a smaller regional bank. You might be surprised, and you don't want to be surprised when you're going through it, that they don't have a fraud desk, they don't have somebody that understands how to send an alert through the Fed wire system or notify the receiving bank which is typically a money center bank. So, it's leaving a small bank. I mean, 9 times out of 10 it's hitting one of the big guys, because of the coordination they have globally. So, if they don't have their own incident wire fraud communication, all those channels. I mean, I had to educate bank presidents on what an indemnification and hold harmless looks like going to a money center bank, to allow the funds to come back to a victim. It's surprises me as a lawyer. So just don't be surprised. You run this. Sit down with your banker and make sure you know exactly who to call and the information that they will that will require. If they in turn, have the rails set up to protect you and get the documentation that the receiving bank is going to need to put a suspension on the account, freeze the movement of money, and hopefully work that back to you or your customer. And Melissa, it's worth noting it's not just the disbursement wires, yes, those were a direct hit to the closing attorneys. But it's the risks that buyers face when the closing attorney is spoofed. They haven't been educated. They haven't been engaged on this issue. They haven't received wiring instructions. And all of a sudden at the closing table we realize that there's no certified check in hand because their life savings was wired a few days ago. And I'm going to say this it does not matter to tell the people we don't receive wired we only receive certified checks. We have seen time and time again. The fraudster redirecting through communication the requirement that “Nope, can't have a check now because I've got an OMICRON outbreak or something's going on. I need your wire and I need your wire today.” It's just we've seen it unfortunately. Melissa Jay Murphy 37:05 It does seem to me that reverting to what we call the old-fashioned way of conducting business has some role here, has some advantages here. Some of the questions on the chat or have to deal with these new fax systems that do come straight to your computer versus more of a phone line that's sitting on the desk behind you. But is it better to use an old-fashioned fax machine to send and receive things? The problem is a buyer, the normal consumer, out there doesn’t have a fax machine sitting on their desk if they have a fax number? It's something tied to their computer, but certainly for the purpose of receiving a payoff from a lender. An old-fashioned fax machine seems like it might give you some level of protection. Then in dealing with for example, buyers that need information about where to send their cash due at closing. I don't know what the average homeownership is now, but you know, it's five to seven years, maybe. People don't do this on a daily basis the way we do and so they're not sophisticated and educated about this cyber fraud and rather than communicating with them via email it seems like a reliable form of communication is the good old-fashioned phone. Do you agree? Is that something real practical piece of advice? Steven Dougherty 39:01 You know for customers; this is not a muscle memory transaction for them. Just to put it out there, everybody puts disclaimers at the bottom of their email saying, “wire fraud is real.” Well, guess what? People don't read anything below your signature line in your email. They read the content. That's it, they're not reading and paying attention to that. So, you really have to engage your clients and customers on a very sort of vigorous basis. Tom, you agree that you should do it upfront and throughout the entire process. Let them know, this is the process, and fraud exists, this is how we combat it. Tom Cronkright 39:44 We didn't create this threat. The threat is not going away. It's only getting worse. So, what do we do in response? My argument has been to the industry, to my staff, to our community here in West Michigan primarily is that this isn't going to happen on our watch. And if it does happen, we as transaction participants as advisors, lending, real estate, title and closing that we've done everything we could. We met the standard of care as is being defined in the courts, unfortunately, federal and state as to what success looks like for a consumer to be protected. The challenge is we're not driving them to the bank. We're not over their shoulder when they're opening online banking. A lot of them are banking with an eBank and there's no bank branches. That's the other realization with this economy we're in. We're not in a good fun state. So, I don't have to take wires and if I put my title owner hat on, I don't have to take wires in for cash to close. Now don't have to send wires out, pursuant to the state of Michigan. But what I need to do is educate the consumer that this thread is out there. They can strike at any point and we're going to set you up for success. So, the first thing we do is when we issue the title commitment, we send our wiring instructions along with a wire fraud notice to every consumer. We send it through CertifID. You may even say I'm going to send it through secure email; however, you send it just make sure that you have confirmation that they're the ones that actually received it. Because in a vacuum you can say “Look, no wires only checks. Got it great. We'll see you at closing” and then they get tricked after and it's simply not enough. The other thing that we've done is educate them of the closing scheduled. “Hey, remember if you are going to wire only those instructions that were sent earlier can be trusted.” With regard to enrolling the real estate agents and the referral partners. This is the key. This is where you can multiply the message and multiply this yourself in this conversation because guess who they trust? They trust the real estate agent because they're typically the one driving the traffic. You're being fed off them. Everyone is kind of beholden or codependent on the real estate agent. There's an opportunity there that at the agency formation, this knowledge transfer takes place. So, through notices, we've provided what we call a “day zero document” that our real estate agents put in Dotloop and DocuSign that we have the customer sign because they might start working with a buyer six weeks ago trying to find houses. We've been involved in wire fraud recoveries where the purchase agreement wasn't even countersigned by the seller in the entire cash to close amount was wired to a fraudster by the buyer. Purchase Agreement wasn't even consummated yet. That's how early they can get approached. So, educating the real estate agent, you know, showing them what you're doing to protect the consumer to protect them, and then getting them as part of the lexicon of how they do their business. Wire fraud becomes this conversational piece, not something that we hide behind or act like it's not happening. That in my opinion, is how you drive sustainable engagement. You can't do it all yourself. Melissa Jay Murphy 43:16 Interesting. I think thiss has been an incredible source of information. So, thank you to Tom and Steven. I think that we might have raised some questions that we have not been able to answer and those have been reflected in the chat. So, what I am going to try to do along with my team is look at the issues and questions created by the chat. Review the information that Tom and Steven have shared with us. Try to make some organizational sense to it and try to push something out to Fund Members to update them on the best way to deal with this. Nothing about what you do when you realize there's been a crime is really different than what's on our website right now, Fund Members. We have the IC3 website. The Secret Service connection is something that's a little bit new. And so, we're definitely going to add that kind of information to our webpage. https://www.thefund.com/information-center/information-security.aspx Steven, so thank you for that. Steven Dougherty 44:35 On that website, you can actually go back to do investigations. And there's actually numerous pieces, there's PDFs, there's documents that help prepare for a cyber incident and give updated information on cyber stuff that you can definitely pull down and link to on your website. www.ic3.gov Melissa Jay Murphy 44:54 We will definitely look into that. So, with that I am going to thank Tom and Steven again. I'm going to thank all of you 190 people that participated in this webinar. Thank you so much for your time and attention. Don't forget we're going to push this out on the podcast. And so that's another way you can listen to this webinar again in the information. We will make sense of the comments and information that has been posted in the chats and push that out to you. And as I always do when I wrap up one of these is thank you above all, thank you for your support of The Fund.

In this episode of SSWS, Sierra is joined by wife, mom and wedding planner Melissa Murphy to discuss the low marriage rates for Black women, specifically Black, Christian women and what role the church plays in these numbers.

Melissa Murphy in the house! This conversation was refreshing to my soul. Melissa is a dear friend from my college days and beyond. Newly married, she's an occupational therapist who sees God as she cares for others, wrestles with worry and loves how God is all-powerful and sufficient. 

For the video podcast version, go ahead and subscribe to Lauren Powers YouTube Channel - www.youtube.com/c/LaurenPowers10. To know more about the show, go to www.powerhourtv.com Get your FREE 30-minute discovery call with Lauren M. Powers on "How to internally create the motivation to reach your personalized end health goal". Book here: https://calendly.com/bodybreakthroughclub/30min. ***** This podcast is produced by Transource Media, LLC. Do you want to have your own professionally produced podcast? Go to www.transourcemedia.com to learn more or email at podcast@transourcemedia.com. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/laurenpowers/support

On todays show Ray chats to Ola Majekodunmi and Donla Uí Bhraonain about some recent changes to phrases in the Irish Language, Melissa Murphy and Eileen Pugh join Ray to tell us more about Death Doula or Death Companion to help you or loved ones prepare for your or their final months and Alison Spittle tells us about a new movie she stars in.

Small business guru Melissa Murphy-Steely joins the conversation to talk about fusing faith into the DNA of her business, as she supports and empowers her clients to dream big as their Virtual CFO.

Melissa Murphy and Dr Nadeem Khan discuss their thriving Med Spa business in Willow Park TX and Central Dallas TX.

I was personally surprised that the search term for selling succulents was so popular. When I think of succulents, I think of a cactus, similar to the ones I've seen on long drives through the desert. But they are so much more! Melissa Murphy started Succulent Studios in her backyard and they carry 180 different varieties of those fleshy, juicy plants. In just three and a half years, they have grown their business selling succulents to shipping out over 60,000 orders monthly. That's a lot of plants and a lot of shipping! Full article here: https://goalsforyourlife.com/blog/selling-succulents It was inspiring to hear Melissa's story because they are still very grassroots and self-funded. In this way, she and her husband have bought their freedom and kept the fun factor intact. However, they have a very workable system and as a SaaS company (subscription as a service,) they grow and rotate plants on a 1 ½ to 2-year cycle. Their low entry price-point and flexibility keeps customers coming as they can't wait to receive their monthly baby succulents! There are many steps involved in selling succulents as a business, from choosing plants, growing the plants, finding your ideal customer, then actually shipping the plants. Also, when setting up a SaaS system, you have to have the back-end support for all the labels, orders, cancellations and changes. There were some basics I took from our interview that I feel are important for any business, some with an interesting twist. I will cover three of those here that may just help you stand out a little more from the others in your field.

Tim Murphy and Steve Peters of Hello Texas bring you their take on Texas Music, Texas Photography, and Texas Fun. In this episode, Steve and Tim chat with Canaan Bryce and the Damn Band (Zach Hawkins and Adam Carrillo). They discuss their backgrounds, the evolution of the band, and life on the road. Recorded at The Backyard Bar, Stage, and Grill in Waco Texas Canaan Bryce and the Damn Band - www.canaanbrycemusic.com Facebook - ​https://www.facebook.com/CanaanBryceMusic Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/canaanbrycemusic/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/canaanbryce Produced by Melissa Murphy. Theme song - On My Way by Michael Carubelli (used by permission) --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Tim Murphy and Steve Peters of Hello Texas bring you their take on Texas Music, Texas Photography, and Texas Fun This week Tim and Steve talk to musician Wes Perryman. They talk about his career as a farmer and growing up in the small town of Moody, Texas, the influences that made him into the musician he is today, and his time as a solo artist and with the band Lilly and the Implements. Wes Perryman Music - https//www.facebook.com/wesperryman Lilly and the implements - https://www.facebook.com/Lilly-and-The-Implements-403943390359902 Follow Hello Texas everywhere: Website - www.HelloTexasUSA.NET Instagram - www.instagram.com/hellotexasusa Twitter - www.twitter.com/hellotexasusa Facebook - www.facebook/com/hellotexasusa Steve's Socials Instagram: www.instagram.com/drivinglessonswithdad Facebook: www.facebook.com/stevep999 Tim's Socials Website - www.crackersaandcucumbers.com Instagram - www.instagram.com/therealtmurfee Instagram - www.instagram.com/crackersandcucumbers Twitter - twitter.com/therealtmurfee Facebook - www.facebook.com/tmurfee Filmed and recorded at Perryman Farms in Moody, Texas. Produced by Melissa Murphy. Theme Song - On My Way by Michael Carubelli (used by permission) --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Tim Murphy and Steve Peters of Hello Texas bring you their take on Texas Music, Texas Photography, and Texas Fun This week, Tim and Steve talk to personality Jeremy Hart of 317 Productions. They talk about his experience as a radio DJ on Texas Troubadour Radio, his involvement with Space X, his podcast RocketFarm, as well as all of the upcoming plans for his production company 317 Productions. 317 Productions: www.317productionstudios.com RocketFarm Podcast (and More): www.317productionstudios.com/podcast 317 Productions Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/317productionstudios Follow Hello Texas everywhere. Website: https://www.hellotexasusa.net Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hellotexasusa Twitter: https://twitter.com/hellotexasusa Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hellotexasusa Steve's Socials Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drivinglessonswithdad Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stevep999 Tim's anti-social's Interwebs: https://www.crackersandcucumbers.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therealtmurfee Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crackersandcucumbers Twitter: https://twitter.com/therealtmurfee Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tmurfee Filmed and recorded at the Backyard Bar, Stage, and Grill in Waco, Texas. Produced by Melissa Murphy. Theme song - On My Way by Michael Carubelli (used by permission) --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Tim Murphy and Steve Peters of Hello Texas bring you their take on Texas Music, Texas Photography, and Texas fun. This week, Tim and Steve finalize the year with more lists. The Top 5 top fives. You hope it gets better but I'm not sure it does. They explore the Top 5 Albums of 2020, Top 5 newly discovered artists that you should be listening to, Top 5 Music Videos (no bias in that list at all), and Top 5 female artists. (not listed in any order so as not to create any presumptions of favoritism or potential competition, whether real or perceived.) They recap some of their favorite and least favorite personal moments of the year. And of course they talk about the year with Covid. Stay until the end. This episode is packed full of Easter Eggs. Follow us everywhere. Interwebs: https://www.hellotexasusa.net Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hellotexasusa Twitter: https://twitter.com/hellotexasusa Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hellotexasusa Steve's Socials Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drivinglessonswithdad Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stevep999 Tim's anti-social's Interwebs: https://www.crackersandcucumbers.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therealtmurfee Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crackersandcucumbers Twitter: https://twitter.com/therealtmurfee Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tmurfee Filmed and recorded at the Backyard Bar, Stage, and Grill in Waco, Texas. Produced by Melissa Murphy. Theme song - On My Way by Michael Carubelli (used by permission) --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this interview, I talk with Tamara Dorris about how to stay balanced and focused to live a healthy life. Tamara has been a college and university professor for more than 17 years. With a formal education and interest in psychology, and a graduate degree in communications, she has spent her adult life researching and writing about personal performance and professional development. The author of 21 books, Tamara is also a certified hypnotherapist and certified in Human Design. She coaches people on better managing their energy, mindset, and manifestation skills. Learn more about Tamara at her website—tamaradorris.com Follow Tamara Dorris on Twitter @tamaradorris Follow Tamara Dorris on Facebook @mindovermatterwithtamara-author Read her book, "MIND OVER MATTER: HOW TO GO FROM SURVIVING TO THRIVING" Read the hilarious trio "Secrets of a Spiritual Guru" Books 1, 2, and 3, where you'll meet wine-loving, house-selling Melissa Murphy and followe her through her crazy antics and even crazier love life. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/reallifetbl4w/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/reallifetbl4w/support

Latest updates about ongoing protests. President Trump to visit Kenosha amid protests. Herman Cain is still dead and is still tweeting. How Covid-19 has changed how we use cars. Steve Gregory details how he stumbled across a warehouse party in LA. OC muralist Melissa Murphy shares positive vibes by discussing where she gets inspiration for some of her art work. South Coast Plaza welcomes back shoppers.

Amanda talks to the Attorneys' Title Fund Services General Counsel, Melissa Murphy, about the remote online notarization adoption trends she's seen in Florida among agent attorneys. She also shares the features agents should be looking for in a RON platform and her hopes for improvements from RON software vendors.

Join Ken as he speaks with Melissa Murphy about how to get started in your real estate investing journey. They talk about steps she took to start investing and then expand out to a broader discussion of smaller markets.

In this week’s podcast, Nick and Mark are joined by Melissa Murphy (@melissa.a.murphy). They discuss the the folding phone craze, a sizable chunk of their latest show/movie recommendations, as well as some common phrases people get wrong. Our deep dive of the Outsider covers episodes 6 and 7. As always thanks for listening and stay frosty! | Mel’s Bookstagram: @murphys.books | Nick: @nickcarignan | Mark: @mark.j.murphy | Podcast: @topics.of.interest.pod

Melissa Murphy-Webster of AVS Organic Foods talks with Katrina Fox in this episode of Vegan Business Talk.

In this episode I interview Melissa Murphy-Webster from AVS Organic Foods vegan cheese company in Melbourne, Australia. The company – which was originally called A Vegan Smiles – was the... Read More

Our friend Melissa Murphy, owner of Prime Real Estate Group in Spokane talks about her journey, road to success and the ups and downs of real estate and entrepreneurship.  

Melissa Murphy is a singer-songwriter and musician residing in Toronto. We discuss Melissa’s upbringing in Newfoundland singing, and coming to Toronto to attend Humber College.  We discuss her musical projects including Flatrock.  We talk about our show we’re performing together Nov 8th at the Cameron House, and the business that Melissa started helping young artists with singing and songwriting lessons.   Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/y7gtrnmv IG:https://tinyurl.com/yascbant FB:https://tinyurl.com/y72n79et

Today on The CBN News Daily Rundown: A parents nightmare. In October of 2017, Vinnie and Melissa Murphy woke up to the sound of their children screaming. They lost their two youngest that day--only five and seven years old. But they also lost their oldest son--19 year old Malik Murphy was charged with murdering his siblings. Reporter Efrem Graham just returned from the Murphy's Colorado Springs home, where they talked about the struggle to forgive, mental illness and the new understanding they have for the love of Christ.

Melissa Murphy and Robin Federici talk "Big Event 2017" in this episode of The Big Event Mini-Series. In particular, Robin has included 2 hours this year on Liquor Liability Exposures - Personal and Commercial Lines. Think you know liquor exposures? There are some hidden elements that most agents just don't realize. PLUS...hear Robin's favorite part of The Big Event. Thanks to Plymouth Rock Assurance for sponsoring the The Big Event Podcast Mini-Series.

Thomas Keegan, Elizabeth McCain and Melissa Murphy share stories at our Summer 2015 trip to Washington, DC.

Classroom 2.0 LIVE webinar on Google Forms in the Classroom with special guest, Melissa Murphy, March 1, 2014. Google offers us so many tools for enhancing the teaching/learning experience for both teachers and students! Unfortunately, too often we find that we know something about them but don't really know how we could use them in our classrooms. Melissa Murphy to the rescue! Melissa created an entire series of blogs posts about various ways she has been using Google Forms in her classroom and she will be our special guest presenter for this session to share her passion for Google Forms and to describe how she is using them in the classroom. Melissa is a Google Certified Teacher and teaches 6th, 7th & 8th grade students in Belmar Elementary School in Belmar, NJ. She has just been announced as the Belmar District Teacher of the Year for 2014! We are so excited to have her joining us!

Classroom 2.0 LIVE webinar on Google Forms in the Classroom with special guest, Melissa Murphy, March 1, 2014. Google offers us so many tools for enhancing the teaching/learning experience for both teachers and students! Unfortunately, too often we find that we know something about them but don't really know how we could use them in our classrooms. Melissa Murphy to the rescue! Melissa created an entire series of blogs posts about various ways she has been using Google Forms in her classroom and she will be our special guest presenter for this session to share her passion for Google Forms and to describe how she is using them in the classroom. Melissa is a Google Certified Teacher and teaches 6th, 7th & 8th grade students in Belmar Elementary School in Belmar, NJ. She has just been announced as the Belmar District Teacher of the Year for 2014! We are so excited to have her joining us!