Commercial Title Insights — Title Industry Edition | October 2026
A monthly briefing for the title industry — Michigan agents, out-of-state agents, and underwriting counsel.
Title Industry Pulse
ALTA Study Finds Seller Impersonation Attempts More Than Doubled
ALTA's 2026 Seller Impersonation Fraud Study puts the share of firms seeing at least one attempt at 59 percent, up from 28 percent in 2024, across 245 respondents in 40 states. Vacant and free-and-clear commercial parcels are the profile these schemes hunt, and a written verification protocol you actually follow is what the claims file gets judged against.
Source: ALTA 2026 Seller Impersonation Fraud Study, Sept. 2026
Why Title Insurers Should Pay Attention to the NAIC's AI Bulletin
ALTA's read on the NAIC model bulletin is that moving underwriting, fraud screening, document review or customer service onto AI does not shift an insurer's existing legal and regulatory obligations. If you are adding AI-assisted steps to production, the vendor vetting and the written use policy have to keep pace.
Source: ALTA TitleNews Online, Sept. 24, 2026
Veterans United Fails to Knock Out Core RESPA Theory
A Missouri federal judge trimmed most of the case but left the Section 8 kickback and fee-split theories standing, rejecting the argument that an affiliated referral arrangement is categorically inside the safe harbor. Anyone running an ABA or joint venture should read it as confirmation that the safe harbor protects a structure that operates the way it was papered, not the paper by itself.
Source: HousingWire, Aug. 25, 2026
Transaction Spotlight
Details anonymized to protect client confidentiality.
A light industrial sale this month had two separate ways onto the road — a curb cut, and a second point of access by way of an easement. That combination is why the file carried both ALTA 17 and ALTA 17.1.
The two forms are not alternatives and they do not overlap. ALTA 17 goes to access to and from a physically open street abutting the land, including the right to use the existing curb cut. ALTA 17.1 goes to access by way of an easement rather than from the insured parcel itself. Issue one, call access covered, and the other route is uninsured — and the route that fails is usually the one nobody looked at twice. Where a parcel is served two ways, both belong on the policy.
Commercial Title Insight
Schedule B-I on Entity-Level Acquisitions: What Michigan Authority Actually Requires
The seller impersonation numbers above are the retail version of a question every commercial file asks quietly: is the person signing actually able to convey? On an entity deal that question lives in Schedule B-I, and it is the requirement set most often drafted from a template. Michigan does not let you infer management from the entity name. Under the Michigan Limited Liability Company Act, management is vested in the members unless the articles say otherwise (MCL 450.4401), so a manager-managed LLC and a member-managed LLC produce different authorized signatories and different consents. Requisition the operating agreement or bylaws as amended to date, a member or manager consent that names the signer and describes this transaction, and a current certificate of good standing. A foreign entity taking or conveying Michigan title needs a certificate of authority on top of its home-state standing, and a layered structure — an LLC whose sole member is another LLC — has to be walked down to a natural person with signing power.
The habits that keep this off the closing-day list are unglamorous. Ask for the documents at commitment rather than at closing, because that is when there is still time to fix a consent naming the wrong manager or an entity that quietly went into default with LARA two years ago. Make the consent transaction-specific; a general resolution authorizing the manager to conduct business is not the same as one authorizing this sale of this parcel on these terms, and underwriting counsel will say so. Watch the dates — a good-standing certificate pulled ninety days ago is a historical document, not a current fact. And when the structure is genuinely complicated, tee it up for underwriting with the chain laid out rather than sending raw documents and a question. That is the difference between a same-day sign-off and a week of email.
Sources: MCL 450.4401, Michigan Limited Liability Company Act · ALTA 2026 Seller Impersonation Fraud Study
From Dave's Desk
October is the travel month. ALTA ONE is in Scottsdale the 12th through the 15th, and my calendar there is mostly underwriter time — First American, Stewart, Westcor. If you carry Michigan work and you are going, find me. Most of our co-agent relationships started in a hallway rather than a pitch.
Then on November 4 I am speaking at the MLTA Fall Education Event on the use of AI in a commercial title agency. Given the NAIC bulletin above, the timing is about right. Westcor's fall fraud CE and CLE webinar follows on November 10.
— Dave
Co-Agent and Referral Arrangements
We welcome co-agent referral arrangements on Michigan commercial transactions. If you are a Michigan agent without a commercial bench, an out-of-state agent with a Michigan leg, or an underwriter looking for a qualified Michigan specialist for a complex file, please reach out directly. We split fees on co-agent arrangements per underwriter rules and are happy to handle the Michigan portion of multi-state portfolio closings.
Stay Connected
Follow us on LinkedIn: Midwest Title Commercial | Dave Nykanen
About Midwest Title and Dave Nykanen
Midwest Title's Commercial Division is a Michigan title agency specializing in complex commercial closings — multi-parcel assemblages, entity-level acquisitions, co-insurance placements, multi-state portfolio legs, and the underwriting issues that benefit from a dedicated commercial bench. Founded and led by Dave Nykanen, a licensed Michigan real estate attorney with three decades of commercial real estate experience as both a practicing attorney and a title agent, the division regularly serves as Michigan co-agent for out-of-state agents and as a referral destination for residential-focused Michigan agents who don't carry a commercial desk.
Contact:commercial@mwtmi.com | Midwest Title | Commercial Division | Michigan-Licensed Title Insurance Agent
This newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.
