[MassHistPres] Title insurance and historic disclosure

[Michael Ruderman]

Dennis De Witt wrote:

"It is a requirement for an LHD plan to be filed in the courthouse,
otherwise the LHD is not enforceable.  And it was my impression that there
are reference indexes for filed plans identifying the affected properties or
streets."

That's correct, but you still won't always discover your property's being
included in an LHD through a title search. Neither the plan nor the order
creating the LHD needs to list the current owners, street addresses or
assessors maps and lots of the affected parcels (although they could).


Registries of deeds index plans by the three different names that may appear
on them: owner, surveyor, and street. I've done a few "every owner through
the plan index" searches, but only when someone thought there was a problem
with the boundaries. Absent an owner's or a surveyor's name, you could, with
heavy emphasis on the "could", check every plan recorded in the past 50+
years which depicted anything on a given street.

Not in 27 years of examining real estate titles has anyone ever asked me to
do that.

Title insurance treats LHDs like zoning regs, building codes, overlay
districts, wetlands designations (from Conservation Commissions), flood
zones (FEMA): you have to find out about them at City/Town Hall, not the
Registry of Deeds, because they stem from police functions and they don't
change ownership.



You don't have to mention an LHD designation in a deed because, like all the
other stuff above, it's all publicly discoverable--just not through a
title search.



Title insurance pays off only when your ownership could ultimately be
challenged,
like when the  holder of an undisclosed lien seeks compensation. And unless
you buy title insurance that specifically insures a particular use (extremely
rare), your policy has a blanket exception for all zoning and zoning-like
matters.

Michael Ruderman
Arlington
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