Own a beachfront property in New Jersey? Read this.

We are the New Jersey title insurance agent that does it all for you. For your next commercial real estate transaction, house purchase, mortgage refinance, reverse mortgage, or home equity loan, contact us, Vested Land Services LLC. We can help!

This is from our friend Larry Bell, Esq. at CATIC.

Public Trust Doctrine Is Now The Law In New Jersey

By the law of nature these things are common to all mankind – the air, running water, the sea, and consequently the shores of the sea. No one, therefore, is forbidden to approach the seashore, provided that he respects habitations, monuments, and the buildings, which are not, like the sea, subject only to the law of nations. From Book II of the Institutes of Justinian, Roman Emperor Justinian, circa 500 AD.

Dating back to Roman law, public rights to the seashore gave fishermen and travelers by sea unfettered access to dry land. Those public rights were maintained through the English Common Law and brought to America by the settlers of the original 13 colonies. A common law right, public access to the shore has developed in New Jersey through several court decisions, the first of which was the 1821 case of Arnold v. Mundy, 6 N.J.L. 1, where an owner of land adjoining the Raritan River claimed exclusive fishing rights to tidal oyster beds abutting his property. In that decision, the Court held that “[Common Property includes] ‘the air, the running water, the sea, the fish, and the wild beasts. [These are] things in which a sort of transient usufructuary possession only, can be had ....’” Unlike other public property, it was “ ... to be held, protected, and regulated for the common use and benefit.” Several other decisions and numerous regulations would follow as reviewed by the NJ Department of Environmental Protection.

On May 3, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy made the Public Trust Doctrine the law of the state when he signed P.L. 2019, Chapter 81 into law with an effective date of July 1, 2019. It was a long time coming, but NJ now has a law that codifies the Public Trust Doctrine, intended to ensure public access to beaches and tidal areas, and promote, protect and safeguard public access rights. The new law affects both the 127 miles of NJ oceanfront beaches as well as the more than 1,200 miles of tidally influenced rivers and bays throughout the state.

The law supports the creation of new access points and the enhancement of existing ones, and is intended to provide the tools to defend against attempts to block access. It gives the NJ DEP broad regulatory power not only to create, enhance, and preserve public access, but also to ensure that there are necessary amenities in place to support it, including public parking and restrooms. The new law will have significant ramifications for landowners, municipalities, and developers, and will affect planning, zoning, and new construction in affected areas. It does not change the landscape, and standard title insurance exceptions for the rights of the public remain the same, but it is notable that some 1,500 years later Roman Emperor Justinian and Governor Phil Murphy wound up on the same page.

For your real estate purchase or mortgage refinance or

if you have questions about what you see here, contact

Stephen M. Flatow, Esq.

Vested Land Services LLC

165 Passaic Avenue, Suite 101

Fairfield, NJ 07004

Tel 973-808-6130 - Fax 973-227-0645

E-mail sflatow@vested.com

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Homebuyer's protected by Notice of Settlement

We are the New Jersey title insurance agent that does it all for you. For your next commercial real estate transaction, house purchase, mortgage refinance, reverse mortgage, or home equity loan, contact us, Vested Land Services LLC. We can help!

Notice of Settlement protects buyers and lenders.

In New Jersey, the status of title and mortgages is officially established by the recording of documents in the County Clerk’s Office. For example, a home buyer will record his deed,  which then places a copy of the deed within the real property record books for that county. The original deed is then returned to the purchaser.

How to protect against fraudulent acts?

New Jersey law permits the recording of a document called a notice of settlement to show the world that an owner is about to sell or mortgage their property. Lenders will require borrowers (usually through their title companies) to file a notice of settlement prior to the loan closing. The notice of settlement will include the name and address of the borrower, an identification of the property and the name and address of the lender.

Thus, if a notice of settlement for Lender A is recorded on June 1, from that date forward, Lender B is considered to have notice of the borrower’s intention to take a loan from Lender A. The recording of the notice of settlement helps to establish priority of recorded documents and to advise interested parties of ongoing transactions with respect to a particular property.

A notice of settlement is effective for a period of 60 days from date of recording, which means that the deed or mortgage mentioned in the notice of settlement must be recorded during that time period in order to enjoy the protection of this procedure.  There is a renewal period.

A  professional title agent knows how to protect you!  Don't buy a home without title insurance.

For your real estate purchase or mortgage refinance or

if you have questions about what you see here, contact

Stephen M. Flatow, Esq.

Vested Land Services LLC

165 Passaic Avenue, Suite 101

Fairfield, NJ 07004
or
1500 Allaire Avenue, Suite 101
Ocean, NJ 07712

Tel 973-808-6130 - Fax 973-227-0645

E-mail sflatow@vested.com

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New Jersey suburbs - having deer as neighbors

We are the New Jersey title insurance agent that does it all for you. For your next commercial real estate transaction, house purchase, mortgage refinance, reverse mortgage, or home equity loan, contact us, Vested Land Services LLC. We can help!

Having lived in the wilds of suburban Essex County, New Jersey, I can personally testify to the incredible number of deer roaming through wooded areas; such as the one that bordered my home.  I once read that there are as many deer now as there were in the time of the Revolution.  The reason, we killed off their natural predators.

www.pexels.com

In any event, they are back with an annoying vengeance.  Here's an interesting article on the problem from the New York Times

Deer Make the Worst Neighbors

Like many of us who choose to live in the suburbs, deer want a nice, safe neighborhood, with great food and plenty of privacy. For one particular doe and fawn, that neighborhood happens to be my backyard. 

 Sure, they’re quiet — come to think of it, I’ve never heard them make a sound. And the little one covered in Bambi spots sure is cute. But let’s face it, they’re rude neighbors. When I ask the mother to leave by, say, pounding on my kitchen window with a spatula, she stares back at me blankly and pees. 

 Sometimes, she deposits her fawn in my shrubs for the day while she runs off to do whatever it is deer do with their time when they’re not devouring my marigolds. I’m not a free babysitter, but she seems to think I am. And the fawn is under the impression that we can’t see her, even as my children crouch, perplexed, to get a better look at the little speckled creature crushing my lamb’s ear. 

 I’ve tried using subtle hints to let them know I want my space, like spraying my foliage with an organic concoction that smells like sour milk and claims to repel deer, but actually only repels people who like to sit near flowers. Sometimes, they take a hint and venture off — I imagine them taking long strolls in the nearby nature preserve, another suburban selling point. 

 No sooner have they left, though, when another mother shows up. How do I know she’s not the same one? A hint: this one has twins.

 You’d think I live far out in the country, in some area of thick woods and wild mountains. But no, I’m only 20 miles from Midtown Manhattan in New Jersey, the most densely populated state in the country.

 Blake Smith, who moved from Brooklyn to West Orange, N.J., 13 years ago with her husband, Tim, 49, can see the Empire State Building from her back deck, but it’s the deer that take her breath away.

 “They’re like these mystical creatures,” she said. “They’re like unicorns.”
 More like shameless interlopers. A few weeks ago, a deer pushed its way into Ms. Smith’s screened-in porch to get ahold of some potted hibiscus. Ms. Smith, 45, an associate director of digital at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai, had moved the pots inside so they wouldn’t become deer salad. 

 So much for that. Ms. Smith gave up and put the pots back outside. “I told them, ‘Have them, just eat them. Just please don’t eat my watermelon,’” she said. 

 Ms. Smith knows these deer well. They are members of a herd that has lived in a vacant lot behind her house for years, with a doe that the family named Limpy for her uneven gait. Perhaps because they’ve been neighbors for so long, the deer listened to her about the watermelons and so far have left them alone. The hibiscus they ate.

 Whitetail deer are a source of suburban awe and angst. They were hunted to near oblivion in the late 19th century, but their numbers are back and they’re seemingly everywhere. New Jersey doesn’t even know how many whitetails call the Garden State home, since government estimates are based, morbidly, on the number of deer that hunters kill each year, which hovers around 50,000. In areas where hunting is prohibited, like my backyard, no one is tracking the herds.

 “It’s really hard to get a population estimate, especially in a fragmented, densely populated state like New Jersey,” said Brooke Maslo, an assistant professor of ecology at Rutgers University.

Read the full article.

For your real estate purchase or mortgage refinance or

if you have questions about what you see here, contact

Stephen M. Flatow, Esq.

Vested Land Services LLC

165 Passaic Avenue, Suite 101

Fairfield, NJ 07004

Tel 973-808-6130 - Fax 973-227-0645

E-mail sflatow@vested.com

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It's not about Title Insurance! Getting Down Payment Help Now. Sharing Home’s Gain (or Loss) Later.

We are the New Jersey title insurance agent that does it all for you. For your next commercial real estate transaction, house purchase, mortgage refinance, reverse mortgage, or home equity loan, contact us, Vested Land Services LLC. We can help!

From the New York Times, an interesting way to get a large down payment for that expensive home:

Getting Down Payment Help Now. Sharing Home’s Gain (or Loss) Later.

With home prices in some markets going through the roof (pun intended) just how does a home buyer come up with that large down payment.

For aspiring homeowners, coming up with a healthy down payment has long been the biggest obstacle to owning a home.
 With property values soaring in many areas — median prices in San Jose, Calif., and Denver are 60 percent above their prerecession peaks — the barrier is rising. That has some firms promoting unconventional ways to scrape together a down payment, including crowdfunding and using Airbnb rental income.
 Now, a small but growing number of home buyers are trying something different: asking an outside investor to put down money alongside them.
 It is called shared equity, and Unison, a company based in San Francisco, is the largest of a handful of firms putting it to work. Unison will provide at least half of a consumer’s down payment in exchange for a piece of any appreciation in the home’s value when it is sold. If the home sells at a loss, the company absorbs a share of that, too.

Read the full article here. 

What will they think of next?

For your next title order or

if you have questions about what you see here, contact

Stephen M. Flatow, Esq.

Vested Land Services LLC

165 Passaic Avenue, Suite 101

Fairfield, NJ 07004

Tel 973-808-6130 - Fax 973-227-0645

E-mail sflatow@vested.com

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What is title insurance? Why do you need it?

We are the New Jersey title insurance agent that does it all for you. For your next commercial real estate transaction, house purchase, mortgage refinance, reverse mortgage, or home equity loan, contact us, Vested Land Services LLC. We can help!

Title insurance may seem like just another expense to pay when you buy your home, but this coverage may be more important than you think. Title insurance seems unnecessary, but, when you need it, you’ll be glad you have it.

For instance, someone says they have a claim against your home, your title insurance policy steps in to protect you from financial damages. Title insurance can also protect you from the impact of old liens, unpaid property taxes or even the contractor who says he was never paid for work on the home.

If you are worried about being overcharged, please know that title insurance premiums are regulated by the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance.

To learn more about title insurance, call us, or take a look at the NAIC article the Vitals of Title Insurance.

For your next title order or

if you have questions about what you see here, contact

Stephen M. Flatow, Esq.

Vested Land Services LLC

165 Passaic Avenue, Suite 101

Fairfield, NJ 07004

Tel 973-808-6130 - Fax 973-227-0645

E-mail sflatow@vested.com

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