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An apparent cyberattack on title company First American is also disrupting life for a significant number of appraisers in Massachusetts.
The company announced it had “experienced a cybersecurity incident” on Thursday afternoon, but provided little additional detail.
“In response, we have taken certain systems offline and are working to return to normal business operations as soon as possible,” the company said in a press release, a statement repeated on firstamupdate.com, a dedicated website it created to post news about the situation.
According to information shared with Banker & Tradesman, it’s not just buyers of real estate who are likely affected. Appraiser software ACI, published by First American, appears to have gone offline.
Steve Sousa, executive vice president of the Massachusetts Board of Real Estate Appraisers, said in an email that around 1 in 4 appraisers use the ACI software to complete and deliver their reports.
“The website is used to link maps and other data to reports and to convert an appraisal report to a format used by lenders and the secondary market. The outage may be causing delays in loan closings and jeopardizing rates that are locked in,” Sousa said.
First American is just the latest real estate industry firm hit by hackers in recent weeks.
Fellow title insurance company Fidelity National Financial suffered what it called in an SEC filing a “cybersecurity incident” this fall, forcing it to block off some of its computer systems and disrupting its title insurance, escrow, mortgage transaction services and real estate technology businesses.
And mortgage company Mr. Cooper disclosed in an SEC filing Nov. 2 that a cyberattack earlier this year cost it $25 million. The attack saw 14.6 million borrowers’ personal information stolen, according to a data breach notification it filed in Maine, and the company’s decision to shut down its systems while it repaired the damage reportedly blocked millions of borrowers from making payments and disrupted pending mortgage transactions.
