There are two sides to the recorder of deed’s office: the side where title searchers look for things, and the side where you get documents on record. The recording process is a key lever in real estate transactions; unless ownership interest is recorded, you can’t get title insurance or transfer real estate.
Thanks to the pandemic, recorders’ offices all over the country are currently bogged down. Recording a document today can feel like walking through mud—but there are a few things you can do to facilitate the process.
What’s Happening: Slow Turnaround at the Recorder’s Office
As we noted in our blog on title search delays, many recorders’ offices are operating much more slowly owing to Covid-related precautions. In some offices, public counters will remain closed through 2021, while other offices are functioning with reduced hours and capacity limits.
The recorder of deeds in every county is impacted differently, some worse than others. For example, in Montgomery County, it’s currently taking at least three weeks to get something on record. If your documents get rejected, the clock restarts: you correct the problem, resubmit the documents…and then go back to the end of the line. So, three weeks is the best turnaround time you can expect in Montgomery County today.
Making things more difficult is the fact that we’ve gotten used to rapid recording. Once e-recording began in the late 1990s, it made transactions more real-time. After a closing, you upload documents to an e-recording portal to be transmitted to the courthouse. Once received, the jurisdiction records the documents and returns them to you—and a process that used to take days or weeks to complete now takes just hours to days.
As a result, most lenders now expect to get a recorded mortgage back in just a couple days, especially on bigger transactions. But in these post-Covid times, with recorders’ offices bogged down, that’s unlikely to happen. And we’re all feeling the frustration.
How it Affects You: Prepare for a Chain of Delays
It’s a myth that recorded documents come back instantaneously, even if you e-record them. We’re seeing a lot of mismatched expectations, both inside organizations and between different parties in real estate transactions.
If you’re on the lender side and you’re expecting evidence of documents being recorded, you should be aware of the time gap caused by the slow turnaround. If you need a copy of a recorded deed, the turnaround time is even slower.
The larger problem is that the slow turnaround can affect other transactions, especially in situations where one transaction depends on another. Even if you e-record documents, you may not get those recorded documents back in time to move another transaction forward. Those gaps often bleed over from one transaction to the other and can really delay things.
What Actions You Can Take
While things are moving slowly, we have a few recommendations to help you manage the situation:
- Just show up! If possible, do your recording in person to avoid extra-long wait times for e-recording.
- Set realistic expectations. This is important to do within your own organization as well as with whomever you’re working with. It can help reduce tensions and head off the blame game when transactions are delayed.
- Plan ahead. Knowing that your document recording could be delayed by weeks, talk to your title agent to discuss a strategy. This is especially important when a transaction has multiple phases.It’s best not to submit any documents for recording in advance of closing without the title company’s knowledge. Most underwriters will require the title agent to wait for the document to be not only recorded, but also indexed, before they can act on it. That additional gap for indexing can increase your wait time by several weeks.
- Get it right the first time. When recording documents remotely, it’s critical to get every detail right. Even a simple error risks having all of your documents rejected. If they are, you could be doubling or tripling the wait—and causing a chain reaction if they’re at the top of the recording order.
Unfortunately, we’ve seen documents get rejected multiple times for what seem like nonsensical reasons. But quite often people make legitimate mistakes, such as incorrect property information, illegible or missing signatures, or fee errors.
According to the American Land Title Association, one of the most common reasons for rejection is not meeting a county’s document standards requirements. So be sure to check the recorder’s website for things like margin, font, spacing guidelines, and formatting requirements for tax parcels. Check with the Pennsylvania Department of State or the Pennsylvania Association of Notaries for proper notary acknowledgments—and be sure your signature blocks line up exactly with the notary acknowledgments.
At Certified Abstract, we’re here to make your real estate transactions as smooth as possible, despite pandemic-induced delays. We’d love to help you get the information you need to move forward with confidence. Contact us today for a free consultation.
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