Personally, I'm a BIG fan of the complete demise of the online land records. Let them be on computer, that's fine. I understand quite well that even counties that don't have a lot of real estate transactions will see their Register Of Deeds offices run out of space eventually, and computer records - IF entered and maintained well - are a fine solution. However, making those records available to anyone online has led to some pretty rotten things in this industry within the last 5 years, at least around here. There are at least half a dozen companies around here who do their work totally online, and are basically incompetant. When I'd see a prior policy of theirs come across my desk, I'd file it, mark it "unusable", and do a full search. 80% of the time, I'd catch something they'd missed. Add to that the outsourcing overseas of title work, and you have the potential for very dramatic and very real land records issues in the future. How long? Could be a few months... could be 20 years before some things are finally caught.

It's funny, integrity of the records used to be a huge issue, for both abstractors and the Register of Deeds' staff. I think, at least some places, some of that has been shoved off to the side in favor of search speed and profits. Scratch that, I KNOW integrity and accuracy are being pushed off in favor of speed. I recently turned down a much-needed job with a company because the owner told me he'd fired the best abstractor in that county because he was "too detailed", and sometimes took longer than what the owner felt neccessary for some searches. He'd told me his underwriter was willing to pay claims for him if he'd followed certain steps, and he took that to mean he could do those steps, cut out anything else, and be safe. I've now made it a point to not even consider working for any company attached to that underwriter. That's now four companies I've seen working in shadiness who deal through them.