I’ve attended a couple of seminars on e-filings in Pennsylvania and the program appears to be pretty solid. It uses what is called Level 2 e-recording which means that a real paper document is produced and then scanned and sent for filing by the preparer along with some recording information. The recordings will come directly from the title companies and lenders who will be registered for e-filing with both the recording office and the company that handles the e-recording, so there is probably much less of a chance of this type of e-recorded document being fraudulent than someone walking of the street with a fake signature, fake notary acknowledgement, or a fake check.

It works well for the title insurance agents because the original documents never leave their office (and so will never get lost or altered along the way to the courthouse). They scan them themselves and send them in electronically and get an almost instant response as to whether or not the documents are in recordable form. If they are, they get the recording information back right away and so, if they are inclined, can issue a policy with original documents the same day instead of waiting several months to get the documents back. I believe the recording fees are even automatically calculated and deducted from their accounts so it saves a bit of record keeping time on that end. You also have a better chance of “winning the race” to the courthouse because your documents get recorded the same day as your pre-settlement bringdown instead of a couple of days later. This also helps prevent people from carrying out fraud by selling the same property twice in one day.

The thing that I think will affect searchers the most is potential indexing issues. The document filers are required to type in some of the indexing information associated with the document (at least one grantor and grantee in the demo I saw) in order to send each document. These systems are set up so that the recording clerk can import this information into the recorder’s computerized indexes. I don’t think there is any safeguard in the program that prevents the recording clerk form just clicking the “import” button without verifying that the names of all of the grantors and grantees have been entered (not just the first). Obviously even if this is verified, I would be worried that some of the names will be submitted and imported incorrectly without any verification.

The lenders drive this industry and they are always under competition from each other to reduce cost and time in turning around searches. I think the best bet to survive is to embrace any technology that is available to level that aspect of the playing field and hope that delivering a better product based on your knowledge of the records and searching will help maintain your customers. If our job really does require the amount of skill we think it does and we really are much better than foreign searchers (I can only go by stories I’ve heard), then all we can really bank on is that the level of frustration with a poor quality product will bring the business back to us.

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