E-recording of legal documents in local registries, while not exactly new (first one recorded in 2000 in Salt Lake County, Utah), has become much more widespread in use in recent years both by jurisdictions accepting this method of recording as well as local attorneys utilizing the same. There are currently 1856 jurisdictions accepting e-recordings and growing. North Carolina and South Carolina each participate though not at 100% for either state. North Carolina has 81 out of 100 counties currently with ability to e-record and South Carolina has 19 out of 46. The participating counties are mostly skewed to the more populated ones and those with higher volumes of recordings generally.
The benefits to e-recording are many and Law Firm Carolinas. does implement this process where available. E-recording allows for submitting documents to almost all participating jurisdictions through a single portal from your desktop computer as many times a day as needed and eliminates the use of runners/abstractors or mailing to deliver the documents to the applicable registry. Documents that are submitted for e-recording are also typically recorded within a few hours or rejected with a reason provided and can then be resubmitted quickly after correction. This decreases timelines for recording, and subsequent funding, key dispersal, etc. significantly. There is also an increased security component for documents insomuch as the originals never leave the closing attorney’s office before being sent back to new owner or lender.
One thing to remember, however, is that e-recording is not instant. For a purchase transaction with a lender, for example, loan documents are signed with a borrower, all monies must be received, funding authorization may be required by lender after their review, documents must be uploaded to the e-recording portal along with proper indexing and format requirements, title is then updated and documents are pushed for recording. After all of that, the receiver on the jurisdiction’s end must review and handle the actual recording after their review of sufficiency. Again, e-recording does provide for the process to be expedited but there is still some time to elapse before documents are on record.
If there are questions or concerns about how ability to e-record may affect your transaction, contact an attorney at Law Firm Carolinas, P.A., to assist you.