The country’s custodians of land property records endorse freely accessible information to the public at large.
The Property Records Industry Association, Morrisville, N.C., has posted online the “Access to and Sales in Bulk of Land Records,” a whitepaper based on industry feedback and data gathering the coalition of government and business partners from the property records industry initially started in the spring of 2008—which concludes that land records are public records that should be freely accessible by the public.
Danny Crank, a workgroup co-chair and recorder with Butler County, Ohio, said the whitepaper has identified “a hot button topic” for the industry.
PRIA president and senior vice president/chief title officer at Bank of America, Richard Bramhall, said the whitepaper is timely and useful to a wide range of entities operating in the mortgage market space given that land records include deeds, mortgages, assignments of mortgages, liens, the satisfaction of mortgages and liens, and who owns it and who has an interest in that land.
Bramhall told this publication the whitepaper is a policy statement that PRIA has put out “supporting the accessibility of records for bulk” records from service providers.
“There’s always been a bit of a controversy about the accessibility to recorded documents.” Some recorders believe it should only be accessible on a limited basis and controlled by the recorders of deeds rather than a public records available to anybody. Another issue is cost. Who shoulders the cost of maintenance and public access? And again there are two camps, those who think it should be somewhat more controlled than others who think they should not.
PRIA engaged in this project “to fashion a responsible and rational response” to lawsuits around the country, “pitting title plants and underwriters against recorders.” PRIA insiders expect the whitepaper’s straightforward conclusions to achieve “just that” even though it cannot “address or eliminate” the industry’s issues related to mortgage foreclosures.
PRIA’s bulk records access workgroup and records access and privacy policy committee summarized the conclusions from discussions conducted between 2008 and 2011 during conference calls, face-to-face work sessions during PRIA’s annual conferences and symposiums that benefited from the participation of over 40 market insiders, along with feedback from public comments on the drafts posted by PRIA online.
According to Carol Foglesong, an assistant comptroller based in Orange County, Fla., and privacy policy committee co-chair, since bulk sales of land records indexes and images must comply with existing federal, state and local laws, it is the responsibility of recorders to make the documents and the indexes to these documents publicly accessible in compliance with these laws.
In an effort to promote efficient data exchanges, she said, the whitepaper outlines the components of “a reasonable cost structure” whenever there is no specific legislation or regulatory framework addressing the sale of land records.
Since recorders today have adopted electronic databases and document imaging technology and are extensively providing microfilm and electronic, the whitepaper also provides information about records’ delivery standards and pricing.
The goal of the whitepaper is to share the information gathered and takeaways from the aforementioned discussions with peers and partners in the land records industry, “both recorders and purchasers of records in bulk,” says Craig Muldoon, vice president of market development for RedVision Systems, and co-chair of the workgroup.
