A new milestone has been reached in the number of recording jurisdictions electronically recording documents. As of June 30, 2016, more than 76 percent of the population in the United States resides in a recording jurisdiction offering electronic recording of documents. More than 1,500 recording jurisdictions across the country are eRecording enabled, which represents more than 40 percent of the nation’s 3,600 recording jurisdictions.
“PRIA (Property Records Industry Association) is a standard setting body that promotes and monitors the adoption of eRecording throughout the United States,” said Mark Ladd, vice president of regulatory and industry affairs at Simplifile, and PRIA president. “We continue to experience a month-over-month increase in the number of recording jurisdictions enabling eRecording in an effort to streamline their office workflows and boost both efficiencies and turnaround times for their submitters.”
eRecording is the automated process in a property records office of receipt, examination, fee calculation and payment, endorsing of recording information and return of recorded electronic documents to the submitter. eRecording improves the quality of data, reduces turn-around times and provides significant cost savings for those who utilize it, when compared to a manual process.
“In the past 18 months, the number of counties committing to the eRecording process increased by 300,” Washoe County (Nev.) Recorder and PRIA Technology Committee Co-Chair Larry Burtness said. “As the PRIA eRecording standards continue to mature, the number of counties leveraging this technology continues to expand.”
According to PRIA’s tracking system, it took from the late 1990s until August 2006 to reach the 200 eRecording counties mark. Since 2006, an additional 1,300 counties have stepped up to enable the electronic recordation of documents.
PRIA maintains a list of counties that have implemented eRecording technology and posts the list on the association’s Website (www.pria.us). The list includes counties whose implementations have been verified by PRIA.
The names of the eRecording counties are available to the public on the PRIA website, while PRIA members have access to a more detailed list which includes contact information for the counties, as well as the individual county’s technology vendor(s). The list is updated continually by the PRIA administrative staff, which works with key volunteer resources to find and report new eRecording-enabled counties.
The eRecording process also provides a competitive edge to the firms that submit documents to the recorders electronically, by decreasing turnaround time and speeding up the transaction process, PRIA said.