Land Records Committee

The purpose of the Land Record Committee is maintaining communication with the 62 counties to share news and information essential to the efforts of recording and title examination with Underwriters, Agents and Search Companies. The challenges we have can vary as we learned during the last two years. The climate of the pandemic brought us unexpected closures and significant restrictions regarding access to land records. Because of these conditions, either by Executive Order or personal decisions made by local officials, the result was much difficulty assembling our end product. The delays which persist today, affected production, closing transactions and recordings. I believe the best way to manage through these obstacles is to create a strong relationship with staff in the Clerks’ Offices. While I had set that as a goal early on, I initially did not realize that this would take years of gaining their trust. While some Clerks’ Offices have a transparent approach to working together, there remains a degree of caution and hesitation in other counties for a desire to strengthen the rapport with our Industry. I am pleased that after 8 years of serving on the committee, as either a member, Vice Chair or Chair, I was able to establish several connections which hopefully have helped the Association.