Maryland officials will be launching a pilot program next spring in Baltimore County to electronically record land documents.
The eRecording pilot is being jointly run by the Maryland Judiciary’s Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC), the Baltimore County Circuit Court Clerk’s Office, the Baltimore County Department of Budget and Finance, and the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation.
This is the latest development in the growing move toward conducting paperless real estate and mortgage transactions. Many Notaries are following developments with pilot eRecording and eClosing programs in different parts of the country to see if they lead to new standards for electronically notarizing documents.
The Maryland pilot program will give customers the option to record deeds, deeds of trusts, mortgages and selected other land documents using a paperless system. Officials hope that eRecording will provide a less expensive and more efficient method to record documents and make them easier to access by the public.
“This service should save staff time and resources and increase efficiency, which will benefit all our citizens,” Third Judicial Circuit Administrative Judge Kathleen G. Cox said in a statement released by the Maryland Judiciary, which oversees the state’s land records.
State Court Administrator Pamela Q. Harris noted that eRecording systems are operating successfully in neighboring jurisdictions, such as Virginia and Washington, D.C.
David Thun is an Associate Editor at the National Notary Association.