Electronic recording in Connecticut

Last Friday I was in Norwalk, Connecticut to speak to the Connecticut Town Clerks Association about electronic recording.  Connecticut is one of only three states in country in which land records are maintained at the city and town level and not in counties or multiple town districts (the other two are Rhode Island and Vermont).  This means the each city or town clerk in Connecticut handles all the duties performed by our registries of deeds in Massachusetts.

Connecticut is also on the verge of implementing electronic recording.  A statewide task force overseen by personnel from the state library that included town clerks, attorneys and real estate professionals of all types has developed draft regulations that will govern the performance of electronic recording in the state.  Once the regulations are finalized, individual clerks may begin electronic recording although the process will be voluntary – no town will be forced to implement e-recording.

More than 100 city and town representatives were present for my talk in which I emphasized the ease of electronic recording from a document processing perspective and shared some of our experiences with the technology through the years (we began e-recording here at Middlesex North in 2005 and it now accounts for 25% of our daily recordings).  My sense is that a good percentage of the Connecticut clerks seemed genuinely enthused about adopting this technology and it should catch on quickly once the regulations are finalized.