Looking Ahead at the Registry of Deeds

Last Thursday (May 14, 2020) the Chief Justices of the Supreme Judicial, Appeals and Trial Courts issued a letter on "the path forward during the pandemic." Here are some of the things that stood out when I read it:

• "We anticipate that our courthouses will likely remain physically closed in June . . ."
• "We expect that courthouses will physically reopen this summer, but only in stages and only for certain matters that require in-person appearances.
• "We hope that in September, if schools reopen, we will once again begin to conduct jury trials."

And regarding the rapid progress the courts have made in shifting to video conferences in place of in-person hearings, the Chief Justices wrote, "even when this pandemic is behind us, we do not believe we will or should go back to doing things as we did in February." 

The reason I mention all of this in a post about future operations at the Registry of Deeds is that this Registry of Deeds is physically located within a courthouse and is therefore dependent on the courthouse being open for us to be open to the public.

That said, even when the courthouse reopens to the public, I'll borrow a line from the justices and say we will not go back to doing things as we did before the pandemic struck. Here are some of the things that are likely even after the building reopens to the public:

•  Walk in recordings will be limited to dropping documents at the entrance to the registry
• Customer will not be permitted near the section of the registry counter where the recording terminals are located
• For registered land, we will still require you to email us the documents you intend to register for pre-approval before we will accept the documents being dropped off
• Same for plans
• There will be no real estate closings within the registry space (this was going to be the case anyway since there is no such space in the new registry)
• There will be no opportunity to do research within the registry space (this was going to be case anyway since there is no such space in the new registry)
• There will be no public computers for pre-recording rundowns. The building has WiFi so if a rundown is important, bring your laptop and do it from outside the registry

In addition to the above, we are still researching how to safely provide some of our other services such as providing over sized prints of previously recorded plans; administering oaths of office; and allowing corporate certificates to be sent directly to this office. 

In the future, as now, we hope to use the telephone, email and our website to provide customer service rather than doing it in person. 

That's it for now. I'll provide more updates as they become available.

Middlesex Probate Courthouse in Cambridge Closed Temporarily

Last evening the Trial Court closed the Middlesex Probate Courthouse in Cambridge. Because the Middlesex South Registry of Deeds is located in that building, it also will be closed. It's my understanding that Middlesex South will be able to process electronic recordings remotely but the ability to process other recordings and  to perform other tasks may be disrupted during the closure.

As of now, no reopening date has been set.

UPDATE on June 5, 2020: The Middlesex South Registry reopened for limited operations soon after this post was published. The Middlesex South Registry continues to accept documents recorded electronically and those sent to the registry via the United States Postal Service.

For more information on the status of Middlesex South, please consult that registry's website.

MassLandRecords outage

The masslandrecords.com website has been malfunctioning since late last night. It is affecting most but not all registries of deeds across Massachusetts including this one (Middlesex North).

The problem has also affected our incoming electronic recordings.

The Secretary of State's IT Department is aware of the problem and has been working on it since overnight but as for 1:20 pm the outage persists.

This post will be updated when additional information becomes available.

UPDATE: At 1:45 pm, it appears that Masslandrecords.com is back in operation. We also have received some e-files but there may still be a problem with some submitters.

Sales and Foreclosure Reports

We have posted our Sales Report for April. You can find it and other monthly reports for this year on the main page of the LowellDeeds.com website. Just scroll down to the Quick References section and look for links to:

Sales Reports

Foreclosure Reports

Please note that there were no new foreclosures to report in April due to the Covid-19 emergency foreclosure moratorium.

As for our volume of documents, the number of deeds recorded in April was down 27% compared to April 2019, while the number of mortgages was up 67% over the same period.