Reopening Update: July 17, 2020

Here are some observations on our first week of being open to the public:

We are only open for limited purposes. Please consult the REOPENING page on our website for details on the services we offer and those we cannot.

The primary reason people have come is to drop off documents for recording. If you have Registered Land or Plans, you must still email them to lowelldeeds@comcast.net for preapproval before bringing them here.

If you have Recorded Land documents, you may email them for preapproval although that is not required. However, you must have your documents, check and return envelope fully ready before you arrive.

If you are a homeowner with an Order of Conditions, Certificate of Compliance, or other document from Town Hall, please call us at 978-322-9000 before coming so we can explain the procedure and answer any questions.

We are also able to administer oaths of office for those with new or renewed notary commissions. You must call in advance and schedule an appointment. Call 978-322-9000.

Finally, all of our documents, plans, and certificates of title are scanned and freely available on our website. If you believe something is not there, please read our Search Records Instructions page which explains how to find everything, especially our oldest documents. After reading these instructions, if you still cannot find something, please email us at lowelldeeds@comcast.net and we will assist you in obtaining the document you need.

Reopening the Registry

On Monday, July 13, 2020, courthouses across the Commonwealth will reopen to the public on a limited basis. This means the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds will also reopen to the public on a limited basis.

Please visit the registry's "Reopening" page for a description of how we will operate starting on Monday. Here are the main points:

• Walk-in Recordings will be "drop off" recordings. Customers will leave their documents, checks and envelopes at the entrance to the registry. After the customer leaves, registry personnel will retrieve and record the documents. 
• Registered Land and Plans to be recorded must still be sent by email to lowelldeeds@comcast.net for pre-approval. Pre-approval means don't send the physical documents to us until you have received approval from us by email.
• No paper copies of documents or plans will be provided in-person. We urge customers to obtain documents from our website but if paper copies are required, they may be requested by mail. 
• Registry employees WILL NOT notarize documents
• We will administer Oaths of Office, however, the person taking the oath must make an appointment in advance.

In other words, how we will operate after the building reopens will not be much different than how we have been operating throughout the pandemic. 

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.

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.

Middlesex Probate Courthouse in Cambridge Closed Until Friday

The Trial Court has announced that the Middlesex Probate Courthouse in Cambridge is completely closed to staff for the next 48 hours. The Trial Court website states that staff will be allowed back into the building on Friday, April 24, 2020.

Because the Middlesex South Registry of Deeds is located in the Probate Courthouse in Cambridge, I assume that registry is closed to employees coming onsite which has implications for recording mail and dropped off documents.

I'll post updates as I get them.

For now, this office is running as normal (as in normal for the pendemic) so we're recording e-files, mail and dropped off documents.

Registry Update: April 21, 2020

We had a busy day today with 398 documents recorded. Mondays are usually our busiest day due to a high volume of mail, but Tuesdays that follow a Monday holiday (Patriots Day) are even busier.

Electronic recording is our biggest source of documents by far. However, we still get a considerable volume of mail and Fedex and UPS both routinely make deliveries. The Justice Center is closed to anyone who is not an employee, including mail carriers and delivery people, but the Court Officers staffing the entrance will take deliveries just outside the front entrance and we've had no problems getting packages intended for us.

This is also the case with documents that are dropped off for recording. We do ask you to call us to let us know you are coming or have just been here.

If you have Registered Land, we do require you to email your documents first to lowelldeeds@comcast.net so we can review them before you send them or drop them off. This makes it easier to make the minor technical corrections that are frequently necessary for Land Court registrations. Once we review the documents, we email you back with any needed fixes or with the go-ahead to get us your original documents.

We have the same requirement for plans. Take a picture of what you intend to record and email it. Once you get a reply from us, you can send or deliver your plan.

Finally, during the pandemic  emergency we have stopped recording at 4pm rather than our normal 4:15. Please keep that in mind if you're rushing to get something on record by the end of the day.

Expect Unexpected Registry Closures

If you go the the website of the Berkshire Middle Registry of Deeds in Pittsfield today, this is what you see:

The Berkshire Middle District Registry of Deeds is temporarily closed due to a COVID-19 exposure.

We will reopen on Wednesday, April 15, 2020. Please check our website or Facebook for any additional updates.

We cannot receive any mail or walk-in customers. We cannot register Land Court documents until we reopen on the above-stated date.

We can Electronic Record Only.

As I understand it, an employee of a non-registry of deeds office within the courthouse where the registry is located has developed symptoms consistent with Covid-19. That prompted the Trial Court (the operator of the building) to immediately close the building, in this case, for 72 hours, for cleaning and disinfecting. 

Early in the shutdown, something similar occured at the Edward Brooke Courthouse in Boston, the home of the Suffolk Registry of Deeds. That caused the courthouse and the registry to close for five days.

So please be aware that when there is a diagnosis of a possible Covid-19 infection of an employee, the Trial Court’s standard operating procedure is (wisely and understandably) to close the entire building down for some period of time. 

If this were to happen at the Lowell Justice Center, the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds would continue to process e-filed documents and to respond to emails and telephone calls, but we would be unable to receive mail, deliveries or dropped-off documents. We would provide notice of our changed circumstances on the registry website (www.lowelldeeds.com) and on this blog.

Monday, April 13, 2020 update

The Middlesex North Registry of Deeds continues to record documents received by e-filing, by mail, and by drop-off.

We require anyone with Registered Land documents to first email us the images of the documents so that we can review them and advise the submitter of any corrections needed. This is to minimize the number of times everyone must handle the documents.


We also ask anyone with a plan to record to email us the image of the plan prior to dropping it off and to await our instructions before bringing it to the Justice Center for recording.

Recorded Land documents that under normal circumstances would be scanned then handed back to the customer are being mailed back instead because customers are not allowed in the building. For this reason, if you are dropping off a Recorded Land document for recording, please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope so that we may return the original document to you.

During our limited operations, we are unable to administer oaths of office or to print and distribute corporate certificates ordered from the Secretary of State's office.

Tuesday, April 7, 2020 Update

I haven't written for several days, mostly because we've settled into routine operations here at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds. We are processing electronic recordings, in-coming mail and an occasional dropped-off document (mostly registered land and a few subdivision plans, things that can't be e-recorded).

The volume of recordings is down considerably this week from the prior two. I believe there is plenty of activity pending, but everyone else involved in the process is struggling to transition a business that required a great deal of in-person contact with a world that forbids that. Once people figure that out, there should be a burst of recording activity.

Recording Plans in the Pandemic

The health and safety restrictions in place during the pandemic have altered much of how the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds operates. A major goal is to minimize in-person contact between registry staff and our customers.

To help with this we have created a drop-off system in which customers may leave documents in a basket we have placed at the front entrance of the Lowell Justice Center. Customers place their packets in the basket, call the registry at 978-322-9000 to tell us of the drop off, and then depart. Once the customer has left the building, someone from the registry will come out, retrieve the package, record it, and mail the originals back to the customer.

This system fails when the documents delivered by the customer have some defect that prevents them from being recorded. For this reason, we have imposed an additional requirement on all Registered Land recordings. The customer must first email the intended documents to us at lowelldeeds@comcast.net so that we can review the documents and communicate any corrections needed to the customer before the documents are dropped off. Only after receiving an email back from the registry instructing the customer that the documents are suitable for recording may the customer drop the physical documents off at the Justice Center.

We now impose a similar requirement on all subdivision plans that are to be recorded.

If you have a plan to record, here is what you must do:

If you have an electronic version of the plan exactly as it is to be recorded - in other words, an electronic image showing all necessary signatures and stamps - then email that electronic version to us, preferably as a PDF document.

If you don't have an electronic version, or the one you have doesn't show the needed signatures, then use your phone to take a photo of the plan. Be sure the photo is sufficiently clear for the registry to see the essential elements of the plan (see below for that list), then email the photo to lowelldeeds@comcast.net. We will review the plan as shown in the photo and let you know by reply email whether it is OK to bring it to the Justice Center drop-off box for recording.

Here are the things we require before a plan may be recorded:

1 – That the plan be printed on Mylar

2 – That the plan contain the surveyor’s certification that the plan complies with the rules and regulations of the registry of deeds

3 – That the plan is either (1) approved and signed by the planning board; (2) signed “approval not required” by someone authorized by the town to make that determination; or (3) contain a certification by the surveyor that “no new lines or boundaries are created”

In addition, there should be some kind of book and page or plan book and page reference to the land depicted on the plan so we can determine whether the plan is Recorded Land or Registered Land (and Registered Land plans have additional requirements).

The plan should also contain the name of a person or entity connected with the land and should identify any streets shown on the plan. These entity and street names will be added to our index to assist future researchers in finding the plan.

If you have any questions about this procedure, please email or call us (lowelldeeds@comcast.net or 978-322-9000). 

Week One Wrap Up

Friday (March 27, 2020) marked the end of our first week in the new home of the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds in the Lowell Justice Center. Moving the registry in the midst of the restrictions imposed by the pandemic was a challenge but it went relatively smoothly and we continued recording documents throughout the process. 

Here is where we stand now and going forward until circumstances change. (And remember, circumstances could change for the worse which could cause the shutdown of all but electronic recording or they could change for the better which would mean current health and safety restrictions are eased):

·        Electronic Recording - We continue to accept recorded land documents for recording via our electronic recording system. Prior to the pandemic, this method already handled 65 percent of our recording volume. I assume that most who weren’t using the service a month ago have signed up by now. If you haven’t, you should.

·         Mail - The registry continues to receive documents by US Mail, Fedex and UPS. However, because of health-related restrictions on people entering the building, the carriers are not permitted past the front entrance. Thus far, the Court Officers staffing the security checkpoint have been accepting mail and signing for packages after which registry of deeds personnel go and retrieve it. While this method of delivery has proved reliable thus far, it could change suddenly based on rapidly changing circumstances. If and when that happens, I will share the news on this site.

·         Drop-Off Box - We have placed a drop-off box in the lobby of the Justice Center. This is for those who cannot e-file and who don’t want to mail their documents. For this service, you may come to the Justice Center at 370 Jackson Street, Lowell, enter the lobby, and drop your package in the Registry of Deeds box which sits atop a small pushcart just inside the main entrance to the building. Then you call the registry at 978-322-9000 and tell us you’ve dropped off a document. Then leave the building. Be sure to include a self-addressed stamped envelope so we can mail your original documents back to you (there is no scan-and-return service during the pandemic).  

·         IMPORTANT - Registered Land - If you have registered land documents to register, before dropping them off you MUST email us all of your documents for us to review. Send them to lowelldeeds@comcast.net. Someone in our Registered Land Department will review the documents and email you back, either instructing you to make changes or authorizing you to drop off your documents. (This requirement is due to the frequency with which registered land filings are rejected for defects: we have no way of getting your documents back to you so they have to be correct the first time you present them to us).

·         Coming into the Registry is NOT ALLOWED - No customers are allowed into the Registry of Deeds space. Consequently, many of the services we previously provided are not available during the pandemic shutdown. These include acknowledging signatures (notary service); administering oaths; picking up corporate certificates; conducting research on registry computers; printing plans and documents on registry printers; and anything else that requires in-person presence.

·         Enhanced Virtual Customer Service - During the pandemic and afterwards, we will use technological tools to provide virtual customer service. These tools include our website (lowelldeeds.com); email (lowelldeeds@comcast.net); and the telephone (978-322-9000).

Looking into the future . . . 

Once the restrictions imposed by the pandemic are loosened, we will be delighted to have you see our new space. However, it is quite a bit smaller than our prior home in the Superior Courthouse. That was not a choice; it was a limit set by the building designers from the beginning. Here are some consequences of that:

Closings at the Registry - The common (but diminishing) practice of doing closings at the registry of deeds will be marginally available but not necessarily practical.  At Superior Court, we had a large room filled with tables and chairs (the “closing room”) that made it convenient to conduct closings there. But that was not always the case. When I first became Register of Deeds that room was our Plan Department. It was filled with plan storage cases, reproduction equipment, and four employees worked there. To do closings, lawyers would try to snag one of the tables outside the second floor criminal courtroom or settle on a table amidst are oldest record books in the unfinished courthouse basement.  

When I asked the Justice Center designers about closing rooms, they responded “there are more public conference rooms in this building than in any courthouse ever constructed in the Commonwealth.” That is true, as far as it goes. Each of the 19 courtrooms in the building has two conference rooms immediately outside it. These conference rooms are supposed to be available for anyone to use so a closing could conceivably be conducted in one of them. However, there are some practical problems: the conference rooms are scattered throughout the building and there’s no way to “reserve” one, so only when you get to the building will you be able to find one that you can use to do your closing.

Mailing or Couriering Documents Addressed to a Third Party to the Registry. We have long had a policy to refuse to sign packages brought by UPS, Fedex, or couriers which packages were addressed to a third party in care of the Registry of Deeds. We will not change that policy in the new space. Anyone sending documents in this manner will assume the risk that the package will be refused and returned to the sender. This means that your closing documents could be locked in some Fedex depot when you need them to do your closing. FIND ANOTHER WAY TO RECORD YOUR DOCUMENTS.  

Research/Computer Use at the Registry - All recorded and registered documents and plans are on the Middlesex North portion of the Masslandrecords.com website. If you can’t find what you are looking for there, call us or email and we’ll add what you need to the website (or upload a clearer copy if that’s the issue). Original record books and plans have not been available for public viewing since 2007 (except in rare circumstances). There is no “research room” with registry-supplied computers at the Lowell Justice Center. There are four “run down” terminals that are available solely for pre-recording rundowns. These four computers are directed to the Masslandrecords.com website, not to the legacy Search application. 

That’s it for now. Please check back to this site each day for the latest registry news.