Technology and Commercial Real Estate: Part 3 Online Visits to the County Courthouse

By Bill Adams, President, MBA, CCIM, CRB, ALC

By Carsonmc at English Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10546555

This is the third installment in the series on how technology has changed Commercial Real Estate.

One of my favorite training sessions with new agents was the field trip to the record room at the county courthouse. In Georgia, real estate instruments are filed with and recorded by the County Clerk of the Superior Court. The record room is a treasure trove of real estate information. Every transaction has a Warranty Deed, sometimes a Limited Warranty Deed, and or a Quit Claim Deed transferring the title of a property from a Seller to a Purchaser. If the owner of a property is an estate, the transfer of ownership will take place via an Executor’s or Executrix’s Deed. If there is a mortgage on a property, a Deed to Secure Debt will be recorded by the Clerk of the Superior Court. Any liens or easements affecting the property are recorded at the courthouse.

If you needed a property’s legal description, to look for any encumbrances, or determine the actual owner of a property, a trip to the courthouse was in order. A special treat was overhearing the conversations of the “Deed Dogs.”  These folks are regulars in the record room performing title searches for real estate closing attorneys. Those conversations may range from the latest Atlanta sports team’s failures to politics to affairs of the heart.

A few years ago, the Georgia Superior Court Clerk’s Authority, The Clerks Authority, developed a website that would allow subscribers to search for real estate records at courthouses all over the State. The website https://www.gsccca.org, allows you to search for filings from the comfort of your office or home. You can print the information you find at your desk. Thus, there is no travel time to the courthouse, no exorbitant parking fees, no search for a copier, and no printing costs. I love technology and enjoy the efficiency of the clerk’s website. I do, however, miss the “cultural” experience of a field trip to the courthouse and being able to eavesdrop on those great conversations in the record room. It is yet another example of the price we pay for speed and convenience these days.