Procedural Best Practices: Record Documents within Two Days of Closing

Best Practice #4: Adopt standard real estate settlement procedures and policies that ensure compliance with Federal and State Consumer Financial Laws as applicable.

To conform to ALTA’s Best Practices, ATG is changing its document recording guidelines: When recording services are provided by you or your search provider, submit or ship all documents to be recorded within two business days of settlement. For refinance transactions, this means submitting the mortgage for recording within two days of the date of disbursement. Further, when documents are rejected for recording, correct those documents immediately and re-send them for recording.

Please contact any search providers that you rely on to handle recordings and notify them of the updated requirement to submit documents for recording within two days of closing. ATG will be implementing this guideline for documents that ATG records, as well.

Lenders occasionally request agents to refrain from recording the mortgage for more than 30 days after closing. When that situation arises, notify the lender of the risks of waiting to record, and obtain a written direction from the lender to keep in the title file. Further, agents must raise the following exception on the Loan Policy of Title Insurance:

Consequences, if any, of the failure to record the insured mortgage on or before 30 days after the borrower took possession of the property.

For more information about bankruptcy risks from delays in recording mortgages, review our previous article, Record Mortgages within Two Days of Closing. Questions? Contact an Underwriter.

Last update: 5-29-13

Posted on: Mon, 04/29/2013 - 9:06am