eRecording Fundamentals: Innovative and Practical Real Estate Solutions

Disclaimer: Please be advised that this recorded webinar has been edited from its original format, which may have included a product demo. To set up a live demo or to request more information, please complete the form to the right. Or if you are currently not on CSC Global, there is a link to the website in the description of this video. Thank you.

Caitlin: Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's webinar, "eRecording Fundamentals: An Innovative Real Estate Solution." My name is Caitlin Alaburda, and I will be your moderator today.

Joining us today are Musa Khan and Andrew Singleton. Musa is a national account manager for the Electronic Document Recording eRecording Division of CSC, based out of Wilmington, Delaware. He's been with CSC for more than five years and is dedicated to CSC's eRecording program, and his daily workflow includes onboarding submitters to use CSC's eRecording digital tools and new client acquisition. Andrew is a sales engineer in the Real Estate Services Group at CSC. Since joining CSC in 2015, Andrew has held several roles in the Real Estate Group, including sales representative and team leader, where he provided onboarding and service delivery for submitters using ePrepare, CSC's eRecording solution to reduce risk, document rejection, and processing time across a document's life cycle.

And with that, I'd like to welcome Andrew and Musa.

Andrew: Thank you, Caitlin, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today on our eRecording webinar. A little bit before we get started on eRecording is a little bit about CSC. We are the world's leading provider of business administration and compliance solutions. We're a global organization. We have presence in five continents. We have expertise and capabilities in more than 140 jurisdictions worldwide. We employ more than 8,000 employees throughout the world. We're also the trusted partner of choice for more than 90% of the Fortune 500 companies, more than 90% of the 100 Best Global Brands, more than 70% of the PEI 300, and we service in a variety of forms more than 10,000 law firms. So in short, our tagline is "we are the business behind the business." And anything that you need, CSC can provide for you.

And then speaking to those services, this next slide provides a breakdown of the various services that CSC as a whole provides. We provide business administration and compliance services, fund solutions, transactions and lending, capital markets, and domain security and brand protection. So there, again, CSC is a trusted partner of choice for a large portion of organizations throughout the world. And anything that you need, CSC can do for you.

Musa: Now the age-old question, why CSC for eRecording services? CSC was established in the year 1899. In fact, we celebrated 125 years of service this year. We provide a plethora of services to various companies across the globe, as Andy had alluded to in the previous slide.

Now our services, they span across multiple industries throughout the globe. Now the main services that we offer include business, legal, tax, and digital brand services. And as I did mention, for over a century we've brought immense value to the marketplace. We are popularly also referred to as the business behind business. And our commitment to excellence is the driving force that allows us to continue to thrive decade after decade.

And specifically for eRecording, we were the first ones in the market to bring eRecording and continue to provide value to our customers through the service. And year after year, CSC has provided world-class customer service and support to our clients. Service is our middle name, and customer success is at the heart of our approach to business.

Musa: Okay. So looking at today's agenda, we're going to be discussing market trends and insights, going over the eRecording basics, and also discuss notable county activations, a little bit about our comprehensive Real Estate services, paper recording, and also another additional service that CSC offers, which is the UCC service. There will be a question (sic) for Q&A and a product demo at the end.

Andrew: All right. So on this slide, we're going to review and take a look at market trends and insights. The majority of these numbers are Q1 this year versus Q1 in 2023. And this can provide all of us on the call insight as to where things are going in our industry and the real estate businesses in general.

Total mortgage origination, in terms of dollars, was 13.2% increase from '23 to '24. Purchase originations increased 9%. Refi origination dollars increased 30.3%. And the current 30-year FRM, 7.23% as opposed to 6.88%, so about a third of a percentage point increase year-over-year.

Home sales, the total home sales is down 2.2% from Q1 '23 to this year. Existing home sales down 3.2%. New home sales, so new construction has an increase of 4.5%. Then the median home price is a little over $385,000, which is up by a little over 5% over Q1 '23 at $366,000, pushing $367,000. Unsold inventory increased as well, over 1.2 million.

As it relates to economic relations, the 10-year treasury yield is currently 4.3%, pushing 4.35% as of about a month ago, the beginning of June. This time last year it was about 3.7%. And unemployment changed a little bit. It says 3.9%, but as of July 1, now it's actually increased slightly more to 4.1%, whereas it was almost 3.5% Q1 of last year.

So all this are indicators of where things are going in our world, in the real estate world, and where things stood a year ago and where things are going now. And as we all know, the real estate industry is cyclical. The highs are highs, the lows are lows, and it's a constant roller coaster so to speak. And we're kind of in middle of that right now, so.

So are here are some eRecording basics for those of you unfamiliar with eRecording and perhaps you're considering transitioning your processes over to the eRecording methods. As Musa alluded to earlier, in an earlier slide, we were the first to market eRecording, way back in 2002. We did that in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania was the first eRecorded document.

A wide variety of entity types eRecord with CSC. The traditional lenders, mortgage lenders and mortgage servicers, title companies, law firms, and many other entity types transmit documents over our secure web-based network to county recorders nationwide. Also government agencies, what we call G2G, conduct their electronic recording transactions through CSC as well.

As it stands right now, CSC's network covers a little more than 90% of the U.S. population. We're in approximately 2,500 counties in the country. Roughly there's 3,600 counties nationwide. So you may look at that and hear that and say, "Wow, there's 1,100 counties that are not eRecording." But there's 2,500 that do. It encompasses a little over 90% of the U.S. population.

eRecording provides you with the ability to eRecord much more quickly, securely, efficiently, and in most cases there's cost benefits to it on your end. It's real easy to eRecord and set up an account with us. And it's also an ALTA best practice endorsed by the CFPB.

And as I mentioned earlier, we have over 10,000 customers using our ePrepare system, our eRecording platform. And it's, again, all different types of entities, from the largest banks in the world, that control a lot of the mortgage origination that goes on, to all the primary underwriters, their agencies and their agents use us for eRecording as well. So we have great relationships with all the major title underwriters, and many of the bigger, larger banks in the country use our eRecording service as well. So it's a great product that we offer, and we certainly stand behind our platform. And it's true and tried and tested. And there, again, many of the largest organizations in the country use our eRecording system.

Musa: So let's talk a little bit more about eRecording basics. There's two main ways to electronically record your documents. And just to kind of pull back a little bit and look at eRecording at its core, this is basically like a secure bridge that allows the submitter to quickly and effectively transmit documents directly to the recorder's office without worrying about any county requirements or how you're going to pay for it because CSC fronts all the costs.

So looking at the two main types of electronic recording, there's the mainstream eRecording, which is also referred to as Level 2, for all document types. So in a nutshell, you will have the ability to scan and upload your document as either a PDF or a TIF image into our system. And as I mentioned, the system has all the requirements built into it. If you do have any additional documentation in terms of supporting documentation that you would need to upload with say your instrument, like a deed or a mortgage, you will be prompted to do so. You will also be prompted to input any data items, also referred to as indexing in a package. And then also not worry about cutting a check. CSC fronts all the costs once the documents get recorded. And then once everything is taken care of in terms of document recordation, all the fees are reconciled into an invoice and then transmitted back to the submitter for reconciliation.

There's also another way to prepare documents specifically for your mortgage lien releases and assignments. It would work very similarly in terms of how you would create a package. But the place where it actually changes is that you will have the ability to generate a lien release. CSC has templates for all 3,600 or so jurisdictions for both releases and assignments throughout the country. You input your data. You generate the lien release. You will have the ability to also digitally sign and notarize those documents and transmit to the counties directly. And as I mentioned, for all 3,600 or so or for all 50 states, CSC has all the templates available for you, both for commercial and residential.

Andrew: Mention real quick, if I can just add another component to the lien release to the Level 3 eRecording, you have the ability in our system to there again use the templates that Musa referenced. And you can go in and render the document. So you can enter in all the data using those templates to complete your release or assignment. But perhaps it's not an eRecording county, where we have the data, we have the completed release or assignment, but we need to get it recorded. So you have the ability to do that within our system, print out the document, wet sign it, wet notarize it, and then at that point go about traditional methods to get it recorded, whether it be mailing it, sending it out in the mail, or as we will get to in another slide, in a future slide, we have a team in Tallahassee that does full-service recording. So in theory you could send it down to our team in Tallahassee, and they'll take care of getting it recorded for you too.

There again, that's something that we'll speak to on another slide, but taking advantage of while I'm here with Musa on this on this slide, if you're a bank or a financial institution that's recording lien releases and assignments in bulk especially, our Level 3 would certainly be highly beneficial to you. It provides you a lot of different ways and mechanisms to streamline your processes.

Musa: Thanks, Andy. Now let's look at what happens after the documents get recorded. Now after you submit the documents, they're at the recorder's office. They get recorded. You can set notifications that your document has been recorded. Immediately after the county recorder's office records the document, they transmit those packages back to the submitter, and you should be easily able to access it, review it in a neatly set dashboard.

And then, of course, the next step in the process is to make sure that everything in terms of accounting is handled. There are nightly reports that get generated and go out to all of our submitters. These reports have all the necessary information that you would need to know in terms of recording information, any fees, all the totals, etc. And then the following day, after your documents get recorded, CSC would reconcile any amounts using the payment method on file.

And one thing to know, that I typically allude to this while interacting with all of my clients, is that the miracle of eRecording is that your documents will never get rejected for your check being off a certain dollar amount. In the past, we've heard of situations where counties immediately reject a package for the check being a dollar off, whether it was over or under. So you will never have your packages rejected or your documents rejected for your check being off because CSC basically works with the counties and we work hard in the background to make sure that the fees are accurately represented, not only within the system but also accurately paid to the county recorders as well.

Andrew: And if I can just add real quick, Musa, the security component of eRecording. So with the counties using a PDF or TIF image that's being sent to the submitter, the original wet-signed document is remaining in our submitter's possession. So there's no chance to lose it, for example in the mail. The original wet-signed document is remaining in the possession of the submitter at all times. So that's another added component, if you will, for those of you not already eRecording is that you'll never have to . . . I personally have heard from a lot of people that have lost their documents in the mail, whether on transit to the courthouse or in return. So that's certainly a component that can and has happened. But with eRecording that won't.

There's that human element on the county's end. When it's electronically submitted, it lands in their recording queue, and the clerks are reviewing them as they come in on a first come, first served basis. So that's another feature to discuss while we here is simply the security aspect of eRecording.

So on this slide we're going to discuss some of the additional features available within our ePrepare system. First and foremost, when we go live at the county, they tell us all of their requirements, what their sizing requirements are, what their margin requirements are, and things like that. Any indexing that may be required, depending on the document itself, is made known to us, and we develop that into our ePrepare system. If there's tips that we've learned over the years with particular jurisdictions, we embed that into our ePrepare system. Forms that have to be completed, we provide links to do so. So there's a lot of knowledge within our ePrepare system. And from what we hear, it's very user friendly, and those extra added components help to facilitate that.

We have image utility tools. So when you go to upload a document, maybe someone signed in blue ink, for example, and it's a little faded, in the scanning process we have image utility tools that allow you to, for lack of a better term, clean up the document. You can darken certain aspects of the document or the document in itself. Maybe someone spilled a cup of coffee on the document. We have the ability to remove stains and things like that from the document. Those image utility tools allow you to clean up the document as needed. You may have clean, crisp documents and may never need to use those tools, but they're there for you in the event that you do.

We have a submitter support team that's available 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Monday through Friday Eastern time, and they're available through a number of methods. You can live chat with our support team right through ePrepare. And then the phone number to give them a call. You could do that as well. You have the ability to email our support team right through ePrepare as well.

As I alluded to in the previous slide, there's a human element that's in play on the eRecording on the county side. When a document gets delivered, the county clerks are reviewing them as they come in and processing them accordingly. If they reject a document for a particular reason, they're going to hand key the reason for that rejection. And when it comes back to you, you'll be able to see their note or their explanation as to why they rejected it. That way you can go in there, right back into that package, prepare it for resubmission, make the necessary corrections and adjustments, and get it resubmitted in a timely fashion.

We have a county knowledge page or link within ePrepare that you can do a number of things or add a number of things to as you see fit for your organization.

We have email notifications. So not only can you and your users set up their own email preferences to be notified of any and all statuses and have TIF or PDF images attached in those emails, but you can also loop in your clients. So if you have their email addresses, you can loop them in the notification cycle as well so they too will receive an email notification of the outcome of their document and a PDF or TIF image attached to that email as well.

And for those of you that do large volume, we have a wide variety of integrated services that we can do. We can do custom integrations for those of you that are using various title software that's out there in the market, SoftPro, RamQuest, ResWare to name a few. We have integrations with those title softwares as well. But there again, we have custom integrations that we can do for those of you that are doing bulk volume to help expedite your process and streamline your process even further.

Musa: Ever since the adoption of eRecording in 2002, and now, of course, it's being widely used across multiple industries, we've come a long way in terms of county coverage. I think it's become more of a need, and that's why more and more counties are now switching to eRecording because it's easier for them as well to receive documents.

Currently CSC has nearly 2,400 counties active in our network across the United States and the U.S. territories. And our coverage includes over 90% of the U.S. population. As you can see on your slide, some notable county activations for 2024 include Madison, Mississippi nearly 100,000 people, Sutter, California 95,000, Dekalb, Alabama, Lonoke, Arkansas, and Harden, Texas.

And one thing of note to mention is the state of Vermont, which is the only state that has yet to adopt eRecording. And Andy, I believe you would like to chime in on this. I believe there's some legislation out there that has passed.

Andrew: There is. Yep, there is. There's legislation that's being discussed currently in Vermont. They're closing in on finalizing it and dotting the i's and crossing the t's so to speak. So those of you that have a need to record in Vermont, it's coming. It'll be there soon. We don't have an ETA. As you know, it's government and government doesn't necessarily always expedite things. But having said that, they're proverbially turning third base and heading home. And we anticipate that they'll be going live soon, and then we'll be able to close up the entire nation at that point.

And if I can just add real quick, 2,400 counties, 90% of the U.S. population. Just a quick note. When I first started, back in 2015, we had a little over 800 counties. So we more than tripled or we just about tripled our county coverage in, what, nine years or so. So not only do we have our eRecording support team, but we also have a team that works with the counties, those that are remaining kind of on the fence on eRecording. We're in constant communication with those counties and those jurisdictions to get them to adopt eRecording and transition into a electronic method as well. So just because they're not eRecording now doesn't necessarily mean that they won't in the future. And you can rest assured that CSC will do all we can to get them on board.

All right. On this slide, we're going to discuss our comprehensive solutions from our eRecording system. Not only can you eRecord, but you can do a number of other things within our ePrepare system.

First and foremost, we have full-service lien release processing. For those of you that are recording releases or satisfactions of mortgages, we have the ability to provide borrower notification letters.

As I mentioned earlier, we have custom email notifications. So not only do we have or provide the ability for your customers to receive just a generic email notification that their documents have been recorded, but we can also customize it to where it includes anything that you want, your letterhead, all of your information to where it looks as if it's coming from your organization.

We also provide property search services. And for those of you in those handful of counties throughout the West and Midwest that require this, we have eTrustee services. And then we have a fee calculator. We have the ability to calculate all fees for any and all document types, no matter the jurisdiction.

Musa: So we also offer a full-service lien release processing option that our submitters can leverage to basically outsource the lien release process to CSC. Just to paint the picture or give all of our viewers a better understanding of how this works, the submitter, the customer can place the order for CSC to prepare and/or record the lien release. Either the documents are sent in to us already prepared, or we could also help prepare the releases as well.

Now the order can be created either by using the original instrument or by inputting some data items which are necessary for the release to be prepared. And if by chance you do not have the security instrument, we also offer search services or also known as property search services that Andy mentioned earlier, which we're also going to talk about that in a bit more detail later in the presentation.

The lien release processing is available for all recording jurisdictions. And wherever possible, we will eRecord or electronically record the documents. Otherwise, we'll just mail them out to the correct county. And as always, CSC fronts all the recording fees and if applicable any taxes as well. And once everything is recorded, you're easily able to track all the documents within the ePrepare dashboard.

All right. So this is an example of the borrower notification letter, an additional add-on real estate service that we offer. So every time a release is prepared or a mortgage is satisfied for I would say any of your customers, especially for lenders, I'm sure that a letter is prepared, which goes out to your customer, where you notify them your mortgage has been satisfied. CSC offers the BNL or the borrower notification letter service.

So whenever you prepare the release within our Level 3 eRecording system, you'll have the option to hit a dropdown. And basically it's a simple question. Would you like for this borrower notification letter to be prepared and sent out to the customer? And if you hit Yes, a notification goes out to our team in Tallahassee, Florida, which basically already would have a template of what you would want to go out to your customer. So they prepare a very I would say neatly prepared letter, for a lack of better term. And I believe a copy of the release as well as this letter will go out to your customer in print form. Very I would say good for a lot of customers that are looking to free up some time, and this task can be handled by CSC for a lot of our lending clients.

Andrew: This slide discusses our custom emails, as I mentioned in previous slides. There again, you have the ability to send custom emails to your clients once their documents have been recorded. This is what it look like. We have a traditional one, and then we have one that you can customize to include your letterhead and certain things from your organization or your business that you would want to include. And then when checked off, they too, the customer, your customer would also receive a PDF or TIF image attached to that email as well. So for those of you that are waiting for documents come back to you and then you've got to print them out and you've got to mail them to your clients, or you have to wait for them to come into the office to give them a hard copy of their recorded document, if you have their email address, this will kind of take or replace that backend process for you. There again, with the mind or the goal being of helping you to streamline your processes through the life cycle of your recording process.

All right. On this slide, we're going to discuss our property search services, just a quick review if you will of our property search services. There again, it's all within ePrepare. So the same account that you go into to prepare your documents for eRecording, there would be a link up at the top there for property searches. And through our property search, you could search through a number of mechanisms, whether it be the address, the owner, or by APN.

We can provide summary reports, detailed reports. And in some jurisdictions, we have the ability to pull in images of the last financial document or transfer document. So long as the county provides or has made that accessible, we have that ability to pull it into ePrepare for you and to provide you a transaction history as well, recordation data, an abbreviated legal description, things like that. And within it, we provide an availability report. Not all states, not all counties within those states make their data available, and that availability report will outline by state which counties this service is available for and what reports or images are available for each one of those counties.

Musa: So let's discuss our eTrustee services, which is part of our eRecording suite of services. There I believe are 10 states currently that require a third-party trustee to sign and notarize a release. And CSC is partnered with a trustee servicer that is able to legally sign as a trustee.

Now just to paint the picture for all of our viewers, whenever you're using or utilizing our Level 3 eRecording system, the document type that you can use to prepare the release is called a subreconveyance, which as I mentioned is available in our Level 3 eRecording platform. In that template, you will have the option to again hit a dropdown and select whether you want the document to be transmitted for third-party trustee services. And automatically, once you hit Yes and once the document is submitted, it's routed to the servicer, which they then sign and notarize the document, and then immediately go ahead and transmit it for recording to the county recorder's office. So all in all, I would say a pretty easy process, with just one dropdown, but it handles a very, I would say, important part of the document submission process, especially when it comes to releases.

I think the last slide kind of talks a little bit about what states the service is available in, so Arkansas, Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. So if you're joining from any of these states, I think this is something that would definitely assist you.

When submitting documents, I believe it's very important to have accurate fees paid out to the county recorder's office. We've had situations where if customers have submitted documents through the traditional paper method, their documents have been rejected because the check was off a dollar or two. So that kind of speaks to the importance of having accurate county recording fees calculated prior to submitting the documents or the package to the counties.

We've recently incorporated the county fee calculation estimator feature. This enables our submitters to input some data points to basically be able to retrieve accurate county recording fees prior to submitting their documents. And the availability is for all doc types. And again, it's state and county specific. And with a subscription to this feature, which either could be yearly or monthly, you'll have unlimited access to pull county recording fees and taxes for various document types.

Andrew: Okay. So on this slide, we're going to discuss our paper recording services. So as Musa and I have touched base on in previous slides, it's CSC's ability and our ability on the Recording team to provide a suite of full-service capabilities when it comes to recording. And we have a team in Tallahassee, Florida that provides paper recording services.

So we have submitters that they just don't want to have to worry about anything. They execute the documents on their end, and they just want to say, "CSC, here you guys take care of it." And you can mail your documents down to our team in Tallahassee, and they'll get them recorded for you. They'll either eRecord your documents through any jurisdictions that accept eRecording. And then if any don't accept eRecording, they'll go ahead and overnight those documents to the respective county recording offices to get processed. And then they'll return everything back to you. They'll upload the recorded images into your ePrepare system, so you'll have immediate access to those recorded images. And then they'll mail back the originals and the recorded instruments back to you through traditional mailing methods.

So this really just cuts right to the heart of CSC's ability to provide full-service capabilities within our eRecording ecosystem. When it comes to releases and satisfactions and some of the other services that Musa and I have talked about, you can prepare your documents in ePrepare, your releases and assignments, and then you can choose to have CSC take it from there and get them recorded for you as well. So a number of different variations where our team in Tallahassee can come into play and help expedite your process and streamline your process even further.

Musa: CSC also provides another service that oftentimes can go hand in hand with the eRecording process when it comes to real estate transactions, and that is our UCC service. I think it's important for us to mention or touch up a little bit about our UCC services. A lot of times there's overlap, where some of our submitters who record at the county level would also need to file UCC documents at the state level as well. With this service, our customers can search, they can file, monitor, as well as track UCCs. Everything that's related to the full UCC processing cycle, CSC can definitely handle.

So if you do have an interest or a need for UCC services, either as standalone or in addition to our eRecording services, feel free to let us know. We're happy to help. There's a web link also posted at the end of the slide, which you can definitely access. And we'll be more than happy to put you in contact with our great team over there on the UCC side.