All papers presented in the office for recording must be original document, properly executed, signed, dated, and acknowledged before a Notary Public with the notary's seal, signature, and date of expiration of the commission, before they can be accepted for recording. All recording fees and transfer taxes are payable at the time of recording.
All documents must have a cover page generated from our web site to be submitted for recording. Documents without the cover page will be returned. To register and create this cover page, please visit this web site.
If the necessary requirements have not been met, the document will be rejected for recording until it is corrected. There is a required $5.00 resubmission fee for each time a document is rejected.
NOTE: The recording of any document is NOT an approval of the contents of that document. The Recorder's Office merely records what is presented to us and in no way do we certify that the contents are correct.
NO. You will find only copies of the original documents in the Recorder of Deeds Office. These copies will furnish you with the information that you need to complete your search.
YES. Copies are available for $.25 per page in our office. Certifications are a $5.00 flat fee. Copies are available at no charge from your own computer, as well as certified copies can be obtained by credit card for $5.00.
YES. Sometimes original documents are lost or destroyed and these can be replaced by making certified copies of the recorded papers.
Yes, but you should consult with legal counsel or someone with expertise in this field, such as an attorney or title company. IMPORTANT: Employees of the Recorder of Deeds Office CANNOT and WILL NOT prepare deeds for you.
A certified copy can be obtained from this office or you can purchase one online with a credit card for a fee of $5.00.
This can only be done by recording a new deed showing the change. Once a document or deed is recorded, it cannot be altered or changed in any way. A new deed is needed and can be prepared by an attorney.
Generally, NO, if a property was held jointly by husband and wife as tenants by entireties. If and when the widow/widower sells or mortgages the property, he or she simply explains in the new deed or mortgage that the other spouse is now deceased. Special exceptions could apply because of a particular legal situation. Please consult an attorney with this type of situation.
It is not legally required that she do so. However, again, because of a particular legal situation, it might be desirable to do so. Please consult an attorney with this type of situation.
NO. A deed is binding even if it is not recorded. However, for numerous reasons, it is in your best interest to record it. For example, the former owner could continue to mortgage, or liens could be continued to be entered against the property since records in our office would show that the original owner still has the property in possession.
Usually, the same way a name is changed: by recording a new deed. In this case, it would be known as a "Deed of Correction." Contact the attorney or agency that prepared your deed.
Mortgages are returned to the MORTGAGEE (lender). The Mortgagor is the party receiving the loan and is usually the purchaser of the property being transferred. The original mortgage will eventually be returned to the mortgagor by the mortgagee when final payment is made to the lender, and after a satisfaction piece has been recorded in our office.
A document called a Mortgage Satisfaction Piece is recorded in our office. All of the information on this document must match the mortgage exactly.
This action must be initiated by the mortgagee. The mortgagee may, however, send the actual forms to you. Upon making your final payment in this type of situation, contact your lender to see how it will be handled.
Bring in the satisfaction to our office for recording with the correct fee.
The mortgage is not required to be submitted with a satisfaction.
There is a state tax and a municipal tax, each amounting to one percent of the value of the property or interest being conveyed. IMPORTANT: This is not necessarily the sales price.
Traditionally, the payment is split with one party paying the one percent to the state and the other party paying one percent to the municipality/school district. However, this would be part of the contractual agreement between parties and does not relieve either party from the responsibility for payment of the tax under state law.
YES. Conveyances between husband and wife, parent and child, grandparent and grandchild, and brothers and sisters are exempt. There are also other exemptions that are allowed in certain situations. It is best to consult an attorney to find out what these exemptions are. Non-profit corporations are not tax-exempt and therefore in most cases the transaction is taxable.
This is a specific form that is used either to set the value of the property being conveyed or to give reason for exemption. To obtain one of these form click here. The statement of value MUST be fully completed as required by the Department of State.
It is required anytime the transfer tax is not paid or anytime the true value of the land is not shown on the deed (such as in the $1.00 consideration). State investigators then check the property and see if the value is as stated or if the reason given for exemption is valid.
This occurs when the state investigator determines that the property being sold is worth more than the stated value OR if the reason for exemption is invalid.
A "Determination" is sent directly to you by the Pennsylvania State Department of Revenue. The additional state tax and interest are paid to them and they, in turn, issue a receipt to our office. Normally, a matching amount of municipal tax is also due. This is paid by bringing the original deed to the Recorder's office with a check for that amount. The office will them affix the state receipt. The deed is then re-recorded for the usual fees.
A deed that was recorded with husband and wife holding title can be transferred to either ex-spouse and is exempt from transfer tax. However, if the ex-spouse has remarried and the transfer is to the ex-spouse and his or her new spouse, there will be a transfer tax of 25 percent of the two percent transfer tax. (1% local and 1% state.)
The Recorder of Deeds is one of the oldest offices in the country. It was started on May 10, 1729, the same year Lancaster was officially chartered as a county. At that time, Lancaster County was under the administration of Patrick Gordon, Governor of the Colony of Pennsylvania. Prior to founding, Lancaster County was a part of Chester County.
Documents were brought in to the office to be recorded. They were copied into a large volume, assigned a book and page number, and copied by hand so a copy could be kept in the office. Examples of this type of recording are available in the county's Archives department.
This method of recording lasted for many years, and deeds were eventually copied by typing, rather than by writing. This is how official records were maintained from 1729 until 1965.
The first step of modernization took place when deed records from 1916 to 1958 were recorded on 16mm film an placed in jackets for easy retrieval and viewing.
On April 4, 1977, the Recorder's Office moved from the basement of the original courthouse and relocated into the expanded quarters in the newly completed courthouse. The county's Archives department is now located in the old Recorder's Office. In November of 2009, the office moved again to the old Armstrong building at 150 N. Queen St in Lancaster City. The building is now home to the Lancaster County Government Center.
Eventually, the Office completely converted from books to microfilm in January 1983. Since there was a backlog of 1,1416,000 pages, incoming work was simultaneously filmed with the records currently in books. As the work was filmed, the camera would automatically imprint a sequence retrieval mark, or "blip" on every image.
The Office's 15,000 subdivision plans were also converted to microfilm in 1983. These are mylar maps of the housing developments in Lancaster County. The format for this called an aperture card.
Computerization came to the Recorders Office in 1966 via a rather large and noisy machine called a flexowriter. As the information was typed on special forms called a "Master Index Record" or "MIR," it simultaneously keypunched the data onto a seven-channel paper tape. Every seven to ten days, the "MIR's" and the paper tape, which sometimes measured thousands of feet, were mailed to an outside vendor for processing. At the end of each calendar year, a new computer write, alphabetized, permanent index replaced the temporary sheets and "MIR's."
Prior to 1977, these records were found in 124 cumbersome books. Now, all books have been filmed and placed in smaller, lighter, plastic binders.
Eventually, the flexowriter was replaced with video terminals. In 1984, the Office converted into a new format called Computer Output Microfilm, or COM. Instead of storing data on paper tape, we were able to store it on magnetic tape, and from this, we produced the microfiche cards. These cards contained the same amount of information as the books, but weighed only a few ounces.
More changes came in January, 1987 when the Office combined the separate indices of deeds and mortgages into a single index titled "Direct" and "Indirect." This allowed the public to find a book references more quickly and efficiently.
Then, on August 14, 1991, the Office achieved another accomplishment that provided even greater access to our documents. All the indexing information since 1984 was placed on a live data base. This encompasses about two million lines! Since then, the years 1981 to 1983 have become a part of the data base as well.
On August 13, 2001, the Recorders Office implemented Tyler Technology's product CRIS+plus. With this system, information is typed into a computer system. The document is paid for at this point, and a bar code is generated for individual page of a document. Documents are no longer assigned book and page numbers, but rather document numbers.
Next, documents are then scanned into a database. The computer reads the barcodes and the documents enter a queue to be indexed. After entering this queue, documents are then indexed off of the scanned images.
Microfilm is no longer made for public viewing, but rather the documents recorded under this new system are viewed on a computer screen, and can be printed out for a fee.
In August of 2009, we implemented a new recording vendor, RecordFusion, and their recording software, CountyFusion, and became the first county in the country to implement front-end recording, where documents are first scanned, and then recorded from the resulting images.
Under this system is the SearchDocs web site, which allows documents to be searched online. Documents recorded under this new system are available for viewing online as well.
With the RecordFusion system, documents are scanned up front before they are recorded. All documents have a cover sheet with a barcode and recording information is returned immediately to the submitter via e-mail.
One recent achievement of the Recorder's Office is the implementation of electronic recording. With this system, documents are sent to the office electronically. All recording requirements would have to be present, including the document image, a digital signature and a digital notary. Large batches of documents could be processed in seconds with a few key strokes on a computer, rather than the extensive procedure of recording manually. Lancaster County is one of a handful of counties in the country using this innovative new technology. For more information, please visit Ingeo Systems, Inc. and Simplifile.
We also have scanned in all of our subdivision plans previously using and the Oce' system and all plans are currently available in the RecordFusion system.
