PRIA Finalizes Indexing Best Practices Paper
May 5, 2015
The Board of Directors of the Property Records Industry Association (PRIA) has finalized its to the "Best Practices: Indexing Names & Parties" paper produced by the Business Processes and Procedures Committee.
According to PRIA, the recorder's property records index exists in a form very similar to a phone book listing. It is the way to find the necessary citation so that a document itself can be retrieved. The document determines whether ownership of property or an interest in the property may have changed and it is the document that must ultimately be evaluated. The index is the tool to locate document.
Typical, statutory requirements for an index are:
- names of the parties to the document
- the date and time of filing or recording
- the document/instrument number (or other location data, such as "book and page"
- the type of document/instrument.
"Over the past 75 years, many recorders adopted practices of adding information to the index,” said PRIA President Mark Ladd, vice president of regulatory and industry affairs for Simplifile. “The recorders did so to make it easier for customers (often individuals in the property records industries) to determine whether they might be interested in reviewing the particular document. Examples of information added to the typical index include: abbreviated legal descriptions, cross-references to related documents or court-case numbers, multiple variations on a name appearing in a document and an ever-expanding category of types of documents."
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