The paperless real estate transaction

Selling real estate in medieval England was less cumbersome than it is today. Back then, the buyer and the seller would travel to the parcel where the seller would pick up a twig and hand it to the buyer, symbolizing the transfer of ownership.

As writing became more widespread, these transactions were memorialized on paper. Eventually, the writing completely replaced the ceremony on the land.

That’s where things stand today, but that’s about to change. Conveying real estate in Massachusetts is heading back to its paperless roots although there are no twigs involved, only computers.

Electronic document recording allows an authorized submitter to transmit to the registry of deeds the scanned image of a document which is then recorded by the registry in a matter of seconds. We’ve been testing this system in Lowell and have recorded more than 5000 documents this way. It is now spreading to other registries and within two years, more than 50% of all real estate recordings should be done electronically. If a paperless transaction worked satisfactorily in 1300, there’s no reason why it can’t work today.