New county service keeps a virtual eye on property changes
Sep 14, 2020 15h05 ● By Cassie Goff
Salt Lake County protects all property records for residents. (Salt Lake County Recorder’s Office/Leslie Reberg)
By Cassie Goff | [email protected]
Property Watch is a new service provided by the Salt Lake County Recorder’s office which allows residents to keep track of any recorded changes to their property. Once an address and associated email is submitted to the Property Watch portal, residents will receive ongoing email notifications for any recorded documents related to the property.
“If you provide an address and email for your property, you will be contacted and notified when you get anything on your property,” said Salt Lake County Recorder’s Office Chief Deputy Rasehelle Hobbs. “Rest assured that your contact information will not be distributed and will only be used to communicate Property Watch information.”
One of the goals for Property Watch is to help educate the public on document types and common terminology used for the recordation of documents that may or may not affect their property.
Documents which will elicit an email notification include: Assignment of a Mortgage, Affidavit, Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure, Lien, Lis Pendens Notice, Mortgage, Quit Claim Deed, Reconveyance of Trust Deed, Release of Mortgage, Subordination, Trust Deed, Trustee’s Deed, Special Warranty Deed and Warranty Deed.
“The power of Property Watch is that you’re able to stay notified. It’s empowering,” Hobbs said. “It’s a powerful and useful service to help protect ownership.”
For example, Title Companies are telling their customers about the service so they can be notified when their transaction is recorded into the Recorder’s Office. In addition, it allows residents to get a quicker response time on derogatory recordings such as liens filed on their property.
Property Watch can also be a helpful tool for families as it “allows family to watch the status of their elderly and vulnerable family members for the protection of their property,” Hobbs said.
On Aug. 4, Hobbs presented an overview of the new service to the Cottonwood Heights City Council during their work session meeting. So far, there have been 301 registrants from Cottonwood Heights, but “we would love to spread the word to the community,” Hobbs said.
Signing up for Property Watch can be done from the Salt Lake County Recorder’s website. When signing up for Property Watch, addresses must be submitted and selected from the drop-down box. After selecting an address, the Parcel Number will automatically populate below. Make sure to select the correct parcel number as some addresses have more than one parcel attached to it.
Once signed up, email alerts will come from [email protected], so make sure those emails aren’t automatically filtered into a spam folder.