ON THE ROAD
WITH TONY...

Welcome to our May newsletter!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend, with a chance to remember all those who fought to preserve our freedoms!

Members of our Clerk's Office staff participated in this year's St. Clair Shores Memorial Day Parade, paying tribute to our veterans, and getting the word out about the 9-Day "Early In-Person Voting" option for the upcoming August Primary and November General Elections.  It is that very freedom our veterans sought to protect.

We are also providing an update to our “Tract Indexing Project,” a new, more streamlined way for Macomb County residents, real estate agents, title companies and local municipalities to do business with the Register of Deeds department. The project, spear-headed by our Chief Deputy Register of Deeds Jennifer Walker, is rolling along and headed toward completion. See article below.

Also, our Fraud Notify system is now helping to protect over 7,500 Macomb County residents. Participants are notified via email when a Macomb County real estate document is recorded in their name. Please see our video feature on how easy it is to set up your Fraud Notify alerts.

The Clerk’s Office’s “Tract Indexing Project,” a new, more streamlined way for Macomb County residents, real estate agents, title companies and local municipalities to do business with the Register of Deeds department, is rolling along and headed toward completion.

Macomb County, the third largest county in the state, currently records over 100,000 documents each year and stores over 9 million records in our free online search system.

When Clerk Forlini first took office a little over three years ago, he was amazed that Clerk's Office Register of Deeds customers could only look up property by the name of the owner and not by address. Clerk Forlini empowered Deputy Register of Deeds Jennifer Walker to come up with a streamlined process to have multiple methods of looking up properties (address, physical location, lot numbers, documents, etc.).

In the past it cost $250,000 a year to contract a company to do the indexing for us. At the pace the project was going, it would have taken 38 years to fully index our 9 million plus documents.

“It can be difficult to find documents related to a specific piece of property,” Deputy Walker explained, “Complete property information is not always available or accurate on the documents we receive. Many times, residents must perform multiple searches tracing ownership to find documents related to a single piece of property."

As a result, Deputy Walker came up with an innovative idea that attempts to solve the issue that recording requirements are based on names and not specific information about the property itself. Her idea was to use technology to shrink the cost and time.

"We estimate that the county will save approximately $11 million real dollars and decades in its implementation," Clerk Forlini explained. "That doesn’t include the millions saved in the private sector as we will provide a service that will cut the time it takes to do their research. This will offer a tremendous value to homeowners, real estate agents and title companies."

FREE Fraud Notify Helps Protect Your Real Estate Assets

The Clerk's Office "Fraud Notify" service is a simple way to be notified of possible fraud.

Participants will be notified via email when a Macomb County real estate document is recorded in their name.

There are now over 7,500 Macomb County residents signed up for the service.

You can sign up for "Fraud Notify" alerts and help protect your Macomb County real estate! Click on the link below to participate:

• LAUNCH Fraud Notify
• CLICK HERE to play video