MARK WAITE / PVT From left, Nye County Recorder Byron Foster discusses the new system with Cow County Title co-owners Tom Arnhart and Cindy Arnhart, Cow County Title escrow officer Ellen Miner and Simplifile Regional Sales Director Joshua Holmes. MARK WAITE / PVT Cow County escrow officer Ellen Miner records a document with the Nye County Recorder's Office using the new electronic system. Advertisement

The fast-paced electronic age of the 21st century has finally arrived at the Nye County recorder's office.

Documents that formerly took a week to be recorded, by being fleeted up to the county seat in Tonopah, can now be recorded in a few minutes courtesy of e-filing.

Employees at Cow County Title Co. boasted they recorded the first title document electronically since the system went on-line Jan. 15. The filing fee is $5 per document.

"We have a big liability. If you submit it to our office down here, that is physically driven up overnight. A lot can happen on that highway," said Tom Arnhart, co-owner of Cow County Title.

Arnhart knows from personal experience about the unpredictable Nevada roadways.

"We had a recording get lost through a Fed-Ex accident in Las Vegas where the truck rolled over on the Spaghetti Bowl and our recording was lost for like two weeks," Arnhart said.

His wife, co-owner Cindy Arnhart, said when they finally received the document, it was damaged by water.

Nye County Recorder Byron Foster, whose campaign platform in 2006 included starting an online system for recording documents, said Federal Express doesn't guarantee overnight delivery to Tonopah either.

"They have been able to submit (documents) here and they are fleeted overnight to our Tonopah office where the county seat is. Now what this does to Cow County or anyone else who has access to the software, very simply they can submit electronically for the documents they want," Foster said.

Nye County commissioners last April budgeted $550,000 for a contract with Tyler Technologies to purchase the Eagle Recorder software program as well as hardware for the system. It also pays for converting 298 rolls of microfilm and 10,150 microfiche jackets of information containing 150,000 documents dating back to 1969 from microfilm to digital. Foster said half of that $550,000 is coming out of the recorder's technology fund, which is funded by a $3 fee charged for recording documents.

Cow County Title employee Cathy Wright recalled the occasional emergency when the company had to hire a courier to get a document recorded in Tonopah in a hurry at a cost of $200.

The first document filed electronically took three minutes to record, Foster said.

"Our goal is to return a document within one hour. We're actually, right now, doing three minutes, but it's a slow time, real estate is slow. Before, to submit a document to us and return it, you're talking anywhere, I think, the quickest may be four days, five, usually a week or longer, just because Tonopah is at the county seat and that's where we do record. So this is a huge benefit for everyone," Foster said.

Foster expects other title companies to subscribe to the system as well.

"We never saw the original. It was all done electronically. That's where your trust relationship comes in. You have to trust the title companies you're dealing with because title companies go under now and then," Foster said.

Title companies, appraisers or any other interested parties can also view documents on line as of Jan. 15. But Foster said currently documents are only posted online dating back to May 29, 2007.

Recorded documents can include deeds of trust, an affidavit terminating joint tenancy, conversion of mobile homes to real property, mechanics liens and judgments. Foster said with the slow state of the real estate business his office is only recording perhaps 40 or 50 documents per day; usually they record about 100.

"We are working on obtaining other documents and getting them online as fast as we can. Today's records will be online tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. It's always one day behind because we have to review our records for redaction, which is Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers and ID numbers," Foster said.

The documents that are printed out from the Internet have a stamp on them as unofficial, since Nevada Revised Statutes require the county recorder's office to charge $1 per page for official documents, Foster said. People who want an official copy can go to the recorder's office, pay the $1 and get the official copy, though he said most people only need an unofficial one.