Laurinburg, NC-L. Page Pratt III, Register of Deeds for Scotland County, announced today that his office has implemented Cott Systems PropertyCheck to help protect county residents from potential property and mortgage fraud. The service is a 24/7 service that allows residents to sign up on the county’s website to receive notifications of recordings on their property by activating alerts based on their name. There is no cost to county residents to participate.
The county has been working in partnership with Cott Systems to help make residents a little safer when it comes to their properties and online security. “Records in many states are made available for viewing online at no cost or sometimes for a fee, which makes it easier to track recordings on your property, but it does require persistence and, in some cases, costs the taxpayer for access”, said Cott Systems. “This solution eliminates the time associated with doing a search on your name or property by alerting the resident by email or text message when a document has been recorded that matches the alerts that they activated.“
Scotland County, Register of Deeds Page Pratt explains, “last year we had a situation with an out of town law firm using the wrong names in a deed. With PropertyCheck, this situation wouldn’t have been stopped, but the affected people would have known about it sooner and been able to start working on resolving the situation. With the prevalence of identity theft, this service is another way for people to monitor parts of their lives that are sometimes out of sight, out of mind.”
County residents can sign up for Cott PropertyCheck alerts at the Register of Deeds’ page on the County’s website at: http://www.scotlandcounty.org/
The Register of Deeds is a vital part of the history, community and economy of Scotland County. The Register's office was created along with the rest of the new county in 1900. Since then it has preserved vital records for the citizens of the county.
As the current Registrar, Page Pratt is the seventh citizen to serve in this role. The fact that there have been so few Registrars speaks to the level of commitment and experience that each brought to the position. Mr. Pratt hopes to continue to provide the high level of professionalism, service and stewardship that the citizens of Scotland County deserve and expect from the office.