ACRIS Sales: Lag between Sale Date & Filing Date

The 2003 sale is nuts. How often do you see a lag of several years? I believe it took at least 2 months to get my last entry into the books.

From the perspective of the City and State, isn't this a tax compliance issue rather than a market transparency problem? If so, the most effective solution might be to threaten late filers with a big penalty on their transfer tax bill.

Or is New York getting the money and just failing to update the database?

That's what I was wondering. Does the DoF actually collect that money (on behalf of NYC and NYS) at time of filing? We need a mole down there.

I'm waiting for a sale in my building to record, where the UCC1 was filed a couple of months ago and I know it actually closed.

as far as I know, its the city employees that are responsible for uploading filings, no? Can a buyer or seller actual delay the filing themselves?

At the last closing I attended, I meant to ask who was responsible for the filing, but it slipped my mind. Logically, I think it should be either the managing agent or the seller's attorney, since they control the disbursements. I'd appreciate clarification on this, because it would shed some light on a related question: whether an interested party might delay a filing to postpone the visibility of an adverse comp.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dof/html/business/business_rec_rptt.shtml says the forms must be filed (and presumably taxes paid) within 30 days of transfer. Doesn't say whether there're penalties for non-compliance, but there'd have to be.

very interesting, thx NWT for the link..i have questions in to a few attys on who is responsible for the filing after closing. will post answers I get

NWT - I'm seeing the same thing in my building, where I know a particular sale closed in mid-December, and it's still not showing up in ACRIS. The puzzling thing is that a few sales by the same seller (the sponsor) which occurred later (January/February) have already shown up on SE.

I bought condo recently and title settlement company was responsible for not only filing and registering my property deed and other documents with City but also paying transfer taxes on my behalf. I know because I made a big check out to these guys at closing. A month went by and nothing showed up in ACRIS and since I knew other closings in my building were showing up in ACRIS almost immediately after the date of closing I knew that these guys were sitting on it and getting interest off my money. So I gave them a call and told them to stop making excuses or else... and the next week the filing was done.

thx for sharing veritas! Some idiot on The Real Deal article just bashed me for being "Another real estate expert who lacks even the most basic knowledge."

http://therealdeal.com/newyork/articles/city-lag-time-distorts-residential-sales-data-according-to-a-report-from-urbandigs-and-noah-rosenblatt

His comment about who files the sale: Rosenblatt, do you think the city has people attending every closing? It's up to the buyer to record the sale...why is Rosenblatt blaming the city? Another real estate expert who lacks even the most basic knowledge.

Comment #12 Posted By: Anonymous 03/07/11

One other issue: I recall another thread on broadly this topic in which a poster stated that filing the deed was important to establishing ownership and the bank's security interest. The statement was something like that where a seller fraudulently "sells" the same property to more than one buyer, the buyer who first registers the deed is the owner and that buyer's bank has the valid, prior lien. This makes a delay in filing the deed a credit issue for the bank and buyer, since any buyer and bank beyond the first are left to pursue the "seller"/fraudster to be made whole. This is how I recall the post anyway. There are enough lawyers on SE that if this description is somewhat off they will correct it (and if it is way off they will attack with gusto). This of course addresses the question of delay in filing a deed, and not whether there is a further administrative delay between deed filing and appearance of the document in ACRIS.

Also, w81: "...whether an interested party might delay a filing to postpone the visibility of an adverse comp." The reported "bulk sale" at the Azure, anyone?

Noah, at least there is reason to belive that the TRD anonymous idiot doesn't also hang out on SE. Everyone here calls you ud, urbandigs, digs or Noah. Never Rosenblatt that I can recall. Maybe he/she/it prefers to be a big strong tough blogger under the name Anonymous.

ud - this is funny as it happened to me. the record below if for my sale that got recorded 2 yrs later. i know my attorney (seller) did not wait for 2 yrs for the filing, that's for sure.

DOC. DATE: 10/12/2006 RECORDED / FILED: 11/6/2008 3:23:57 PM

i have been looking at houses for the past year and see a few that were cash deals and went into contract from Sept to Nov are still not appearing on ACRIS.

I think its a combination of seller atty/title company delays and administrative delays over at city register...either way, understanding the discrepancy and the spread will help me to build better analytic tools for you guys. For example, understanding this spread better will help us tweak the methodology of calculating median sales trends. I think the way to go is to do a preliminary number, advance number, and final number...so have a 2 month rolling revision algorithm built in to our platform. Im discussing now with my team

good point sideline! but I wish I can get an attorney to at least back up my response to #12 on The Real Deal. I know Ron Gitter tried to publish a confirmation, but TRD did not accept the comment for soem reason. But if Ron agrees, I know its right.

http://therealdeal.com/newyork/articles/city-lag-time-distorts-residential-sales-data-according-to-a-report-from-urbandigs-and-noah-rosenblatt

This whole thing made me interested in adding up how many 2010 closings got recorded AFTER the Q4-2010 report was released on January 2nd. According to Streeteasy, Q4 saw 2900 closings. So far, I added up ONLY January 2011 sale filings and already found 720 closings that actually sold in 2010 but were recorded after January 2nd, 2011 when the quarterly report was released. Thats 25% of all closings counted in Q4, that never made it into the report and rather will count towards the Q1-2011 report released April 2nd - because the data became public record in Q1-2011. I did NOT count 2010 closings that were filed in Feb or March yet. So in reality, its even higher. Just to throw some numbers out there. If anything, this digging gives us a better perspective of how to measure and track Manhattan sales in real time. Im talking to my team about monthly bar charts w/ Preliminary & Advanced revisions on a 2-month roll. For example, on March 1st, Jan preliminary bar is published. On April 1st, Jan advanced bar is revised. On May 1st, Jan Final bar is published. Etc. Thoughts??

I wouldn't bother to change it, UD. Chances are these recording anomalies have existed for decades, and making a correction will only skew y-o-y figures. I know it's more honest to make the revision, but people will just have to mentally take it into account.

I would just post a line that says "Closings as recorded by ACRIS" or some other disclaimer.

No reason you have to take more responsibility than the govt does. No reason you have to sweep up after their elephant parade.

interesting...thx for the opinion!

I have been tracking a sale in my building. I know the closing date was 12/15/2010 because the mortgage info has shown up on ACIS,(and a board member confirmed the closing) but the sale has still not been posted there. How can the seller avoid having this sale posted in city records?

The seller can't avoid it, but whoever's supposed to file can be slow about it. They can also screw up the address or block-and-lot. E.g., for this one at 45 E 66 -- http://streeteasy.com/nyc/closing/1810276 -- they entered 65 E 66 when filling out the ACRIS forms. I've also seen 711 for 771 WEA, etc.

NWT - thanks for the info, but in this case it's a sponsor sale,and they've already filed several other, later sales) so I don't think it's that sort of screw up. I just have the feeling that there is some reason for the delay in filing. Possibly to avoid showing the closing price as they sell other units.

So there is no city requirement for timely filing?

for condos, the title company usually files with ACRIS. For coops, the seller attorney usually is responsible for filings. YES, ACRIS has data integrity issues that warrant secondary systems to check if unit, address, alt address, lot/block is correct. It never ends! When we were developing the UrbanDigs.com real time Manhattan tracking platform, I was not lying when I said how bad the inventory and sales data was. Sales data was not nearly as bad though as inventory data integrity issues. This is why quality data and fixing the issues, is so important before producing stats on the marketplace. The lag is different issue, and forced us to tweak methodology of how we utilize sales vol trends and absorption rate, etc.

This'd be a good thread to keep open. I was looking for your "This whole thing..." post above the other day.

ph41, there is a timely-filing requirement, since it's revenue-related, but don't know how/whether it's enforced.