When a county records both deeds the same afternoon, is the spread public before the end buyer's agent even leaves the parking lot?

Question

The question comes up because some counties post recorded instruments online within hours, and a 15k spread that looked private at the table is searchable by the end buyer's agent on the drive home. The privacy argument for a double close over an assignment rests on the assumption that the seller and end buyer never see each other's number, but that assumption has a time limit attached to it, and the time limit depends entirely on how fast the recorder's office processes and publishes. In some jurisdictions that window is days. In others it is the same afternoon. So the double close hides the spread from the table, and the public record reveals it a few hours later to anyone who knows where to look. The question worth asking before structuring the deal that way is whether the spread being visible in the record actually changes anything, because if the end buyer discovers it after closing, there is nothing to unwind, but if they discover it mid-transaction through a same-day search, it can create a conversation nobody planned for. How fast does the recorder in the county you work most often publish, and has that speed changed in the last year or two?

chriswalton8 · Answer

The spread being in the public record after closing is legally inert, the deal is done, but the real exposure is the mid-transaction discovery you named, where an agent runs a same-day search and walks back into the closing with questions that stall or kill it.

What county are you working in most often, and do you know whether the recorder there posts same-day or runs a lag?

quentin_arriaga · Answer

The mid-transaction discovery is the one that actually stings, and the scenario I see kill the vibe is when the end buyer's agent refreshes the recorder site while they're still waiting on the wire confirmation.

Cook County went to same-day posting on most residential instruments sometime in 2022, and that window closed a lot faster than people who were structuring doubles in 2019 expected it to. What county are you running these in?

When a county records both deeds the same afternoon, is the spread public before the end buyer's agent even leaves the parking lot?

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