Clark County Will Email You When Something Is Recorded Against Your Property

Most people who own a home in this valley have never thought about the Recorder's Office. It is where deeds, liens, notices and transfers get filed into the Official Records, and in the normal course of owning a house you interact with it twice: once when you buy, once when you sell.

Which means that if a document showed up under your name tomorrow, you would probably find out months later. Maybe at a refinance. Maybe when you went to sell and the title company called.

The county runs a service that closes that gap. It is called the Recording Notification Service, and signing up takes about five minutes.

Deeds transferring ownership. Deeds of trust when there is a loan. Reconveyances when a loan is paid off. Mechanics liens from a contractor who says they were not paid. Judgment liens. Notices of default. Easements. Corrections to documents recorded earlier.

Most of these are routine and most of them you already know about, because you signed them. The ones worth knowing about quickly are the ones you did not sign.

That is the real reason to do this. Not because something is likely to happen, but because the cost of finding out late is high and the cost of finding out early is five minutes.

You give the Recorder's Office an email address and the names or parcel numbers you want watched. From then on, when a document is recorded into the Official Records matching what you enrolled, an email goes to that address automatically.

Two details from the sign-up page that matter. You have to activate the subscription from the email they send you, so it is not finished when you click Sign Up. And it only covers documents recorded after you sign up. If you want to see what is already on record against your property, the Recorder has a separate document search for that, and it is worth running once while you are in there.

You can enroll a name, a parcel number, or both. A parcel number is the stronger of the two, because it is unique to your property. Your name is not unique to you, which brings up the next part.

This is the part I would not want you to misunderstand, so I am using the county's own answer.

It does not prevent anything. Asked directly whether the service stops someone from recording a document on your property, the Recorder's Office says no. The service only notifies you, and their office is required to record all documents that meet the requirements set out in the Nevada Revised Statutes. You are buying early warning, not a lock.

It will sometimes tell you about something that is not yours. If you enroll a name, you will hear about documents recorded under anybody whose name is spelled the same way. The office also notes that indexing errors happen and can generate an alert in error. An alert is a reason to look, not a reason to panic.

It covers one county. If you own property in another Nevada county, or in California, your Clark County subscription does nothing for it. You sign up with each county separately where the service exists.

It is not connected to any identity monitoring product. If you pay for one of those, this is still a separate thing you have to do.

Go to the Recorder's subscribe page at recorder2.clarkcountynv.gov. Enter your email address twice, choose whether you are enrolling a name or a parcel number, type it in, and click Add record. You can add more than one. Then click Sign Up and watch for the activation email.

If you do not know your parcel number, the Assessor's parcel detail site will give it to you from your address in under a minute. Enroll the parcel number for every property you own in Clark County, and enroll your name as well, including the way it appears on your deed if that differs from how you usually write it.

If something about the form does not work, the Recorder's Office takes questions about this service at RecRNS@ClarkCountyNV.gov and at 702-455-2844.

Read what it says before you do anything. A lot of alerts are documents you already know about, a reconveyance after a payoff, or a document belonging to someone who shares your name.

If it is not yours and it concerns you, the county's own recommendation is to contact local law enforcement and seek legal counsel. The Recorder's Office cannot interpret the document for you or tell you what it means, and under Nevada law they are not permitted to. I am a Realtor, not an attorney, so I am not going to tell you what your position is either.

What I can do is read the Official Records on your property, tell you what is actually there, and tell you whether it is the kind of thing that will stop a sale. If you were planning to list, that is worth knowing before the title company finds it rather than after.

Anyone who owns property here, but four situations in particular.

You kept a rental when you moved up. Nobody drives past it, the mail goes to a tenant, and you are the least likely owner in the valley to notice something.

You inherited a house and you live somewhere else. An out-of-state owner finds out last, every time.

You downsized and kept the old house. Same problem as the rental, with the added wrinkle that your name may still be attached to two parcels.

You have owned the same home for a long time and it is paid off. A house with no lender watching it is a house where nobody but you is paying attention to the record.

Send me the address. I will pull what is recorded against it and tell you plainly whether there is anything on there you should deal with before you ever think about selling.

Call 702-881-6562 or email JArendt658@gmail.com. Sign up for the notification service first, because that takes five minutes and does not need me. Then, if something comes back that you do not recognize, call me and call a lawyer, in whichever order makes you feel better.

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John Arendt, Realtor, has sold homes across the Las Vegas valley for 20 years, in Henderson, Summerlin, Southern Highlands, Anthem, Boulder City and North Las Vegas.

This article describes a Clark County Recorder's Office service as that office documents it. John Arendt is a Realtor, not an attorney, and nothing here is legal advice. If you believe a document has been recorded against your property improperly, contact local law enforcement and an attorney.