Lowell Deeds

Yesterday I attended a meeting of the REBA Registry Committee at the REBA (Real Estate Bar Association of Massachusetts) headquarters in Boston. The main topic on the agenda was electronic recording and that proved to be an interesting discussion with both sides (the registers and the attorneys) sharing their questions and concerns. But I’ll leave that to a future post because I learned of pending legislation that may be of interest to some of our readers. MGL c.183A, s.9 has always required a copy of the floor plan of a condominium unit to be recorded a along with the first deed to that unit. At this registry, at least, we have left that to the honor system since it would be impractical for us to ascertain whether a deed represented the first deed for that unit or whether it was a subsequent one. But while we will let your deed get on record even without the required plan, the absence of that plan could create a title defect. So a bill to abolish this requirement has passed both houses of the state legislature and is now on the governor’s desk awaiting his signature. Governor Patrick is expected to sign it any day now, but there is no emergency preamble was the amendment to the law will not take effect for 90 days. The amendment also retroactively cures any deeds that omitted the required floor plan which should be of some relief to real estate practitioners.