Editorial by Evey Larson, Murray County Recorder
What does the Recorder’s Office do for you, the taxpayer? That’s a good question and one that we would like to answer for all the property owners in Murray County. If you own a home, an acreage or a farm in Murray County you have a deed that was given to you by the seller at the time of closing. The Recorder’s Office is where all the deeds, mortgages, modifications, satisfactions, affidavits, probate documents and hundreds of other documents are filed each year. Our records go back to 1858 when Minnesota became a state and the land was deeded to the government, railroads and individual property owners.
We have all the old books that were handwritten in the late 1800s and we still use them today. These books have all been digitized and duplicates are stored off-site in a bank vault and at our server location out of state so that we would have all our records available in the event of a catastrophic event (i.e. tornado, fire, etc.). If such an event did occur, we would be able to get set up within hours and be able to transact business with the help of our software company, Fidlar Technologies.
In the United States, we have the right to own our houses and land. With that ownership, we have the economic advantage of being able to use the equity in our homes and land as collateral for loans to make improvements or start new businesses. Without the proper documentation, you wouldn’t be able to secure a mortgage on your property and that’s where the Murray County Recorder’s Office comes in and is a great benefit to the landowner. Our office will have all your documents that are required to facilitate your real estate transactions and protect all parties’ interest. The records in the Murray County Recorder’s Office are the “official” record and are used by abstractors to create new abstracts and title searchers to write title insurance. Our office has gone from using those dusty old books to electronic recording of all your documents so that the public has current and factual access to everything that has been recorded over the past 161 years.
Since I was elected Recorder in 2014 we have updated both our records and our office. Murray County has worked with Fidlar Technologies since 2002 to offer programs that are dedicated to preserving our real estate records along with allowing easy access and searching through public portals. In 2015 we upgraded to the AVID program with Fidlar that allows us to scan and index your documents within a short time to allow searching of the records in both Laredo and Tapestry programs.
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