Nope it will never be done and shouldn't be done. First of all, fraudulent deeds are extremely rare. I have never been involved with one in over thirty-five years of real estate law practice. Second, it would be an overwhelming burden to put on local governments. Third, it would significantly delay how long it takes to get documents recorded. It's not the government's job - and shouldn't be - to make sure that every document that comes in for recording is legitimate.
The government would still have immunity because the burden still falls on the notary.
Imagine I'm buying a shopping center. I have a loan commitment for $50m that provides that if I close on or before August 1 the interest rate is 3%, but if I close after August 1 the interest rate is 4%. (It's not unusual to have a loan commitment structured that way.) Everybody goes to the title company and signs all the documents on July 31 and the deed and deed of trust are hand delivered to the recording clerk that day for recording no later than Aug. 1. On August 1 the recording clerk calls and says they can't record that day because they can't verify notary Joe Blow. On August 2 they call back and say that Joe Blow was indeed found in the database and they can now record. That's all great, except that their mistake or incompetence now means I have to pay $500k more a year in interest for the term of the loan. Should the county be responsible to reimburse me for the extra money they have cost me? I think so.
I don’t think so, around here you wait at least three business days before calling and if you want a deed walked through, you pay someone to walk the deed through.
As to it being too much trouble to verify that some poor innocent old veteran or something isn’t being put on the street due to a fraudulent deed, well, if it takes so long, what exactly ARE they verifying, is a thing that is going to go through a lot of people’s heads. At some point, in this age when we all have to spend many many unreimbursed hours of our time correcting personal information no-one should have the right to sell to begin with, you could see how ugly that could get.
It isn’t the job of the old people who are living in their houses and are not parties to the transactions in question to bear the burden of fixing this, and that is exactly what Philly is trying to do. Now maybe that will fly in deep blue Philly, maybe, maybe not. But at some point “it isn’t my job” isn’t going to fly.
The notary system basically works on the honor system at this point, and people have gotten sloppy, lazy, and no-one has bothered to bring the system out of the eighteenth century. But just because “we’ve always done it that way!” doesn’t mean there is anything inherently sacred about being backwards and stupid.
Btw, closing date is the day the document is signed and notarized, not the day it is recorded in the land records. You’ve got your pocket deeds, and a fair amount of business is transacted that way in corporate real estate to say nothing of all the series llcs snd trusts making everyone’s lives interesting. The date of closing is the date of closing, it could have been ten years ago and held onto until a sale of the property and recorded with the new buyers deed, but the date of closing remains the same. Thats where a database of these court certified notaries and the transactions they have authorized could really come in handy. Someone’s got to be keeping track of these folks, one would think, otherwise paying a fee for someone’s John Hancock is just a pointless exercise in private taxation.
They could do a pocket deed amnesty before the new system took effect, what fun that would be ;)