Choosing SB 255 notification software: 12 questions to ask any vendor

Since SB 255 passed, California recorders have heard from several kinds of vendor: national property data companies with existing fraud notification products, government software platforms, mail houses, and specialist products like SentraDeed. Many demos look similar: a dashboard, a letter, an email alert. The differences show up in the details the statute cares about. These are the questions we would ask, including of ourselves.

Meeting the statute

1. Where does the mailing address come from? Section 27297.7 says the notice goes to the tax-bill address established prior to the recording. Ask whether the vendor uses your Assessor's own address history as of the day before recording, or a national database snapshot that may already reflect the new owner, or a fraudster's change of address.
2. Who receives the notice? The statute says the party or parties executing the document. Ask how signers are identified and what happens when the signer is a trustee, an agent under power of attorney, or an officer signing for a company.
3. How are your document codes mapped to the four covered categories, and how is the government-grantee exemption applied? What happens with a code the system has never seen? See Which documents does SB 255 cover?
4. How is the 30-day clock tracked? From recording, per document, with a view of what is close to due? Or from when a file arrives?

Accuracy

5. What happens when the system is not sure? Missing APN, retired parcel, two possible owners. A good system sends uncertain cases to a person; a weak one guesses and mails. Ask to see the exception queue.
6. What does "AI" actually do? If a product says it uses AI, ask which decisions it makes, how confident it must be, and which decisions a person always reviews. See Reading APNs from document images for how we draw that line.
7. Can you test it on your own files before you sign? A few days of your Recorder and Assessor exports, run end to end, tells you more than any demo dataset.

Residents

8. Is the notice a statutory notice or a marketing-style "courtesy notice"? Who approves the wording, and is it available in Spanish and other languages your county needs?
9. Are the notice PDFs and the resident portal accessible? Ask for PDF/UA validation results and a WCAG 2.1 AA conformance report (VPAT), not just a statement. See Accessible notices.

Data and control

10. What happens to your county's data? Is it used only to run your program, or does it feed the vendor's commercial property database or other products? Where is it hosted, and what happens at contract end?
11. Who prints and mails, and how is it recorded? Can the county keep printing in-house, or must it use the vendor's mail service? Can you show, per notice, when it was mailed? Contracts for processing or mailing are subject to the bidding rules in subsection (e), so ask your purchasing office how that applies to each option.
12. What does it cost per year, all in? Software, per-notice charges, postage, setup, and changes. Can you see the number before a sales cycle? This feeds directly into any fee under subsection (f); see Setting an SB 255 recording fee.

How SentraDeed answers

SentraDeed is built only for §27297.7. It uses your Assessor's address history as of the day before recording, decides every covered document with a stored reason, sends uncertain cases to staff, produces PDF/UA-validated notices in English and Spanish, and keeps printing and mailing with the county or its mail house. The county owns its data; CSP does not sell it, use it for advertising, or train models on it. You can see it on synthetic data in the product tour, review our security and accessibility documents, and see how counties buy it on the procurement page.