Operations
Which documents does SB 255 cover? Mapping your document types
The statute names four kinds of document. Your recording system has dozens of codes. How to map grant deeds, trust transfer deeds, interspousal deeds and the many flavors of deed of trust, and how to handle the government-grantee exemption.
Government Code §27297.7 covers four kinds of document: a deed, a quitclaim deed, a mortgage and a deed of trust. A typical California recording system has far more codes than that. Deciding which of yours fall into the four categories is one of the first decisions a county makes, and one of the few that changes the volume of mail more than anything else.
This is general information, not legal advice. Your county counsel decides the final list.
Start from your own code list
Pull every document type code used in the last year, with counts. Most counties find that a short list of codes accounts for most covered recordings, and a long tail of rare codes needs a decision once.
Codes most counties treat as deeds
- Grant deed
- Quitclaim deed
- Interspousal transfer deed
- Trust transfer deed
- Gift deed
- Corrective or re-recorded deeds
- Transfer-on-death deeds, and affidavits or other documents that transfer title on death, which need a specific decision
- Sheriff's, trustee's and tax deeds, which also need a specific decision, because the "party executing the document" is an officer, not the owner
Codes most counties treat as deeds of trust or mortgages
- Deed of trust, including short-form and construction deeds of trust
- Deed of trust with assignment of rents
- Home equity lines secured by a deed of trust
- Mortgage (rare in California, but it appears)
Codes that are usually outside the four categories
Reconveyances, substitutions of trustee, notices of default, notices of trustee's sale, assignments of a deed of trust, liens, releases and easements are not deeds, quitclaim deeds, mortgages or deeds of trust as such. Most counties exclude them. Some, notably notices of default, are worth a second look for an optional email alert program even if they are not part of the mailed notice.
The government-grantee exemption
Subsection (c) says the section does not apply where the federal government, the state, a county, a city or any subdivision of the state is the grantee. In practice that means a list of agency names and patterns: the county itself, cities, school and water districts, Caltrans, housing authorities, the United States and its agencies. Two cautions:
- Names vary. "City of Demo," "Demo City," and "The City of Demo, a municipal corporation" are the same grantee. Matching needs normalized names and patterns, not exact text.
- The exemption looks at the grantee only. A deed from a city to a private buyer is still covered. So is a deed of trust where a public agency is the beneficiary but not the grantee, depending on how your counsel reads the document's roles.
New codes and rare codes
Recording systems add codes over time. A program that silently ignores an unknown code will miss notices. SentraDeed treats any code it has not seen as an exception: staff classify it once, and every later document with that code follows the decision. Each county keeps its own mapping, because the same code can mean different things in different systems.
Keep the reasoning
When a resident asks why they did or did not receive a notice, "the code was excluded" is only a good answer if you can show when and why. SentraDeed stores the decision and reason on every document (notice, exception, or excluded with a named rule), and every change to the mapping is written to the audit log.
Related: SB 255 for county recorders, subsection by subsection and the SB 255 guide.
Not legal advice. This article is general information about California Government Code §27297.7 and county recording operations. It is not legal advice. Consult your county counsel about how the statute applies to your office.
