SB 255 by January 1, 2027: a countdown plan for the last 11 weeks

Section 27297.7 asks each county to have its recorder notification program in place on or before January 1, 2027. As of mid-October, that is about 11 weeks away, including two holiday weeks. Plenty of counties are still early in the process. This plan assumes you are starting about now.

Weeks 1 to 2: decide and request

• Confirm the program design with county counsel: covered codes, exemptions, start date, APN requirement, email alerts. See Which documents does SB 255 cover?
• Decide who prints and mails: in-house, county print shop or mail house.
• Request a week of sample exports from the Recorder (daily index, and images if APNs are often missing) and the Assessor (ownership and mailing address, with history).
• Get a board date on the calendar for December. See The SB 255 board resolution.

Weeks 3 to 4: map and dry-run

• Map the file layouts to the system without changing county systems. See How counties send files.
• Run the sample week end to end and review the decisions: notices, exceptions, exclusions.
• Draft the notice in English and Spanish and send it to counsel.

Weeks 5 to 7: parallel run

• Set up the daily SFTP or upload so files arrive automatically.
• Process each day's recordings in parallel, without mailing. Work the exceptions as if it were live, and time them.
• Print a sample batch on the real printer or send it to the mail house for a test.
• Collect the numbers for the staff report: documents, notices, exception rate, staff hours. See Budgeting an SB 255 program.

Weeks 8 to 9: board and outreach

• Board adopts the resolution (and any ordinance, APN requirement or fee).
• Notify title companies and e-recording submitters of any APN requirement and fee.
• Publish the resident pages: what the letter means and the alert sign-up. See Property fraud alerts.
• Brief front-counter and phone staff on resident questions.

Weeks 10 to 11: ready to mail

• Final template approval, user accounts and roles, and a check of the audit trail and reports.
• Go live for documents recorded from the program's start date.

If you start late

A late start is not the end of the program. Subsection (d) says a failure to give notice does not create liability for the recorder or county, but the purpose of the law is to warn owners, and late notices still do that. Document a start date, then run a catch-up pass so every covered document recorded since that date is decided in order, with due dates tied to each document's recording date. SentraDeed's backlog processing does exactly this, and flags anything past its 30-day window so the office can show how quickly it caught up. See What the 30-day notice requirement means in practice.

This article is general information, not legal advice.