Setting an SB 255 recording fee: cost recovery under §27297.7(f)

A notification program costs money every day: paper, envelopes, postage, staff time and software. Subsection (f) of Government Code §27297.7 gives counties a way to recover it. In addition to any other recording fee, the board of supervisors may authorize the recorder to collect a fee from the party filing a deed, quitclaim deed, mortgage or deed of trust.

This article is general information, not legal advice. Fee setting is a county counsel and auditor-controller question, and your county's usual fee procedures apply alongside the statute.

The two limits in the statute

• A cap. The fee cannot exceed the reasonable costs of the county's services to provide the program and comply with the section.
• A wait. The fee cannot be charged until at least 120 days after it is established and the public has been notified of the fee and its effective date.

Counties that have announced fees so far have set them at a few dollars per document. The right number for your county depends on your volumes and your costs, which is why the cost basis matters more than the amount.

Building the cost basis

A defensible fee study lists every cost the program creates and divides by the number of documents that will pay the fee. Typical lines:

• Postage per notice, at the class and presort level you will actually use.
• Printing and supplies: paper, envelopes, toner, or the mail house's per-piece price.
• Staff time: working exceptions, approving daily batches, answering resident calls, handling returned mail. Measure it in a parallel run rather than guessing.
• Software and hosting.
• Outreach: the resident alert page, letters to title companies, translated materials.

One detail is easy to miss: notices outnumber documents. A deed signed by two owners produces two notices; a refinance may record a deed and a deed of trust together. The fee is charged per document, but costs accrue per notice, so the study needs the ratio of notices to fee-paying documents. SentraDeed's monthly statistics report shows covered documents, notices produced and notices mailed side by side, which gives you that ratio from your own data.

Documents that won't pay

Documents where a government entity is the grantee are outside the program under subsection (c). Fee waivers that already apply to certain filers in your county may also reduce the fee-paying count. Use the count of documents that will actually pay, not total recordings.

The 120-day calendar

Count back from the day you want collection to start. If the board establishes the fee on December 1 and public notice goes out that week, the earliest collection date is about the end of March. Until then the program runs on the general fund. Some counties take the fee to the board early for exactly this reason. See The SB 255 board resolution for how the fee fits with the program resolution.

Telling filers

Title companies, lenders and e-recording submitters need the amount and effective date in advance so their systems calculate fees correctly. A short notice to frequent filers, a posting on the Recorder's fee schedule page, and an update to the e-recording fee tables usually cover it.

Review it after a year

Volumes move with interest rates and the housing market. A fee set on 2026 assumptions may over- or under-recover by 2028. Reviewing actual costs and notice counts annually keeps the fee within the reasonable-cost limit.