Announcements Archive

March 12, 2010


Changes to Document Search effective March 12, 2010

• In the "Detailed Document Screen," the consideration amount from the RPTT (from line 11, schedule 1) will be displayed in the Document Amount field, rather than the RPTT Cash amount of the property (from line 1, schedule 1). This means the amount will include the cash payment or value of the property plus other considerations, such as RPTT and/or other taxes or expenses of the grantor paid by the grantee or amounts of other liens on the property.
  
• On the Document Details screen, the Percentage of Interest Transferred from the RPTT (from the Property Location section of page 1) will be displayed when known.

June 7, 2009


Changes to the E-Tax application Real Property Transfer Tax Return (RPTT) section effective June 8, 2009
ACRIS customers using the E-Tax application will see a new form (Schedule I) in the Real Property Transfer Tax Return (RPTT) section. It will be required if the Condition of Transfer is "Transfer Pursuant To Martial Settlement Agreement Or Divorce Decree." If the Condition of Transfer is “Other,” the new schedule will be optional. For all other Conditions of Transfer, the new schedule will not be displayed.  Schedule I will be grouped together with other schedules in alpha order.

The ACRIS application, “Find Addresses and Parcels and Create Tax Forms / Create Cover Pages,” may be unavailable Sundays from 4:00am to 10:00am, and Sunday 9:00pm to Monday 4:00am. This is due to routine maintenance.

The link between ACRIS and the Digital Tax Map is now available
The ACRIS “Search Results By Parcel Identifier” screen now includes a button “View Current Tax Map” to link a BBL.

September 29, 2008


Changes to the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Customer Registration Form for Water and Sewer Billing–effective September 29, 2008 

Starting September 29th ACRIS customers will see the following changes related to the DEP Water and Sewer Registration form:

• The Water Sewer Tab will no longer exist.
  • To receive the water and sewer bills at an address other than the property address, please click the mailing address tab and follow the instructions. 
  • In addition, if you want to receive a duplicate copy of the bill at a third party address, please call DEP at 718-595-7000.
• Changes to the Property Information Tab - Additional Property Information section:
  • The optional Meter # and Account # Fields have been removed. This information is no longer available via ACRIS
• Changes to the Mailing Address Tab
  • Wording has been added to indicate the property address will be used by DEP as the billing address for all Water/Sewer correspondence.  You may enter another billing address via the DOF Statement of Account Web Site.
• The printed order of completed NYC-RPT forms are:
  • An Affidavit Of Compliance With Smoke Detector Requirement For One and two Family Dwellings 
  • A Customer Registration Form for Water and Sewer Billing 
  • A Real Property Transfer Tax Return
• The layout of the Customer Registration Form for Water and Sewer Billing has changed.

Beginning June 1, 2008: Please provide an appropriate sized, self-addressed, stamped envelope, with your submitted documents if you wish to have your recorded papers returned by mail.

 
January 25, 2008 (ACRIS 4.0.1)
 

Subscription Data Services is now called Electronic Data Services
This name change will be seen on all of the Data Services web pages. Customer IDs, Keywords, and Data Services functionality remains the same.

Cover Page
Validation of Reference Numbers for Pre-Paid Tax Transactions:
Customers can either enter in the Amount field, the Total Remittance paid (i.e. the Total Tax paid and any Fees paid) or the Total Tax paid

Cover Page Update Listed Below

December 3, 2007 (ACRIS 4.0)


The next major release of ACRIS (Release 4.0) is scheduled to go into production on December 3, 2007. Click on the link below to read more information on the enhancements to be included in this next release:

Cover Page and E-Tax Forms

1. Personal Exemption Programs
2. Users are required to have an email address in their profile and will be prompted to add an email address to their account when they login to ACRIS after the go-live date
3. Users will be able to recall their Customer ID, Keyword and Transaction Numbers
4. Document Types will be split into Document Classes
5. Definitions for each Document Type will be available in Cover Page
6. Cross References on the Cover Page Cross Reference Tab will be Validated
7. Reference Numbers for Pre-Paid Tax Transactions will be Validated
8. Only one Smoke Detector & Water and Sewer Affidavit will be printed along with an Addendum if there are multiple properties in the transaction
9. Users will no longer be required to enter two names for a Partnership Tax Form
10. Government Agencies will be able to mark that they are exempt from paying RPT and RET filing fees
11. The Date of Transfer Field will be restricted to only allow dates up to 45 days in the future
12. The RPTT Transfer Date will be automatically copied to the Cover Page
13. RETT Schedule C will only be required if the Transfer is Fee Simple
14. Only rejected documents must be resubmitted as of December 3, 2007

Read more about the ACRIS Release 4.0 enhancements

FAQ’s

Question (1) - What should I do with transactions with both accepted and rejected documents that I’m working on prior to December 3rd?

Answer
Look at the date on the return letter:

• If the date is December 2nd or before, return both the accepted and rejected documents for reprocessing - as is currently the process.
• If the date is December 3rd or later, return on the rejected documents to the Borough Office

Question (2) - What should I do when I receive the email notification that the transaction has been recorded?

Answer
If you are the "Presenter", you can then return the accepted documents to the "Return To" parties.
If you are not the "Presenter", you can notify the "Presenter" parties that the transaction has been recorded. The accepted documents that were part of the transaction can then be sent to the "Return To" parties.

Question (3) - Why is a letter summarizing the return information for all of the documents in the transaction being sent out with the endorsed cover pages?

Answer
The letter is being sent so that the "Return to" parties know that if a document is not included with the endorsed cover pages, it is with the "Presented" party, because it was previously accepted by the City Register.

December 15, 2006  (ACRIS 3.0.4)
 

Cover Page

• Under rare circumstances the total page count displayed on the recording and endorsement cover page did not match the actual page count. A correction was made to fix this rare discrepancy.

Doc Search

In the "Detailed Document Screen" the RPTT Cash amount of the property (from line 1, schedule 1) will be displayed in the Document Amount field, rather than the consideration amount from the RPTT (from line 11, schedule 1). This means the amount only includes the cash payment or value of the property and not other considerations such as; RPT Tax and/or other taxes or expenses of the grantor paid by the grantee or amounts of other liens on the property.

Read more about the latest ACRIS releases
Announcements archives

Information from the City Register

Federal Lien Party Search
Please view the Quick Reference Guide below for important information on Federal Lien search strategies using ACRIS Document Search.

 Search by Party Name Quick Reference Guide (202.9k)

Cover Pages and E-Tax Forms
Please Note: ACRIS Cover Pages are purged from the ACRIS system according to the schedule below if they are incomplete without payment or completed but not submitted without payment. ACRIS E-Tax Forms are purged from the ACRIS system according to the schedule below if they are incomplete or completed but not attached to a Cover Page. The schedule is as follows:

• Cover Pages
  • Completed – 90 days
  • Incomplete – 30 days
• E-tax Forms
  • Completed – 90 days
  • Incomplete – 45 days

These dates are subject to change in the future at the discretion of the City Register. Please be sure that you complete and submit your initiated ACRIS Cover Page and E-Tax forms within the timeframe above.

October 2006  (ACRIS 3.03)


ACRIS Release 3.03: UCC Addendums, ACRIS Jump Page, Cover Page, Tax Forms
Changes were made so that the expiration dates of UCC Coop Addendums extend the life of the UCC chain fifty years from the initial filing which conforms to current UCC law.

Users entering the ACRIS Website from a bookmark are automatically be taken to the ACRIS Jump Page where they can find new information from the City Register concerning changes in laws that affect Cover Pages, Tax Forms, UCCs and other documents, ACRIS enhancements, new modules, maintenance dates when the system is unavailable, and other ACRIS news.

Read more about Release 3.0.3 and enhancements to UCC Addendums, Cover Pages and Tax Forms.

August 2006


Cooperative Apartment Sales Price
Effective Tuesday, August 1, 2006, the sales prices of individual cooperative apartments for every borough from July 2004 forward will be available in ACRIS.

Please note that our definition of sales price is one of full consideration, which includes any compensation (i.e. cash, unpaid principal of pre-existing mortgage(s), accrued real estate taxes, other expenses) paid by the grantee to the grantor. This full consideration is the basis for calculation of the taxes owed on the transaction.

 ACRIS Coop Sales Prices Quick Reference Guide (962k)

May 2006


In order to provide the best ACRIS experience for all users and to ensure there is no degradation in system performance, system regulators were installed to monitor bandwidth utilization. The daily bandwidth utilization for non-subscribers was limited to 400 MB, effective May 15, 2006, and the Department will deny future access to those IP addresses in violation of this policy.

March 2006


Subscription Data Services (SDS) was launched March 13, 2006. Users who subscribe to this service are able to download data files and ACRIS indexes and images of the past 60 calendar days.

ACRIS is designed to allow end-users to access data through single transactions and was not designed to support automated forms of data extraction. The launch of this new subscription service will now enable subscribers to download, in volume, index and image data directly from ACRIS via FTP. Annual, semi-annual, quarterly and monthly subscriptions are available, the price of which is based upon the type of data and boroughs of transactions being downloaded.

May 31, 2005 (ACRIS 2.1.7)

Cover Page

• Effective June 1, 2005 the additional mortgage recording tax was increased from $.25 to $.30 for each 100.00 secured by the mortgage for counties located in the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District (MCTD).
• The Cover Page application calculates mortgage recording taxes and fees based on the date of first submission to the City Register, or in its absence, the current date.
• The Cover Page application permits the editing of the Address portion of the party information for Cover Pages with an associated E-Tax transaction. The functionality of the party tab is similar to the functionality provided for non-E-Tax transactions with the following exceptions:
  
  Parties 1 and 2:
  - There is NO Delete button
  - Upon clicking the Edit button, all information is placed in the fields above the grid with the Last Name, First Name, Middle Initial, Name Suffix, and Business Name grayed out and not editable.
  - The user is only able to make changes to the address fields.
  - Users do not have the ability to add any new parties; Users can only replace sequence numbers after editing an address.
  
  The Party 3 tab is now fully editable which also includes the Delete and Copy buttons.

Tax Calculator

• The Document Date label on Tax Calculator Mortgage Recording Tax tab has been changed to "Submission Date."
  

April 29, 2005 (ACRIS 2.1.6)

Cover Page

• A statement is added to the Document ID pop up window informing users that they agree the information provided on the cover page is, to the best knowledge and belief of preparer, true, correct and complete.
• Cover Page print functions are enhanced to prevent printing of incomplete cover pages and associated payment cover pages.
• When completing a Cover Page for a Release or Partial Release of Mortgage, a pop-up window now appears when leaving the Document screen. The questions should be answered, printed, and attached as a Supporting Document.
• To accommodate Mortgage Recording Tax requirements, additional questions are now asked on the Mortgage Recording Tax screen for Spreader Mortgages, Wraparound Mortgages and Additional Collateral Mortgages. The appropriate Supporting Documents can now be printed and are required.
• The Aggregate Mortgage question on the MRT screen within the Fees & Taxes tab is changed to include a note informing customers to submit the appropriate affidavit with the document if the mortgage being recorded is not an aggregate mortgage.
• The Mortgage Recording Tax calculation now calculates taxes for apportionment mortgages with or without an MT-15 form.
• Party information on the Party Tab is no longer editable if an E-Tax transaction is retrieved in the Cover Page. Party information must be edited within the associated E-Tax transaction.
• The suffix name for a grantor or grantee entered in E-Tax Forms is now copied to Cover Page.

Document Search

• Party names with a double apostrophe (") are corrected to display only one apostrophe.
• Viewing of document images is improved to allow users to view images without modifying their proxy settings.
• The name entered on the Print Checkout screen is limited to 50 characters.
• Index search results for a Transaction Number search now display party names even if the records do not have affiliated property.
• When a print request for a certified copy greater than 25 pages is displayed, the /'select the page range/' drop-drop down is no longer displayed.
• All screens and printouts where the "Party 3" label is displayed or printed are changed to "Party 3/Other" to accommodate recordings of life estates.

E-Tax Forms

• Selecting the \'Print All Forms\' button for a tax transaction with a status of IN USE or RECORDED will now print all tax forms.
• RPTT (Real Property Transfer Tax Return)
  - Selecting "YES" for item "C" on Schedule B, exempts the transfer from Real Property Transfer Tax.
• RP-5217 (Real Property Transfer Report)
  - Item 12. Full Sale Price on the printed RP-5217 accommodates sales prices up to $99,999,999,999.99.
• TP-584 (Real Estate Transfer Tax Return)
  - A Continuing Lien Deduction can now only be entered on Schedule B, Part I for the conveyance of a 1 - 3 family house or where the Consideration amount is less than $500,000.00.
  - Condition of Conveyances "I", "J" and "L" are correctly checked on the printed form when it is selected within the application.

Tax Calculator

• An error message is displayed when a value greater than $99,999,999,999.99 is entered in any of the amount fields and the /'Calculate Taxes/' button is selected.

March 11, 2005 (ACRIS 2.1.5)


E-Tax Forms: Real Property Transfer Tax Return (RPTT)

• The link to the RPTT form on E-Tax Online Help has been updated to display the January 27th, 2005 release of the RPTT form.

Document Search

• Clicking the 'New Name Search' link at the top of the Search Results grid after no records are found will now display the Name Search screen.

Cover Page

• The release of an E-Tax transaction from a Cover Page session will now permanently delete the associated BBL information from the Document Info Tab.

December 10, 2004 (ACRIS 2.1.4)
 

Cover Page

• On the Document Screen, a tax transaction associated to another Cover Page transaction currently being accessed by will not be retrievable.

E-Tax Forms: RP-5217 (Real Property Transfer Report)

• Additional grantors can now be viewed on the Grantor Screen.

September 24, 2004 (ACRIS 2.1.3)


Document Search

• The Recording and Endorsement Cover Pages for recorded documents will now be endorsed with the new City Register's signature.

August 19, 2004 (ACRIS 2.1.2)


E-Tax Forms: TP-584 / RETT (Real Estate Transfer Tax Return)

• Schedule C is now required for all TP-584s, regardless of transfer type.
• In Schedule D, the Non-Resident Exemption Type check boxes are now optional.

E-Tax Forms: RPTT (Real Property Transfer Tax Return)

• In Schedule 2, Excludable Liens amounts can now be entered if there are multiple properties.

July 27, 2004 (ACRIS 2.1.1)


E-Tax Forms

• Printing is now optimized to return faster results.

July 5, 2004 (ACRIS 2.1)
 

Cover Page

• Provides the ability to link Cover Page transactions with E-Tax transactions created in the new E-Tax application (see below).
• Property, Party, and Fees and Tax information is now automatically imported when linking a Cover Page transaction to a Tax transaction.
• When creating a mortgage type Cover Page, any applicable MRT taxes will now be printed on the Cover Page.

E-Tax Forms

• The new Tax Form application (E-Tax) has been designed to provide users with the ability to electronically create a series of real property tax forms for a conveyance for submission to the City Register.
• The following forms are part of the application:
  - Real Property Transfer Tax Return (RPTT)
  - Affidavit of Compliance with Smoke Detector Requirement for One- and Two-Family Dwellings
  - Property Owner's Registration Form
  - Customer Registration Form for Water and Sewer Billing
  - New York State Real Property Transfer Report (RP-5217)
  - New York State Real Estate Transfer Tax Return (TP-584)