Preliminary Change of Ownership Reports -- a Necessary Evil.

In California, every deed or property conveyance that is recorded with the county recorder's office should have a Preliminary Change of Ownership Report completed and submitted alongside the deed or conveyance.

I blog about recording deeds because this is the only way to transfer your real property into a trust. You can have to record a grant deed or trust transfer deed reflecting that your trust now owns the property.

The Preliminary Change of Ownership Report is very confusing and takes more than a few minutes to fill out even with an auto-fill program.

Anyway, it is not required, but the county will assess a $20 recording fee penalty for not submitting this form.

The basic purpose of the form is for the county to determine the type of transfer that is being recorded. The county needs to know if property taxes needs to be reassessed. For transfers into a trust, your property taxes should not be reassessed as the law does not consider a transfer into a trust as a bona fide change of ownership.

Today I ran into an attorney who was talking about these PCOR forms. He says he doesn't do them. To me, that is being lazy. Sure, they are not required, but it makes it very easy for the county to identify the type of deed or conveyance being recorded and seeks the information they need for determining if property taxes should be reassessed.

The neat thing about the form is that you can use any county's PCOR form and it will be accepted by any other county for recording.