Robert EllicksonDecember 29, 1998

SELF-GUIDED TOURS FOR PROPERTY STUDENTS

This memorandum introduces you to several important property-records offices in the City of New Haven. Part I explains the simple Title Search Project that you are individually required to complete. Part II outlines an optional self-guided tour of the local housing court. To preserve the goodwill of the Yale Law School, please go about your business with minimum questioning of the civil servants.

  1. Title Search Project
    Your task is to fill out, for a particular property, the blank worksheet included in these instructionsCto the extent that you can do so in two conscientious hours. The worksheets will be graded credit/fail. To complete the worksheet you will visit two different offices located near one another about four blocks from the Law School. These two offices are open Monday-Friday, 9 am--5 pm, but some operations cease minutes before closing time. Before your visit, select a privately owned property located within the City of New Haven and obtain its street address. You are encouraged to select a property that interests you, for example, a dwelling where you've resided or a restaurant that you've patronized. You should avoid an institutional property, such as Mory's or a house of worship, because these are seldom transferred. These instructions and the sample worksheet use the example of Toad's Place, whose official street address is 294 York Street.

    1. Assessor's Office, New Haven City Hall, 165 Church St.
      (historic building fronting Green, with clock atop)

      The Assessor's Office is in Atrium 141. From the main entrance of City Hall, walk straight back into the two-story atrium. The office will be on your left.

      The records of the Assessor's Office, which is responsible for property tax assessments, readily reveal who owns New Haven's real estate. Thick "Street List" binders, kept on the main counter, contain the property tax assessments. The data reported here were derived from the 1997 Street List; you may find that a more recent List is available. Properties are indexed alphabetically by street name. Find the appropriate binder and then locate your street address by using the left column. The Street List indicated that the owner of Toad's Place is James H. Segaloff, acting as Trustee for the Town of New Haven.

      At the beginning of the third line under the Street List entry you are likely to find "vol" and "page" numbers and a "sale date". The first two signify the volume and page number in the Recorder's Office where the current owner's deed of acquisition is recorded. The numbers indicated that Segaloff had acquired Toad's Place by a deed recorded on 7/7/89 in volume 4113, page 262. Enter the corresponding numbers on your worksheet. (See Sample.)

      To calculate the current annual property tax on your parcel, find the Street List figure that signifies the NET ASMT. For Toad's Place this amount was $476,350. Because a Connecticut statute requires New Haven to assess at 70% of appraised market value, this net assessment implies that in 1997 Toad's Place had a market value of $680,500. In 1997, New Haven's mill rate was 35.04. To figure the property tax owed, multiply the NET ASMT by .03504. In Toad's case, the product came to $16,691. (See Sample.)

      The twelve digit number in the first line on the Street List is the parcel number. Toad's is 260-0307-00500. Place this number on your worksheet. If you are adventurous, go to the lower of the two computers located just inside the entrance of the Assessor's Office. (Type <C>, then <ENTER>, if you need to clear the screen.) Enter this number (without the hyphens) as the "PARCEL NBR". You may be able to see a picture of the property, and, with a bit of experimenting, you should be able to obtain parcel information and a sketch of the lot

      .

      The first three digits of the parcel number (for Toad's, "260") indicate the number of the assessor's map for the neighborhood in which the property is located. Assessor's maps, potentially of great utility to real estate specialists, are located in the drawers of the gray cabinet in the Assessor's Vault, which is through the door to the right of the main counter. A map's number appears in its lower right corner. You should be able to locate the assessor's map for your area within seconds. (An index map in the Vault will help you find maps for other areas.)

      When you're done with your work at the Assessor's Office, exit from it to the left, go out City Hall's back door, immediately turn left up the coral-colored ramp, and walk to the far end, where through double glass doors you will enter the second office building involved in this assignment.

    2. City/Town Clerk's Office (Recorder's Office), Room 202, 200 Orange Street
      (near corner of Elm)

      Parties to New Haven real estate transactions voluntarily record documents in the Clerk's Office, mainly to protect themselves against claims by subsequent purchasers. First, make a brief stop in the small room (with a red-orange door) located to the right as you face the main counter. The bottom drawer in the gray cabinet in this room contains microfilm copies of subdivision maps, which are indexed by street in the thick black book kept in this room. The viewer enables you to examine a map

      .

      Your chief task in the Clerk's Office is to locate the first two deeds in your property's chain of title. Your worksheet is likely already to include the volume and page numbers of the current owner's deed of acquisition. If it doesn't, you can obtain these numbers by using either the grantee indexes or the electronic index (both discussed in the paragraphs below).

      With your numbers in hand, enter the vault through the heavy metal door located seven paces from the door of the subdivision-map room. Here lie the land records of New Haven. Shelved above the countertop along the wall immediately to your right at entry are indexes for documents recorded in the 1984-1996 period. Indexes for more recent years lie scattered on a peaked countertop that is perpendicular to the countertop along the wall. Grantor indexes have red covers and grantee indexes have white covers. Indexes for years prior to 1984 are in large books lying on countertops at the far end of the room

      .

      A person who acquires land in New Haven by recorded deed is listed in alphabetical order in the grantee index for the pertinent time period. Segaloff's acquisition of Toad's is thus indexed in the "S" section of the grantee index for 1989. The index entry appearing by his name is 4113-262, indicating the volume and page at which a copy of his deed of acquisition is recorded. (These numbers are identical to the ones previously found.) The index also identifies instruments by type; for example, the abbreviation WTY (or WAR) stands for "warranty deed," the type of deed most commonly used in Connecticut.

      Copies of documents recorded since 1968 are in blue-spined volumes labeled "Land Records." These volumes are in the perpendicular aisles past the one with the current indexes. The Toad's deed should have been in volume 4113, at page 262, and indeed it was. Find your deed and fill in the pertinent blanks on the worksheet. Because all documents involved in a particular real estate closing tend to be recorded consecutively, examine the adjacent pages to determine whether mortgage financing was involved.

      Locating the next prior deed may take a bit more effort. The first deed indicated that the grantors of Toad's were Michael Spoerndle and Brian Phelps. To find out how Spoerndle and Phelps had acquired title, one must search under Spoerndle's name backward in time in the grantee indexes. That inquiry revealed that Spoerndle and Phelps had acquired Toad's in 1987 by warranty deed recorded at 3761-020. The documents before and after page 20 of volume 3761 revealed the full structure of the Toad's sale in 1987. Prior to Spoerndle and Phelps' acquisition, four concurrent owners, one of them deceased, had owned Toad's as tenants in common in undivided shares of 1/6, 1/6, 1/3 and 1/3. The three living owners and the testamentary trustee for the deceased owner had all executed separate deeds (some warranty, some quitclaim) to Spoerndle and Phelps. The documents reveal that Spoerndle and Phelps paid $1,300,000 for the property in 1987 (almost twice the 1997 appraised market value), and financed their purchase by means of a $800,000 first mortgage loan, at 10.75% annual interest, from the Connecticut National Bank. The worksheet provides places for entry of some of this information

      .

      New Haven has electronic indexes for many recent documents. If you have time, try using the computer terminals located across from the main counter in the main office. Follow the "Search Instructions" posted on the column by the terminal. At the appropriate junctures, choose a "History Index," then a "Name Search," and enter the name of the current owner. The electronic index may list a discouragingly large number of items under a particular name. The entries in the second column can help you eliminate extraneous items: "1" denotes a Grantor; "2" a Grantee; most deeds are identified by either WTY, WAR, QC, or QUIT.

      TITLE SEARCH WORKSHEET

      1. Your name: _________________________________________________________________

      2. Property's street address: _______________________________________________________

      3. Parcel number: ______________________________________________________________

      4. Name of current owner(s): _____________________________________________________

      5. Current property tax assessment: (a) NET ASMT ________________; (b) mill rate (.03504);

      (c) property tax due (= (a) x (b)) ____________________________________________

      6. Name of immediately prior owner(s): ____________________________________________

      a. Type of deed used to convey to current owner: _______________________________

      b. Date this deed signed by grantor: __________________________________________

      c. Deed recorded on __________________________, at Volume _______ Page _______

      d. Sale price (if available): _________________________________________________

      e. Contemporaneous mortgage loan in amount of _______________________________,

      provided by _______________________________________________________

      6. Name of next prior owner(s):____________________________________________________

      a. Type of deed used to convey to immediately prior owner: _______________________

      b. Date this deed signed by grantor: __________________________________________

      c. Deed recorded on _________________________, at Volume _______ Page ________

      d. Sale price (if available): _________________________________________________

      e. Contemporaneous mortgage loan in amount of _______________________________,

      provided by ______________________________________________________

  2. Superior Court, Housing Session.

    The office of the Clerk of the Housing Session is on the second floor of the Ionic-columned Superior Court building, 121 Elm Street (corner of Church). The office hours are 9:00 amC-5:00 pm, Monday through Friday. The Housing Clerk, Suzanne Colasanto, is director of this office. The three workers usually present in the open part of this office are Carol Consiglio, Michelle DeMarco, and Carmela Stora. You also may see Cheryl Wilcox, the Assistant Clerk; Cynthia Teixeira, the Manager of Dispute Resolution; and Heriberto Villafane and Edmond O'Garro, the Housing Specialists. You should briefly explain to one of them that you are a visitor from my class, and then let yourself in by pushing down on the button on top of the gate.

    A simple way to introduce yourself to the business of this office is to examine a few of the manila files in the cabinet located just behind the front counter and along the wall to the left as you enter. These files are those of cases that have recently gone to judgment. The files illustrate the flow of paper in the summary process system. Return files to their proper place. To the right of these files are alphabetical indexes of the parties involved in various types of landlord-tenant cases. One could use these indexes to find out to what extent a landlord (such as your landlord) or a tenant has been involved in Housing Session proceedings. Under the front counter are copies of forms distributed to visitors to this office. Don't take copies unless you need them.

    Judge Edward Leavitt currently presides over the Housing Session of the Superior Court. The court convenes in Courtroom 6 on the third floor. Summary process actions are heard on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Business starts at 9:30 am and may run for several hours.