Deeds and mortgages for Westchester property are recorded with the Westchester County Clerk’s Land Records Division in White Plains. They don’t go through ACRIS, which covers only Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.
Every Westchester recording is prepared in the Clerk’s online system, PREP (Property Records Electronic Portal). The cover pages and, for a deed, the state TP-584 and RP-5217 forms must all come from PREP (Westchester County Clerk, Land Records). A deed for property in Yonkers, Mount Vernon or Peekskill also needs the city’s stamped transfer tax receipt.
Most rejections come from a missing piece or a document that fails a state recording rule. Fee amounts are in Westchester closing costs. Searching recorded documents is covered at the end.
What goes in the package
| Item | Deed | Mortgage |
|---|---|---|
| PREP recording cover page | Required | Required |
| PREP payment cover page | Required | Required |
| TP-584 (from PREP) | Required | No |
| RP-5217 (from PREP) | Required | No |
| City stamped receipt | Yonkers, Mt. Vernon, Peekskill | No |
| Mortgage tax payment | No | Required unless exempt |
| Exemption affidavit | If claimed | If claimed |
Sources: Record a deed, Record a mortgage, PREP indexing requirements.
The cover page
The cover page carries the details the Clerk indexes: the parties (seller and buyer, or borrower and lender), the property, the page count, links to related documents where needed, and the “Record and Return” address (PREP indexing requirements). After recording, the Clerk scans the document and mails the original to the Record and Return address. A mistake there sends your original deed to the wrong place.
The cover page counts as a page for the per-page fee, and it can’t include a Social Security number or date of birth (state recording fee law). Count it when you enter the page count in PREP.
Deed forms: TP-584 and RP-5217
The TP-584 is the state transfer tax return. It must be filed with the Clerk before the deed can be recorded (state tax law). The RP-5217 is the Real Property Transfer Report, a state report on the sale. No deed can be recorded without it and its filing fee (state property law). Both must be created in PREP.
When an LLC is the seller or buyer of a one- to four-family home, the Clerk’s LLC disclosure addendum must go with the TP-584. It lists the LLC’s members, managers and other authorized people.
City transfer tax receipt
Since August 1, 2013, the Clerk has refused to record a deed for property wholly or partly in Yonkers, Mount Vernon or Peekskill without the city’s stamped receipt, even when no city tax is due (Stewart Title notice). PREP makes a bar-coded cover page for the receipt. The Clerk doesn’t collect the city tax, so the city must be paid first. Rates, deadlines and how to get the receipt are in Yonkers, Mount Vernon and Peekskill transfer taxes.
Mortgage tax
No mortgage can be recorded until the mortgage recording tax is paid (state tax law). The Clerk says it is the lender’s job to make sure the mortgage meets the legal requirements for recording (Record a mortgage). If the mortgage claims an exemption from the tax, an affidavit goes with it. Rates and the lender’s share are in Mortgage recording tax in NYC and Westchester, and the refinance savings in CEMA explained.
How documents are submitted
The Clerk has accepted all land records electronically since September 24, 2012, through PREP or national e-recording services (Electronic recording).
Two kinds of package must go in on paper (documents accepted):
- A package with Form IT-2663, the form a nonresident seller uses to pay estimated state income tax on the sale. So on a sale by a seller who lives outside New York, expect a paper submission.
- A package where another document has to be shown, such as an original lease.
Mortgage and transfer taxes can be paid by ACH, certified or bank check, attorney escrow check, or a check from a company on the Clerk’s approved vendor list. Taxes can’t be paid by credit card (Land Records fees).
Why recordings get rejected
The Clerk doesn’t publish a list of common rejection reasons. The problems below are ones that state law or the Clerk’s own rules make conditions of recording, so a package with any of them will come back.
| Problem | Where the rule comes from |
|---|---|
| Forms not from PREP | County Clerk |
| No city stamped receipt | County Clerk, per Stewart Title |
| No TP-584 or tax | State tax law |
| No RP-5217 or fee | State property law |
| Party addresses missing | State property law |
| City, town, village missing | State property law |
| Not in English, no translation | State property law |
| Not acknowledged (notarized) | State property law |
| No nonresident seller form | State tax law |
| Mortgage tax unpaid | State tax law |
A few of these need explaining.
Addresses and municipality. A deed must give the home address (street and number) of both seller and buyer. It must also name the city, town and village where the property is. Leaving them out doesn’t make the deed invalid, but the Clerk may refuse to record it (state property law). Many Westchester villages sit inside towns, so a deed for village property needs to name both.
Deeds signed outside New York. A deed notarized in another state on that state’s form needs an extra certificate of conformity (state law). The Clerk publishes a certificate form. Using New York’s standard out-of-state notary form instead avoids the certificate (state law).
PREP data that doesn’t match the document. The cover page, TP-584 and RP-5217 are generated from what was typed into PREP. If a name, price or page count in PREP doesn’t match the signed document, the PREP entry has to be corrected; sending the same package again won’t work.
Timing
A rejection doesn’t stop the tax deadlines. The state transfer tax is due within 15 days after the deed is handed over (state deadline), and the Yonkers city tax within 7 days. That is why the city receipt is often obtained before closing, or the city is paid right after, with the package sent in the same week.
Until the deed is recorded, the buyer is exposed. Under state law, an unrecorded deed loses out to a later good-faith buyer who pays for the property and records first. The same law requires the Clerk to mail a notice to the owner of record when a deed to residential property is recorded, at the cost of whoever records it.
For who prepares the PREP package at a Westchester closing, see Who does what at a New York closing. A satisfaction of the seller’s old mortgage must be recorded in the county where the mortgage was recorded; see Clearing an old unsatisfied mortgage.
Searching Westchester County Clerk land records
Once a document is recorded, anyone can find it in the Clerk’s free online index, Westchester Records Online (WRO). The Clerk describes it as a way to check whether a document is on file (Search land records). The land records include deeds back to 1680 and mortgages back to 1950. WRO also holds legal records, such as judgments, and filed maps (WRO).
| Access | Cost |
|---|---|
| WRO index search | Free |
| Images online, yearly | $1,200 per user ID |
| Public terminals | Free |
| Certified copy, 1 to 4 pages | $5 |
| Each added certified page | $1.25 |
| Plain copy by mail | $1.30 for 2 pages |
| Each added plain page | $0.65 |
| Mail request | $5 per item |
Seeing the documents. Viewing images online needs a registered WRO account and a paid subscription. The Clerk’s subscription page lists $1,200 a year per user ID. The Clerk’s FAQs also mention a daily fee. A 2016 Clerk release put it at $20, and no current page states the amount. Images are free on the public computers in Room 345 of the Clerk’s White Plains office, weekdays 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Searching by property. For record requests, the Clerk asks for the owner’s name, the address with its village, town or city, the approximate date, and the liber and page (book and page) or control number if known. Its published guidance doesn’t list the tax map number (section, block and lot) as a search key. Westchester tax maps are kept by town and city assessors; see Westchester municipalities explained.
Certified copies. WRO is not the official record. Only copies prepared and certified by the Clerk’s office count legally as the originals (WRO disclaimer). You order them in person or by letter with a self-addressed stamped envelope and a check payable to “Westchester County Clerk”. Cash is not accepted (Certified copies). The fees follow state law, and no copy of one record costs more than $40 (Land Records fees).
Property Alert Service
The Clerk launched a free Property Alert Service in September 2026 (announced September 28, 2026). You register an owner’s name or a property address on the alert site (not a section, block and lot). You then get an email when a matching land record is recorded. The Clerk says the service doesn’t stop a transaction or confirm that it is legal. See deed theft in NYC for what to do if an alert turns up a deed you didn’t sign.
What a do-it-yourself search won’t show
A WRO search shows what was recorded with the County Clerk. It doesn’t show:
- Unpaid town, city, school or county taxes, which towns, cities and villages collect.
- Open permits and violations at the local building department (Westchester municipal searches).
- Judgments and liens, which are kept in the Clerk’s Legal Division, separate from land records. Weekly reports cost $750 a year by subscription or $30 per printout (Judgments and liens).
- A forged signature on a deed that looks valid.
A title company runs land, name and municipal searches and insures the result. See title search and title report and what to do when a lien or judgment turns up.
Details for attorneys and title professionals
- PREP since 2010. The Clerk has required PREP-made cover pages, TP-584s and RP-5217s since January 1, 2010 (Stewart Title notice, 2009). Cross-references go on the cover page where required.
- Correcting a signed PREP form. The Clerk accepts cross-outs if each handwritten change is initialed by the necessary parties, the PREP entry is edited to match, and both the signed form and the unsigned corrected form are submitted. Forms not made in PREP are accepted only in exceptional cases on written request (Stewart Title notice, 2010).
- RP-5217 paper. Stewart’s New York agent guidelines say the RP-5217 must be printed on legal-size paper with the barcode showing (guidelines, p. 26). That is underwriter guidance, not a published Clerk rule.
- Mortgage tax exemption filings. Three filings are easy to mix up:
- The affidavit claiming exemption from the “additional tax” (one separate part of the mortgage tax) when the lender is a federal credit union or an individual person. Both versions are on the Clerk’s forms page, and the matching one must be handed in with the mortgage.
- The affidavit claiming the exemption for a supplemental mortgage (an added mortgage on the same property) or a consolidation that combines mortgages, such as a CEMA. The Clerk’s checklist calls it a “Section 255 affidavit”, after the part of the tax law it comes from. The checklist lists 12 items, including the book and page of each earlier mortgage, the tax paid on each and the unpaid principal. Two copies of the affidavit are required. In PREP a consolidation or change of terms is filed under the document type “Registered Agreement”, which needs the affidavit and its page count.
- Form MT-15, the state mortgage recording tax return. It splits the tax when the property lies in places with different rates, such as partly in Yonkers and partly elsewhere in Westchester. It is filed in duplicate with the Clerk. A mortgage on property entirely in one rate area doesn’t need it.
- Direct e-recording. A submitter signs the Westchester County Registered Submitter Agreement and sets up a pre-authorized ACH debit account; each takes about a week. Scans must be black and white, portrait, at least 200 dpi (240 recommended), as multi-page TIFF or PDF, with signatures and notary seals legible (image specifications).
- Signing checklist. Stewart’s agent guidelines list items to check before submitting: documents dated and signed, names matching across all documents, notary acknowledgments complete with seal, a power of attorney signature reading “as authorized agent,” a legal description attached to the mortgage, and every page initialed where the mortgage calls for it (guidelines, pp. 25 to 27). These are underwriter checklist items, not Clerk rules.
- The “7-day” period. In a note on Yonkers, Mount Vernon and Peekskill deeds, which go to the city before the County Clerk, Stewart’s guidelines describe a “strict 7-day submission after closing period with monetary penalties” (p. 25). That matches the Yonkers deadline. No Clerk page states a general 7-day recording rule.
Official sources
- Westchester County Clerk, Land Records, Record a deed, Record a mortgage, Electronic recording, Forms and Land Records fees
- Westchester County Clerk, Search land records, Certified land record copies, Annual subscription service, Judgments and liens, FAQs and Access to legal records made easy (2016)
- Westchester County Clerk, Westchester Records Online and WRO disclaimer
- Westchester County Clerk, Property Alert Service and announcement (Sept. 28, 2026)
- Westchester County Clerk PREP, Indexing requirements, Image specifications and Documents accepted
- Westchester County Clerk, Requirements for Section 255 affidavits, LLC disclosure addendum for TP-584 and Certificate of conformity
- New York Real Property Law § 291 (acknowledgment; unrecorded conveyances; owner notice), § 299-a (certificate of conformity), § 309-b (uniform out-of-state acknowledgment) and § 333 (subdivisions 1-a, 1-d, 1-e and 2: residences, municipality, transfer report, English)
- New York Tax Law § 258, § 663(d), § 1409(a) and § 1410
- New York CPLR § 8019(f) (copy fees) and § 8021(a)(4) (cover page)
- NYS Department of Taxation and Finance, Form MT-15, Mortgage Recording Tax Return
- Stewart Title, Bulletin NY000423 (PREP requirement), Bulletin NY000438 (corrected forms), Bulletin NY000529 (city receipt) and New York guidelines for out-of-state and new agents, pp. 25 to 27